In the beginning of June, Matters, a platform for industrial culture, coordinated by Kaunas Artist House, has launched an open call for the selection to the compilation -Scape. A total of 38 applications by 37 artists has been received for the call, out of which 16 were by Lithuanian artists. Overall geography of the call is international: proposals were received from artists living and working in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Bulgaria, United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, USA, Russia and Chile.
Compilation -Scape was initiated with the aim to provide an encouragement in the form of a financial award to four artists for pieces of sound that have already been composed or that will be composed in the 30 days following the nomination of the awardees.
Numerous applications revealed severe consequences that the pandemic has had on artists, many of whom were living in precarious situations even beforehand. Among those that applied, were sound artists, djs, promoters that had lost all of their income, who were not eligible for state support or benefits due to their legal status, those that lost roofs over their heads and were sheltered by friends.
The selection was carried out by the initiator and curator of Matters programme, Daina Pupkevičiūtė, and William “Bilwa” Costa, a former resident of the programme, sound artist, educator and performance artist from US/Germany.
In the process of evaluation a variety of factors were taken into account. Among them – the overall sound portfolio of the applicant, their creative goals, concept proposed, with a particular focus on completeness of
the proposal, feasibility and originality. An important aspect in decision making process has been the dimension of the dialog among the four compositions. Of importance was the demonstrated need for timely financial support as well as how the award could help further creative goals of the applicant.
Based on all of the criteria outlined above, it was decided to award the following sound artists:
Augustė Vickūnaitė (Lithuania / Germany), Entropija (Lithuania), La cuarta conquista de México (Mexico) and Xenia (Germany).
The artists will have one month to compose and finalize their sound productions according to the concepts proposed. The digital album -Scape is expected to be available on Bandcamp account of Matters platform in September this year.
Matters is implemented in collaboration with Kaunas 2022.