Engraving Center of Athens - Escape Plan: 1984/2024

The PANDOLFINI & SIATERLI A.M.K.E. ENGRAVING CENTER OF ATHENS. offers an open call to engravers, visual artists and artistic groups to submit proposals for participation in the printmaking exhibition entitled Escape Plan: 1984/2024 to be held in the winter of 2024 at the ETCH INK art space.

The report Escape Plan: 1984/2024is a direct reference to the great political work of George Orwell, which describes in a thorough way, the terrifying apparatus of the state that exercises absolute control over the lives of citizens, through systems of monitoring, control, intellectual and psychological manipulation. Written in 1949 for the then distant 1984, Orwell's prophetic novel is a warning of the future of the world that is heading towards the abolition of all individual freedom, through the methodical application of surveillance mechanisms, the distortion of information and the systematic cultivation of fear. In the dystopian universe of 1984, language has been replaced with New Speech, a system of "language purification" that aims to gradually falsify real meanings to the point of complete annihilation of the original concepts. The greatest crime one can commit, and it contains all others, is the Crime of Thought. Thus, the state carries out all kinds of mind-numbing policies in order to destroy any personal freedom or possibility of resistance to the totalitarian regime it imposes. His intention is summed up in three menacing slogans: "WAR IS PEACE", "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY", "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH". How far is the world and political rhetoric of 1984 really from today, forty years later? His intention is summed up in three menacing slogans: "WAR IS PEACE", "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY", "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH". How far is the world and political rhetoric of 1984 really from today, forty years later? His intention is summed up in three menacing slogans: "WAR IS PEACE", "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY", "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH". How far is the world and political rhetoric of 1984 really from today, forty years later?

Encouraging artists to reflect on the contemporary socio-political situation and the unseen aspects of current reality, the exhibition Escape Plan: 1984/2024 aspires to capture scenarios and ways of escape, while also inviting visual artists to envision and submit a different plan for the future. Leaving creativity and imagination free to experiment, this exhibition is a challenge and a confrontation with the present and the future that follows. Using the language of printmaking as a vehicle, K%X welcomes proposals from its wide range of techniques and methods, seeking artistic imprints that outline escape routes to new collective, visual pursuits.

The selected proposals will be exhibited at the ETCH INK art space, headquarters and exhibition space of K%X, between February and June 2024. The official dates of the exhibition will be announced later in the year.

Submission Deadline

Participation declarations must be submitted by September 30, 2023 , by completing the online participation form .