Image courtesy of SACO Contemporary Art Festival
9th Contemporary Art Festival SACO
Now or Never
July 3 – September 5, 2020
Submission Deadline: March 5, 2020
http://proyectosaco.cl
SACO Contemporary Art Festival has taken place annually since 2012 in the Region of
Antofagasta, in the north of Chile, as an independent initiative by the SE VENDE Mobile Contemporary Art Platform Corporation. Its objective is to install a permanent nucleus of reflection, critique and dialogue in the Atacama Desert, through the gathering of artists, experts, curators, works and the public, in an area marked by the inexistence of institutions dedicated to these ends. It proposes as an alternative option in this copper capital to dig deeper for the renewable wealth of creativity and dialogue, a field no less valuable nor less urgently needed.
Each edition of the festival possesses unique characteristics with a special focus. In this way, the grounds for digging are annually renewed, preventing the resources from being exhausted.
SACO9
The 9th edition of the Contemporary Art Festival invites artists to participate in the open call for its main exhibition entitled Now or Never. The selected artists will take part in a weeklong residence at ISLA, Latin American Superior Art Institute, with all expenses paid, for the realization and installation of their works. After the opening, they will participate in an immersion trip within the territory, into the interior of the Atacama Desert.
A jury will select seven winners according to the proposals’ quality; their suitability to the curatorial direction and space for intervention: The Melbourne Clark Historic Pier in Antofagasta; and above all, their relation to the curatorial concept Now or Never.
Proposals for intervention outside of the pier (in the sea, among the rocks, on the breakwater, etc.) will not be accepted, neither will projects that use electricity of any type (projector, television, etc). The exhibition will only run by daylight. The winning works must guarantee an exhibition period of no less than two months. Works that can be seen and appreciated along the entire 360° of the route will be preferred.
Participants
Visual artists of any nationality may participate.
The existing call is open to professional as well as self-taught artists, with no restrictions with regards to age, education, professional experience, line of work or any other factor. The main criteria that will be subjected to evaluation is the quality of the proposal, its viability and suitability.
Artists whose work is linked to the Colectivo SE VENDE, organizer of the exhibition, or artists who exhibited in SACO8 Destiny may not participate.
Now or Never
With Origin and Myth in 2018 we were questioning the monopoly of official histories, inquiring into the right of subjectivity when looking at the past; in 2019 we turned our heads 180 degrees in search of Destiny, to see if, even though our compasses no longer worked, it would be possible to foresee something about the future through science, intuition, or common sense. In this, the latest edition of SACO in festival format, we come to a stop at the third element of the timeline, the most ideal and immeasurable, but at the same time, the only one that is real and concrete. The times demand that we open our eyes to look at the here and now.
As we think about the present it has already become the past. It lies at that point along the coordinates of time where everything happens, and away from this place absolutely nothing occurs. It is a point with no dimensions: neither height nor width, neither depth nor duration. Everything in front appears as a blur, while everything behind is like a series of images in various states of decomposition. We don’t exist in the past, nor in the future. In the lapse between the two we build worlds that will disappear along with us. Each beginning carries with it an end. Suspended between the temples of collective memory, built out of accumulated experience on the one hand, and expectations of what’s to come on the other, it would seem that we are losing the only thing that is certain.
You can only be certain about what you experience. That which is not present is the same as that which does not exist. It is in this moment that things are happening, words are being spoken, airplanes are coming in for a landing, children are being born. Only between one blink of an eye and the next are we able to touch, hear, see, taste, smell. We are sure that we are alive in this moment. That we are. That we exist.
Living immersed in the now draws us closer to the world of the animals–they don’t create stories or worry about what tomorrow will be like. The present is like the spark of a fuse, which travels along the wick from beginning to end, marking the time we have left. As we watch it advance, we know that we are alive. One’s own body in the past isn’t the same as it is now, but rather it belongs to someone much younger. As for the future, we remember that the spark keeps advancing, but we still have this moment that we can take hold of right now. Nothing more.
As your gaze slides along black, abstract shapes, which, combined together, comprise concepts that in turn develop into ideas, on the screen of your mind a sort of channel surfing through memories, associations and ideas has begun. You are reading. This is reality. Everything else doesn’t exist. Today you can give something to someone, experience a breakthrough, or eat an ice cream. The present is eternal. It has no beginning or end. Now is when.
