We invite artists to submit their short videodance and screendance works in response to the inaugural edition of SET me free using the MUSIC VIDEO/VIDEOCLIP as a point of departure, and responding to the question, “How would you promote dance on the screen?”.

 

Videodance and Music Video flourished through the channels of North American and British television of 1980s and 1990s. Videodance has often been characterized as an art form distanced from commercial constraints; a genre, more likely, that refrains from screening commercial imperatives. The music video (also known as videoclip) is both wedded to and screens certain kinds of commodity, often associated with the popular music market-oriented business. Eye-catching visual images, skilful camera work, choreographed routines that follow musical rhythm together with fast cuts and special post-production effects, create short and cohesive scenarios, which in some cases could define both videoclip and videodance. Yet, the degree that both forms deal directly with consumerism and promotional values varies and depends on artistic intentions, platforms of distribution and goals associated with the commercial or artistic desire to augment spectatorship.

 

This call invites artists to explore the relationships that can emerge between videodance and the music video/videoclip format, to propose new ways of playing with sound, moving image and choreography while disrupting the boundaries between art, commercialism, entertainment and promotion. We invite screen works that examine the spectacular and stereotypical prepositions that the moving body communicates in the context of the videoclip and we welcome works that liberate the moving body from the constraints of codified and stylized movement, yet aim to promote the pleasure of dance (as nostalgically depicted in the videoclips of 1980s).