Poland | Unsound Kraków 2022

Unsound Kraków 2022, a festival of contemporary music, is calling for proposal for their daytime discourse programme in response to this year’s theme: bubbles. 

Unsound explores a wide range of contemporary music, such as emerging, experimental and music that does not follow typical genre constraints, and it has regular events abroad in cities such as Adelaide and London. Between 2016 and 2018, Unsound also produced eleven festivals in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

For this 20th edition of the festival, from 9 to 16 October 2022, Unsound is exploring the theme of bubbles. Bubbles might evoke a glass of champagne, a cluster of colourful balloons floating up into the sky, but it also refers to the way that different communities are isolated from one another and connected, whether through social media, geography or politics. The theme also has roots in the theories of economist Hyman P. Minsky, who developed five stages in the concept of a speculative bubble: Displacement, Boom, Euphoria, Profit Taking and Panic. 

The first phase in the Unsound 2022 design is a series of cryptic charts posted on social media, created by Warsaw designer Ernest Borowski. In time, a second, very different phase of the design will be revealed. 

The festival will include two to five entries in the programme and selected entrants will receive a fee of 2,000 PLN each. Unsound will cover the costs of travel and accommodation. 

Application guidelines 

Deadline: 15 June 2022