DEER FREAKS...and decoys

Announcement:

Swannatopia presents DEER FREAKS and decoys in conjunction with Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center’s exhibition The Farm at Black Mountain College (September 27, 2024 – January 11, 2025). Deer Freaks and decoys will explore the hyper-natural forces of attraction and repulsion informing our interactions with the landscapes we inhabit. This open call will welcome submissions from fence rows to scare-crows, documenting the creative ways people propagate, shape, lure, and protect in their environments.  

We will collect responses and accompanying documentation throughout fall of 2024 to compile into a multimedia zine. BMCM+AC and Swannatopia will also present a fashion show and experience with selected works. To submit work and for more information go to www.swannatopia.com​

AN OPEN CALL TO ALL ARTISTS, musicians  and FARMERS OF ALL AGES AND ALL MEDIUMS AND ALL EXPERIENCE EVERYWHERE]

No animals are to be hurt in the process of this project. 

We, of Swannatopia, invite YOU to join the Experimental Art Club for our next group art show, installation, and publishing project!

 DEER FREAKS…and decoys will explore the hypernatural forces of attraction and repulsion through kinetic and soft sculpture, dances, defensive architecture, gourds, sounds, skeuomorphism, stencils, scarecrows, colors, waterfowl decoys, windsocks, fishing lures and flies, biomimicry, bird blinds, ghillie suits, reflections, refractions, eye spots and whirligigs.  

What looks delicious to a fish? How do we protect our ducks? What will keep bear out of our trash cans and deer from eating our crops?  How can we disappear yet still be seen? 

We will collect responses and accompanying documentation through fall of 2024, to compile into a limited edition multimedia zine as well as curating a physical and digital multimedia group exhibition of selected works, date(s) and location(s) TBD.

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CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE:

Open to collaboration in all WAYS liberatory

If you need a starting point and direction to participate look below and choose your own adventure:

Fake snakes 

Scarecrows - corny non human effigy type form

Strawberry rocks

Cattle grids

Hummingbird feeders

Windsocks

Fishing flies and lures

Squirrel baffles

Predator eye balloons/eye spots

Scare tape 

Purple Martin houses as skeuomorph of human dwelling 

Purple martins on the east coast  nest in human structures and humans make purple Martin houses as scale models of their own.
 

For the parent- 

For the grandmother-

For the landscape painter-

For the farmer- 

For the archivist- 

For the cultural landscape historian- 

For the extension agent-

For the quilter-

For the radio dj-

For the vegetable breeder- 

For the dancer-

For the seamstress-

For the photographer- 

For the entomologist-

For the angler -

For the art teacher-

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HOW TO SUBMIT:

Fill out the GOOGLE FORM. 

Send your work digitally through video, photo and/or sound. Record your deer freak or decoy in situ (in the landscape in which it belongs). Send us up close video/photo and then take 10-30 steps back and send us another video/photo. If you need help documenting simply email us!