NeMe: Capturing Utopia - Call for projects

Fournos, Center for Digital Culture organizes in September which is the Month of Photography for Athens, the event Capturing Utopia and invites creators to send their works [digital photographs and images] that have utopia as their theme.

The term utopia has been used in philosophy, art, literature, architecture even in politics to describe ideal situations that are impossible or very difficult to implement. These approaches may have a financial, political or social basis but in any case utopia is always strongly connected with an optimistic, idealistic or almost impossible perfection. The references to the utopia are innumerable, the most famous examples standing out are: Plato's Republic, New Jerusalem by Augustine of Hippo, Utopia by Sir Thomas Moore [that first used the word utopia], New Atlantis by Francis Bacon, the Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Andromeda Nebula by Ivan Efremov and the Cloud Of Maggelan by Stanilav Lem.

Which are the most familiar forms of utopia for today's world? Utopia is a temporal and spatial illusion that examines reality and transforms it. It is connected to the facts and the conditions of each period converting them to something higher, idealized. Today's utopias are connected to contemporary technology and science, their fast development and their possibilities. They leave behind the images of ideal paradises and societies close to nature. They are inspired and they use material from the internet, the mobile and wireless technologies for new conditions of social and political co-existence. Other forms of utopia are shaped into virtual environments from the fields of creation and entertainment.

Fournos aims with this event to form in its venue a utopian environment as this is captured and expressed by digital images. Images that might be realistic or fake. Snapshots from real and virtual worlds. Utopian reflections inspired from the social, political and aesthetical environment or personal everyday moments. Comments, proposals and personal manifestations visualized will adjoin one another to describe the different identities of utopia today.

Images should be

• sent as attachments via email info@fournos-culture.gr or saved in a CD ROM and sent by post at the address
  Fournos, Center for Digital Culture
  168 Mavromichali str
  11472, Athens
  Greece
• 72 dpi, 800Χ600 pixels, in jpg format
• accompanied by a title/ comment on the work, by the name of the artist, a small CV of his/her, and contact details.
• original works of the senders.
• Only one work can be submitted per sender.

The selected works will projected in the venue of Fournos and will be hosted in a special designed page in Fournos webpage. The event will take place from the 18th till the 25th of September 2005.

For more information please contact Daphne Dragona
via email daphne@fournos-culture.gr
or call us at +30210 6420451 / 6460748.

PS. "Yet, when Utopia misunderstands itself as something real it is, if anything, even worse. As Bourdieu realises and history teaches, a real existing Utopia is invariably horrific for human beings.." (from Charles Esche's article Mobile Utopia)