Call for Student Intermedia Art Projects and the MFRU31 Student Awards – Deadline extended!
11. Jun 2025
Students working in the field of intermedia and digital arts are invited to apply with their own original intermedia projects thematically related to the theme of this year's festival. This year, the festival will again award three prizes and the opportunity to exhibit within the festival, thus encouraging further artistic creation in the field of intermedia art.
This year's edition under the title Esoteric Ecotechnics. Irrational Computation and Conspiratorial Networking will thematically focus on the underground and secret connections between media technologies, users, knowledge and information circulation. This year's curators David Bevilacqua and Lara Mejač will work with local and international artists and researchers to propose alternative forms of computation and explore the social and ecological potentials of radical, disruptive and regenerative approaches to new technologies. In the current discourse on new media, we can observe a worrying dynamic of power and control that is happening with the current alliances between big tech companies and political institutions. There, the priorities in the field of computational development are the new arms race, driven by technological trends in artificial intelligence. The trend towards more and more data centres is geared towards the idea of mass surveillance, ignoring their negative impact on the environment and the general need for social regeneration rather than surveillance.
The exhibition and the festival programme will therefore explore alternative, mystical, subversive modes of mediation and non-normative understandings of digital technologies, with a view to methods of shaping future societies within sustainable ecological frameworks. The integration of artistic practices with permacomputing, rural computing and re-generative algorithms will open up new spaces for human (and non-human) coexistence, and will bring to the fore the consideration of new social alliances and alternative networks. The artists and other participants will draw their methods and reflections from the contexts of magic, folk traditions, rituals and principles of the irrational.
The application should include:
- a short CV of the author with contact details,
- proof of student status,
- a description of the artwork (up to 500 words)
- photo, video and/or other visual material representing the work
- portfolio or website with a presentation of your previous work
MKC Maribor Youth Culture Centre, a public institution working in the fields of art, culture, youth sector and infrastructure management, will award three chosen projects:
- the main award of EUR 400 (gross),
- two additional awards of EUR 300 (gross),
- the winning applicant will be given the opportunity to have a solo exhibition in one of the exhibition spaces of the MCC Maribor (autumn 2026)
- selected projects will be presented in a group exhibition at the 31st International Festival of Computer Arts, which will take place between 26 September and 5 October 2025 in Maribor.
Please submit your application through the online form by the extended deadline of July 14th, 2025.
For any additional information or inquiries, feel free to contact us at mfru@mkc.si.
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