Getxophoto Open Call 2025

Getxophoto's Open Call offers the opportunity for visual artists and photographers from all over the world to exhibit their works at the next edition of the Festival, in June 2025. REC will be the theme of the 19th edition.

Overview

First they pressed the PAUSE button, then the PLAY button, and now they’re hitting REC. The round red symbol, always so easy to find on cameras and electronic devices, takes its name from record, to save, film or register. Whether still or moving, the relationship between the image and memory is a central theme in visual studies that has captured the attention of great minds in the past such as Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag and Georges Didi-Huberman. But what remains of this relationship today in contemporary image technologies?

Our throwaway culture means that we no longer take photographs or videos to treasure moments, but to share them and forget them instantly, and we face an overwhelming abundance that wears our sensitivity down, turning all visual memory into pure noise. Added to this is the unprecedented proliferation of fake images –which collapse our concept of ​​reality– and the conversion of any document into a file readable only by non-human intelligences, with software and devices designed to quickly become scrap metal. Furthermore, the structural limits of data centres, where we store memories without taking into account their enormous needs for water and energy, threaten the future of the “archive”, both personal and civilising (Spoiler alert: it won’t be possible to keep all the information).

These are just some of the factors meaning that visual technologies are facing a gigantic paradigm shift today. That is why, in the next edition of Getxophoto, we ask ourselves how the visual media arts are reinventing themselves in this scenario: what is the difference between accumulating archives and telling a story, what is the future of images –and of memory constructed through visual registers– in a world with extreme, immaterial, easily manipulated and apparently infinite REC.

Practical Info

All emerging and established visual artists worldwide are welcome to apply. Artists have to submit a minimum of 10 images and have the chance to upload a video proposal of up to 10 mins.

The winning artists will benefit from an exhibition at Getxophoto Festival (expenses will be covered by the organisation), €500 fee as festival participant, and accommodation for two nights during the Opening Week plus a travel support (up to €150).

The jury is composed of María Ptqk (Independent Curator, Cultural Researcher and Curator of Getxophoto Festival), María Wills (Independent Curator and Researcher), Carla Bacelar (Vice-President of the Board and Producer, Encontros da Imagem), Verónica Fieiras (Editor, Founder of Chaco editorial and Director of Escuela Migra).

About Getxophoto

Getxophoto International Image Festival has been held in Getxo (Basque Country, Spain) for 18 years. The Festival brings to the city different proposals from visual artists from all over the world, establishing each year a contemporary conversation on the proposed theme. Getxophoto is characterised by its radical defence of public space (physical and online) as a meeting place, a place of mutual recognition and a field for experimentation, play and celebration as opposed to its homogenisation and privatisation. For this reason, most of its programme is made up of open-air installations, highlighting, on the one hand, the link between the image and the environment and, on the other, generating a more horizontal and participatory relationship with the public. From its transversal approach, Getxophoto understands the Internet as a space for the development of visual culture. For this reason, it has a digital programme that has included projects that incorporate live automated processes, video games, video surveillance systems, apps, memes or WhatsApp groups, among other proposals.