OPEN CALL FOR ARTISTS FOR THE KUNO BIENNIAL IN TRONDHEIM: VENTURE COLLECTIVE

Trondheim Academy of Fine Art invites students to take part in the KUNO Biennial 2025 in Trondheim. This nomadic biennial continues its journey from the Vilnius edition Shared imaginations in 2023, and now proposes to embark on a Venture Collective.

By deliberately playing with associations to the start-up term Venture Capital, which evokes economic playgrounds of risk investment and speculation, we want to twist the understanding of the capitalist value system and instead emphasize a value creation fostered through social cooperations. To frame a space that faces the economic realities we are living in, including the art world, while imagining alternative and collaborative ways of venturing. We call for proposals that take the risk of being open, complex and sensible to a place, an environment, uncertainty and collective processes. That are seeking for an artistic and transformative responsivity towards the worldly challenges of our time. This can and should take multiple forms.

Successful applicants are expected to take part in a KUNO express course taking place in the first week of September 2025 in Trondheim, to develop the conceptual framing and artistic work collectively, and explore the place and its possibilities.

Application deadline: April 18, 2025.

Eligibility: full-degree students of any KUNO network academy across various disciplines and study years are welcome to apply. However, it is not possible for the graduating (currently in their last year of studies) students to participate (both BFA & MFA). 

How to apply: Candidates should apply by sending the description and if possible visual(s) of a proposal or project to: kuno@vda.lt (email subject should include KUNO Biennial 2025 in Trondheim). Please combine the description, short CV and images into one pdf file and make sure that all video and/or audio files are submitted via a link to a public site. The focus of Venture Collective is on collaborative, site-responsive projects that can be developed and completed in Trondheim during the two periods before the opening: the KUNO course in September and the installation week leading up to the biennial in October 2025.

Additional information: Each of the 18 KUNO institutions will pre-select three proposals, which can be also be submitted by a small group of students working together. The final selection will be made by a committee at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, which will invite one proposal per KUNO institution. The proposal should outline an idea, but be open enough to be developed collectively in Trondheim, so that other participants can join in or the proposal can find intersections with other proposals.

Selected artists will be notified by email. 

 In case of any questions, please contact lina.koseleva@vda.lt