AFTER THE DELUGE - February – April 2013

“When you wake up, with the remains of a paradise

half-seen in dreams hanging down over you like the hair

on someone who’s been drowned: terrible nausea,

anxiety, a feeling of the precarious, the false,

especially the useless. You fall inward.”

Julio Cortázar, Rayuela

To say that Art is about imagination, is obvious, but maybe less so if we look at art as a concept, the paradigm that has dominated Arts since the nineties.  The return of imagination, surrealism and fantasy is changing the hegemony of this paradigm in the Arts. You need only watch Terrence Malick’s or Lars Von Trier’s latest films to discover that the return of ‘imagination’ is a trend that’s gaining more and more influence on the cultural and arts scene every day.

The current creative model may well be more interested in communicating than in transmitting. It is tied to a specific context where the narrative is placed, and is obsessed by the present. On the contrary, the new paradigm that we are referring to here, is not linked to a specific moment in time or location. It deals with universal topics and trans-historical situations that often take place in imaginary settings. Unreal universes that stress the emotional nature of the esthetic experience combined with a search for new sensations, is replacing the chronicle and documentary format so characteristic of the previous paradigm.   

There is no doubt that this introspective shift, this “falling inward” of the arts of our times, is a result of a certain intellectual collapse. It is the result of an environment in systemic crisis that appears to be leading us ‘back to basics’, a return to the essential, that dusts off old concepts such as the fascinating and the beautiful, concepts that even if they never really abandoned us, now take on a surprising and long-awaited validity. It is as if a return to sensibility were to become a revolutionary form of creation after the devasting global crisis deluge.

The curatorial proposal for the XIII International Photography Biennale of Cordoba focuses on this recent shift of the esthetic paradigm, one which is particularly affecting the photography world. By means of the official and fringe programme, this year’s Biennale aims to chart this shift through exhibitions that share common interests as summarised below:

·      Emancipation of the image regarding the information it transmits.

·      Subjectivity imposed upon communication: the spectator is invited to build his/her own meaning.

·      Image and time become one: the cinema effect.

·      The artificial nature of photography.

·      Images that build an open story and are not trapped by the news.

·      Mystery and fascination goes back to photographic imagination.

·      Progress with the definition of beauty for the XXI century.

Oscar Fernandez Lopez is going to curate the official programme and the fringe programme will be open to all cultural agents (i.e. photographers, exhibition spaces (public or private)etc. interested in the topic.

The call for entries is based on the following aspects:

- an open invitation to participate in the XIII edition of the International Photography Biennale of Cordoba by presenting a detailed project (including a financial analysis) to :

Printed version:

XIII Bienal Internacional de Fotografía de Córdoba

Att. Francisco Palomar

Delegación de Cultura, Ayuntamiento de Córdoba

Palacio de Orive, Plaza de Orive, 2

14002, Córdoba

Digital version (PDF):

XIII Bienal Internacional de Fotografía de Córdoba

Att. Francisco Palomar

[email protected]

- All projects recieved will be evaluated and a selection made by a jury of experts comprising a representative of Cordoba Council; the President of AFOCO; the Photography Advisor to Cordoba Council and Biennale curator, Oscar Fernandez Lopez.

- The jury is responsible for the selection of projects to be inclued in the fringe programme. The selected projects will receive a maximum of 3.000€ in funding from the Biennale to support production costs.

- The selected projects must demonstrate (as well as the usual formal and administrative requirements for this type of call) an intellectual or esthetic link with the conceptual discourse of the Biennale. Participants are invited to explore, and even refute, the concepts that frame the rest of the exhibitions and activities carried out in Cordoba’s XIII Edition of the International Photography Biennale.

- All proposals must be received no later than 11:59pm on October 31, 2012.