Synaptic Graffiti Collective invite your participation in
MEMORY - a Video Poetry Project.

MEMORY is the natural successor to SLAM THE BODY POLITIK, SGC's first multimedia poetry project. There is still a strong social consciousness at work in MEMORY but its expression has a more personal flavour.

From birth we are influenced by mass media, commercialisation, and the imagery of greed and violence. They seek to colonise our very memories through a sickly commercialised nostalgia! MEMORY aims not just to metaphorically scrawl on the walls of the system but to break through them with individual creative expressions of WHO WE ARE in the collective medium of a DVD anthology.

Our ART is an expression of ourselves. It is how we try to connect with the world. We understand ourselves and our own life histories through our composite memories.We seek video poetry that reflects the place of MEMORY in the construction/reconstruction of our personal and collective histories. We are interested in works that correspond with broader social movements and compare/contrast with official accounts of these, but also works that explore the links between memory and identity and memory and place.

Submission Guidelines.

Works will be selected that best fit the theme and the spirit of MEMORY.

SGC is an "Arts meets Activism" collective, so works that connect the personal with the universal are preferred.

Equal attention should be paid to the strength of the poetry and visual elements of the piece, in addition to the sound and music if applicable. A piece that is very strong visually but not based on a strong poem is unlikely to be accepted and vice versa.

Your video can consist of any combination of media including: spoken word, music, text, still and moving images. Slide shows with music or spoken word will be considered but works with a more filmic quality are preferred.

The poetry can be previously published/perfomed and does not have to be new as long as it broadly fits the theme, but the video should be previously unpublished/unscreened, including on the web.

We will consider a video that has had some very limited screening if it’s of exceptional quality. Examples of “limited screening” would be at a one-off local poetry event.

Technical Guidelines

Videos must be NO LONGER than 8 minutes.

They must be in either AVI or MP4 format.

There is a limit of 3 submissions per artist/s.

We prefer the wide screen format of 16:9 ratio (typical for most camcorders & cameras) but will consider a 3:4 ratio which is used in many older video cameras, mobile phones, web cams, etc. Some cropping and/or loss of quality may occur depending on the device that viewers use to display the DVD.

Submission of Images must be in JPG or PNG format and of relatively high quality.

We will not be accepting standalone audio or text for this project as it does not suit the medium.

Please include your full name and a brief informative biography with your submission and be sure to properly credit all those who contributed to your film.

Deadline and Contact Details.

Submissions will be viewed from October 2009 with an EXTENDED CLOSING DATE OF: .February 28, 2010.

Submit your work on DVD by post to:

Video Poetry Project

PO BOX 432

Chirn Park, Qld, 4215

Australia (for those outside it)

For further information email: moss.sara@gmail.com with MEMORY project in your subject line.

This is a grassroots arts project, there is no government or private funding for it, therefore we cannot offer payment for your work. If this situation changes, you will be the first to know! Those included on the DVD will be able to purchase their own copies at cost price + postage.

A limited number of videos will also be uploaded to the Synaptic Graffiti Website and Myspace page for promotional purposes.  By submitting your work to the project, you are consenting to its use for promotional purposes.

The completed DVD will screen sometime from July 2010. So we encourage anyone interested in creating work for MEMORY to begin NOW.

We also encourage all those interested in MEMORY to learn more about Synaptic Graffiti Collective and our first project by visiting the following links.

http://www.scart69.net/synapticgraffiti

http://www.myspace.com/synapticgraffiti

Cheers,

Sara Moss and Scart