Call for contributions: let’s hear your voice on “Hospitality in the city”!

Context and Outlines

As part of the Slash Transition project, international local hubs associated with the project (in Nantes, Innsbruck, Tunis, Tbilisi, Lisbon) have initiated a first reflection on the question of hospitality in the city. This call aims to foster the emergence of artistic or more forward-thinking/reflexive contributions on this subject, which can open up to several themes.

Theme 1: Hospitality, Emotions, and Territory

Hospitality in the city can be approached in multiple ways: welcoming others, solidarity, accessibility of spaces. In this association with others, a particular relationship with a territory is constructed. As an artist, cultural actor, or urban practitioner, how has the question of hospitality affected your journey? Your artistic production? Your choice of residences? Your host country/city?

Fabienne Brugère (2018), a philosopher and ethics specialist, defines hospitality as an openness to others, a welcoming gesture that transcends physical and symbolic boundaries. She identifies three essential functions of hospitality for cities: “Rescue, Welcome, Belong.” How has your territory enabled (or not) you to work/create based on this multifaceted definition of welcome?

Theme 2: Hospitality, Life, and Ecology

Many works today question the anthropocentric view of humanity. What if welcoming others also meant rethinking the place of humans in their ecosystem? Beyond the connections and solidarities at work in territories for populations, this axis aims to address hospitality in its relationship with life. How can we then invent much more horizontal collaborations with life? In what ways can artists invent/experiment and create new relationships with nature? How can the questions of hospitality, life, and ecology be interconnected?

Schedule

• Call Launch: 4th September
• Deadline for Letters of Intent: 4th October
• Deadline for Selection Response: 15th October
• Deadline for Contribution Submission: 13th December
• Publication: Early 2025 (January or February)

Objectives

• Popularize and rigorously publicize the subject to a wide audience ranging from the general public to public operators, including music and variety professionals, media, and sector experts. Contributions should strike a balance between popularization and generalization. They should make technical aspects, theoretical concepts, or scientific vocabulary accessible, relying notably on concrete cases. But they should also take a step back from the realities on the ground, supported by a method;
• Assist Slash Transition in its reflection, to better understand the issues at stake: this involves both mapping the existing situation (actors, practices, tools, etc.) and reporting on the real or potential impacts for the music sector;
• Project into the future and explore new territories: without necessarily placing it at the center of their argument, contributions should include an exploratory dimension that provides elements to understand the future. This exploratory dimension can take the form of real foresight, an open conclusion, an outline of current trends, or avenues for reflection to advance the subject (in the form of public policy recommendations, for example). Historical approaches are largely included in this framework, as long as they shed light on present and future situations;
• For artistic contributions, the aim is to highlight and illustrate the issue from a more sensitive angle.

Conditions

Letter of Intent
Please specify theme 1 or 2. The letter of intent must be: 

• written in English
• not exceeding 3500 characters (including spaces)
• it should briefly: introduce the authors, the proposed topic, the method used, a short indicative bibliography (or webography).

To be sent before 4th October 2024 to the following addresses: coralie@trempo.com + bienurbaines@gmail.com

For letters of intent on artistic contributions, please attach links to the artistic work to the letter of intent.

Contributions
The contribution must be: 

• written in English
• between 7000 and 8000 characters

To be sent before 13th December 2024 to the following addresses: coralie@trempo.com + bienurbaines@gmail.com. 

For artistic contributions:

• At least 1 visual to illustrate the topic (if, for example, there is a sound or written extract).
• If it is a photographic proposal, it must follow the format of a photo series (between 5 and 10).

Payment
Selected proposals will be remunerated 500 euros (inclusive of all taxes) per contribution (not per contributor). The selected projects will be paid either on invoice or by note of authors’ rights and will be subject to a contract linking each contributor to Trempo/Slash Transition.

Publication
Contributions will first be published on the website https://slash-platform.eu in the form of an article and shared with the international Slash project network.
They will be shared again within a thematic web file addressing the theme of hospitality.
They may eventually be published in print form in the longer term.

Eligible Profiles
The call is open to contributors from all backgrounds, in Europe and internationally, with the following profiles:

• Artists
• Professionals in the following sectors: cultural, territorial planning, architecture, urban planning
• Local authorities
• Social sciences, urban planning, and culture researchers

Selection criteria
The selection will be done by an editorial committee in regards of:

• the complementarity with the rest of the Hospitality file contents 
• the answers to the objectives (see above)
• the proposal’s singularity vision of hospitality, taking into account the contributor’s territory and own perspective

A particular attention will be given to the diversity of profiles and territories.