BRÄNDE - DIALOGRÄUME

About the Exhibition

BRÄNDE understands fire not only as a natural event but as a political, ecological, and social metaphor. Fires destroy living spaces, democracies, memories, and future visions—while simultaneously creating spaces for new beginnings, transformation, and resistance. For this themed exhibition on Dialogue Spaces, we seek artistic positions that engage with connections between ecological and political destruction and explore possibilities for reconstruction, healing, and new social imaginaries.

Thematic Perspectives

• Forest, war, and post-war: ecological consequences of World War II; resource extraction, deforestation, and reforestation as monocultures; reparations, rebuilding, and long-term landscape impacts; forests as political archives and witnesses to history.
• Nature and democracy: relationships between ecological destruction and democratic decline; climate crisis, resource conflicts, and authoritarianism; how nature and democracy can grow together; forms of social resilience and collective care.
• Encounters with fire: fire as symbol of destruction and renewal; rituals of mourning, farewell, and transformation; physical, emotional, or spiritual experiences of loss; fire as cathartic or community-building force.
• War, violence, and burned landscapes: documentary or artistic perspectives on conflict zones; Ukrainian perspectives on Russian aggression; military infrastructure and drone warfare; ecological dimensions of armed conflict.
• Premonition: early warning systems for social and ecological crises; natural disasters and political consequences; rise of authoritarian and paramilitary structures; overlooked signs before system collapse.
• Emptiness and afterlife: mourning and loss rituals in artistic practice; ruins, scars, and post-catastrophe landscapes; spaces of remembrance and collective memory; life after war, displacement, or societal collapse.
• Utopias and speculative futures: imaginations of civilizations that never existed; failed future visions; alternative social forms; ecological and democratic utopias after the fire.

Accepted Formats

• Installations
• Video and film works
• Photography
• Sound art
• Performance
• Participatory projects
• Workshops
• Lectures
• Research and archive projects
• Documentary works
• Public space interventions
• Actions
• Community-based projects

What We Seek

We are looking for works that open new perspectives and reveal connections—between past and present, nature and society, individual experience and political contexts. We understand art not as illustration of a theme, but as an independent form of research, remembrance, and social dialogue.

Who Can Apply

We invite artists, collectives, curators, researchers, and initiatives to apply with existing or newly developed works.

Key Dates

• Submission deadline: August 30, 2026
• Notification: early September 2026
• Exhibition period: October 2026

What to Submit

• Brief project description
• Documentation material of the project
• Portfolio or documentation of previous work
• Short biography
• Technical requirements (if applicable)
• Contact information
• (Please use the linked form for submission)

What Selected Projects Receive

• Exhibition opportunity within BRÄNDE – Dialogue Spaces
• Artist honorarium (to be determined individually)
• Travel and accommodation costs (to be determined individually)
• Technical support and installation assistance
• Public relations and integration into the overall BRÄNDE program

Contact

For questions about the call or exhibition spaces, contact: Cosmo Schüppel at [email protected]. BRÄNDE is supported by Fonds Soziokultur, the Thuringia State Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the State Association for Sociocultural Initiatives Thuringia, and the Cultural Directorate of the City of Weimar.