Open Call 2023 – Vote for your favourite art project!

We are happy to invite the MOMO Community to participate in the online voting for the 2023 Open Call Winners! 

MOMO invited artists to apply for the category of Open Call Winner for this year’s MOMO Festival under the topic of identity, giving them the opportunity  to present their project during the next edition of the festival (13-15 April 2023). The Call for Entries  brought in a large, diverse and talented pool of applications which has been narrowed down to a final list of 15, after careful consideration in relation to the affiliation to the theme, the festival’s identity, and the feasibility of each art-project.

Now it’s your turn to help us select one of the winners by voting. Your votes will determine one of the works to be featured, while our jury will select four more. Check out these wonderful projects and do not forget to vote!

You can vote here or at the end of this page, until the 2nd of February!

(IM)PERMANENT
Mikołaj Stojanowicz


A post-digital installation exploring the identity of the in-between. Inspired by own personal liminality of growing up as an immigrant in Rotterdam, the design acts also as a commentary on contemporary themes such as nihilism and hauntology. The artwork will consist of an idol sculpture made from recycled synthetic materials. This installation will be made to represent the ruins we leave for the post-future adolescents.

#Connect
Leon van Oldenborgh, Daniël Korssen, Luuk Siewers, Amar Ravi and Casper van Battum

#Connect is an application that makes use of public (digital) space to challenge users to physically find each other based on limited information they playfully exchange around their identity.

BIMBO ZYGOTE
Sarjon Azouz

BIMBO ZYGOTE is a psy-fi post-narration concept that follows vlogs, documented footage, and unsourced tutorials on genetically modifying the BIMBO ZYGOTES, which are sex workers modified to hoard semen from male clients to process sex hormones and sell on gray market for trans-masc youth. The BIMBO machines work as a tool for healing from identity politics. A trolling manifestation of a xenofeminist world where the audience are presented with an advertisement to join the BIMBO army.

Borders are an Imaginary Line
Olivier Terpstra, Jane Bergrotte, Meshkat Talebi and Jochem van Iterson

Borders are an Imaginary Line is an interdisciplinary project in which there will be a space where the audience can experience a new interpretation of the stories that were told by students from Iran. Both the image and sound will construct a new interpretation on these personal stories and let the audience interact with it.

Dark Grey Almost Black
Marta Wörner, Nikos ten Hoedt & Noemi Calzavara

Dark Grey Almost Black is a dance performance and composed DJ set that flourishes in a nightclub environment. The work reflects the cathartic function of clubs as a free space in which dissident identities can emerge. And it displays the clubbing culture as a catalyst of social change, in which diverse identities coexist while the notion of identity can also disappear.

Fashion Police
Ahnjili ZhuParris

Fashion Police is an algorithm that is equipped with computer vision AI that identifies and tracks any individual who “disobey” existing fashion laws. It highlights the current and potential issues relating to the automated surveillance of individuals in relation to societal imposed image.

Inburgrered (Integrated)
Omid Kheirabadi

– If you don’t want to swim in the fast lane, you can go to the slow lane.
– Wat zegt u?
– I just said If you don’t want to swim here, please go there.
– Maar ik spreek gewoon Nederlands!

Inburgered (Integrated) is a theatrical performance about the struggles of an outsider who has tried to integrate as a “Dutch” citizen. This performance is opening a discussion with the audience and explores the impossibility of becoming Dutch.

IPE (Identity Profile Experience)
Ernest Bessems

IPE (Identity Profile Experience) is a large-scale sculpture that will consist of various parts/  profiles of the artist’s identity. By deconstructing and reconstructing his own identity he wishes to explore every part of himself whereas while performing with every piece of the sculpture touches the notion of accepting thyself.

Mama Limonada
Maite Dardano and Lorena Rode

Mama Limonada is a multimedia installation consisting of a video installation and an actual lemonade stand. It is an art project opening a conversation with the audience about notions such as belonging, being bicultural, and femininity while inviting them to taste what the artists chose as their own representative, lemons.

Nymphs
Niek Wagenaar

Nymphs is a thirty-minute dance piece in which five dancers go in search of their own natural beauty and honest identity.  The dancers look for forms to express their gender identity, but are constantly fighting against the norm. A norm that actually only survives by upholding everyone’s prejudices. Is it possible to transcend these kinds of boxes, or do you just end up in a new box? Entangled in this web of social constructions, the dancers move towards connection.

Place for one (Plek voor 1)
Tatum & Bodine Hekkert

Place for one is a film installation that consists of two almost identical films, playing alongside each other. In the films, twin sisters (played by Tatum and Bodine Hekkert) sue each other for lifelong plagiarism. They are being defended by twin lawyers in a ‘black mirror’ kind of court setting. The films portray the unfulfilled desire to be seen as an individual. At the same time, they provide a broader critique on how we as western society view individuality, ownership, independence and manufacturability.

Sub-Terra
Mo Meyer

Sub-Terra is an installation that will become an audio-visual experience which reflects the artist’s search going within. Who is he? How does he relate to his parents, his name, culture, ethnicity, family, friends, society, and self. An installation with visuals and images expressing this feeling and search, along with African fabrics and handmade clay sculptures to create a new space for visitors.

The Extension Auction
Guus Holtman, Junhao Xiang, Katharina Busl & Yuri Stokking

The Extension Auction is an ongoing performative installation in which the artists sell all kinds of sci-fi bio tools and extensions for the human body in an auction setting. These objects will hopefully evoke some questioning of what it means to be a living being with a sense of self.

We Can Still Build a Home while Floating
Kwinnie Lê

We Can Still Build a Home while Floating is a participatory public installation showcasing flags that bear the multifaceted narratives of the city of Rotterdam. This is a continuation of the artist’s previous project in which she walked around Rotterdam with a number of flags. The walk with the flags resulted in countless conversations and exchanges of stories — philosophical, activist or personal — which now will be  shared on the flags.

What Lies Between
Lara Ferrari Tummma

What Lies Between is a performance working with the expanded notions of map and territory. The project stems from the question of how we construct reality and knowledge of our environment and with what concrete and sensitive means we generate these contents that shape our identity. The artist’s intention is that by approaching the territory in a sensitive way and with other desires of relationships where the dialogue is mutual, a movement in our own relationship with ourselves and our context will be produced.