The main idea behind the festival and the competition is to promote modern art as the form of dialogue with the public and to encourage young artists to create art engaged in the reality. Billboards – the symbol of the modern age consumption – are transformed into an object of consideration, reflection and a deep insight into ourselves and the surrounding.

Artists are invited to prepare an artwork in response to this year’s competition theme: Who governs our lives: we ourselves, other people or algorithms?

This competition slogan can be treated as a metaphor for all the processes taking place in the world today. The human world is a collection of individuals that form small groups, societies and the entire human community. What and who decides what we are like and what we do? We ourselves, by making everyday decisions and choosing our own paths of development? Other people, e.g. neighbours, family, politicians, and celebrities who impose their own opinions and preferences on us? Or maybe corporations that use soulless algorithms to follow our lives and invisibly gather any information about us, to tell us what to do, how to behave, what we should look like, who we should vote for, who we should like, and who we should not like? Is there any space for real individuals in the world that apparently praises any individualism, but at the same tries to average all the phenomena, including individual life, and subordinate them to statistics and algorithms?

The format of the competition work should be 498 cm x 238 cm (196 inches x 95.7 inches) in a horizontal layout, 100 dpi, CMYK, tiff. In order to take part in the Competition, the artist has to send a completed entry form and attach a preview of the submitted work in the following format: 30 cm x 14,3 cm (11,8 inches x 5,6 inches) in a horizontal layout, 72 dpi, jpg.

Both individual artists and groups of artists can participate in the competition. If some other slogan or phrase is used in the work, it should be expressed in either Polish or English language.

There is no entry fee.

Eligibility

Open worldwide to all people, artists and students.

Prize

The best 10 artworks selected by an international jury panel will be printed and exhibited in the urban space of the city of Torun, Poland in September/October 2018.

The author of the winning entry will receive the Main Award in the amount of 5.000 PLN (approx. 1,370 USD).