Call for Proposals: Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival 2024, BuildFest

BuildFest invites academics and researchers to propose ideas for large-scale art installations to be built on the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock festival. Over the course of a five-day live-work festival, accepted participants will work with self-organized student teams to build, install, and work through on-site design solutions. Once completed, the selection of installations will be utilized during the Catbird Music Festival—an Americana festival taking place on the historic 1969 Woodstock site—as functional art-infrastructures to be experienced and adapted for festival attendees. 

BUILDings are, at their core, physical constructs. Even with the rise of computational design tools and digital fabrication, they are still, necessarily, grounded in the material world; for every robot that mills or prints an object, there are people who move and transport those objects. Likewise, FESTivals are physical interactions between people–one of the remaining few places where groups gather to interface and collaborate socially without a digital veil. 

With this understanding, BuildFest approaches the dichotomy between the physical and digital not as a binary but as a chance for collaboration–asking potential participants to imagine what a future might look like in which digital and analog methods of construction are integrated in a more wholesome manner; one in which building technologies (old and new) can fuse to foster smaller, greener and more diverse economies capable of sustaining the long-term habitation of humans on this great floating mud-ball, planet earth.

Proposals should be submitted as single PDFs, no more than 20MB, to 
[email protected]. Name the file “first name_last name_project title” and use the subject line “BuildFest Submission.”

Submissions should include:
-One project statement clearly stating both formal/technical (Build) and interactive/programmatic (Fest) concepts (no more than 450 words).
-Conceptual imagery (relevant drawings, models, diagrams, and/or renderings clearly showcasing the project intent).
-Project timeline and draft budget.
-Bios of the faculty team.

Timeline
-Submission deadline - March 29
-Selection notification - April 19
-Introductory meetings - May & June
-Project coordination - July
-BuildFest - Arrive afternoon September 11, leave afternoon September 15

Apply: https://www.bethelwoodscenter.org/museum/art-architecture-festival-2024