minus20degree 2016 - MELT (Jan 28 - 30, 2016) has an open call for Installation, Video, Land Art, Performance and Sound Art to interpret the 2016 theme, MELT. minus20degree is a biennial art and architecture festival in based in Flachau, Austria. Artist and Architect run, m20d is primarily concerned with snow and landscape as its core elements.

Signified by the transience of snow, melt can be viewed as synthesis or amalgamation, bringing forth new forms vis-à-vis a process of alchemy. Flachau, as a former mining town with two blast furnaces, and the broader view of Austria as a tourism and steel-producing nation bring additional local context to encourage interpretation.

Melt may also be observed through a global lens, where age-old forces of melting are constantly brought to bare via recurring streams of migration and a long standing history of shifting and merging cultures; a process that on occasion also cultivates the enemies of any such melting. Melt provides further reference in connection to ever-warming alpine winters and the parallel threat of snow as a potentially diminishing resource.

Contributions should seriously and critically address melt, however, optimistic and humorous submissions are equally welcome. Performative interpretations are especially encouraged. m20d16 spans over three days in late January 2016 during which a multitude of disciplines are to become entangled within the landscape as well as each other.

Deadline for proposals: 20 July 2015

Download the open call brief