Open Call Mind the Gap
Bewerbungsende: Sun, 19.04.2026, 23:59 Uhr
mind-the-gap-open-call.pdf [66.10 KB]
Mind the Gap is a joint exhibition held in Linz and Vienna between May 26–31, 2026. The project creates a platform for encounter, exchange, and open dialogue between the art scenes of the two cities. Working across two locations at once, it invites visitors and participants to engage with shifting perspectives, networks, and forms of collaboration.
Linz and Vienna are close geographically, just over an hour apart by train, yet their art scenes often feel separated and surprisingly distant from each other. This asymmetry is noticeable but rarely discussed. It manifests itself in gestures, intonations, and expectations, in subtle forms of irony or distancing, in symbolic authority circulating in the realm of the unsaid. It exists in what is implied and not mentioned. These differences have been shaped by history, institutional structures, and the ways artistic identity is formed within academic environments, and they influence how artistic practices are perceived, described, and compared. Vienna, as the capital, offers a dense and substantial art infrastructure, while Linz operates within more limited resources and fewer exhibition spaces, yet offering a rather experimental setting. Such divisions shape perceptions and hierarchies, creating barriers to the scope of inter-city collaboration.
Mind the Gap brings young artists currently studying at art universities in both cities together to enter this unspoken space and to consider what it means to approach the gap, and whether it can be narrowed at all. The exhibition emerges as a wish to reflect on these conditions without fixing them into rigid positions, inviting participants to engage in dialogue and to think about different ways of existing together.
The exhibition unfolds across both cities (locations still to be confirmed), opening with a vernissage in Linz and concluding with a finissage in Vienna. This structure invites the movement of artworks, people, and critical ideas, allowing meanings to shift, misalign, and reappear differently as they travel between contexts. The exhibition is thus not understood as a singular event, but as a sequence of encounters shaped by location, time, and context.
At this early stage, instead of proposing a rigid thematic framework with a fixed outcome, our curatorial team imagines this project as a collaborative process that fosters ongoing exchange among artists, curators, and local contexts and creates future collaborations. We aim to approach the differences outlined earlier with curiosity rather than distance, and see what connections emerge when the space for vulnerability and genuine conversation is given.
The project would like to invite all departments of the University of Art Linz to apply to this open call.
The final selection of participants will be made collectively by the students of the seminar A short life of trouble, part of Curatorial Practice course at University of Art Linz, led by Attilia Fattori Franchini.
Few information:
- The Linz and Vienna are imagined as different exhibitions where different works will be shown. If you only want to show one single work, it is also ok, but the exhibitions are conceived as two distinct shows.
- There is no allocated budget for the production of new work. We have funding for location, structural organization, transport, promotional and informational material, as well as documentation. The funding covers the basics, but we embrace a DIY approach.
- We will provide the exhibition space, context, and fun.
Bei Fragen zur Ausschreibung kontaktieren Sie bitte Sophie Morelli (sophie.morelli@kunstuni-linz.at)