Call to Artists: Politics in Collage 2025

A four-week, virtual/online Residency with Kolaj Institute Sundays, 19 & 26 January and 2 & 9 February 2025. Early deadline to apply: Monday, 30 December 2024 Final deadline to apply: Sunday, 12 January 2025. Freedom House, “the oldest American organization devoted to the support and defense of democracy around the world…was formally established in New York in 1941 to promote American involvement in World War II and the fight against fascism.” In 2022, they issued a report on the state of global freedom and concluded, “Global freedom faces a dire threat. Around the world, the enemies of liberal democracy—a form of self-government in which human rights are recognized and every individual is entitled to equal treatment under law—are accelerating their attacks. Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same.” What can collage artists do to counter rising authoritarianism? During this residency, collage artists will work together to make artwork that responds to a global rise in authoritarianism. They will explore the history of political collage and its early 20th century roots in the European anti-fascist movements. They will learn how to read and decode authoritarianism, to understand how it operates, and strategies for resisting or countering it. Discussions and presentations will center on how an artist can make work that picks up the unfinished work of history and contributes to the civic discourse. Artists in the residency will work together to illustrate and elucidate The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide. Based on the Polish experience, The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide offers its readers information and tools for recognizing and resisting authoritarianism. In a clear series of lists, the Guide lays out what to expect in a society being led by an Artists in the residency will hear from Guest Speaker Martin Mycielski, the Vice-President and Executive Director of the Brussels-based Open Dialogue Foundation. In 2017, Mycielski published a series of improvised, spontaneous tweets that became The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide after they went viral and reached 3 million views within one month. Artists will also hear from Guest Speaker G.E. Vogt about how 21st century collage artists make political collage. Since 2021, Vogt has led a series of residencies in which artists explored the intersection of politics and collage, which resulted in the books Politics in Collage and Collage Saves The World. Vogt was the artist-in-residence with Ideas Block LT in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2023, wherein she worked with a Russian artist to create an exhibition of works exploring the rise of authoritarianism in their respective countries. Vogt’s artwork explores the unmanageable socioeconomic gap, the various forms of inequality prevalent in the U.S, and the toxicity of our political climate. The residency will be facilitated by Ric Kasini Kadour, a 2020-2021 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow, whose work centers on how contemporary art can pick up the unfinished work of history and contribute to the present-day civic discourse. Kadour will lead discussions around artist practice, collage and illustration, the diffusion of political art, and the role of contemporary art in society.