Open Call: VHS/DTV: Viddy Horrorshow/Daytime Viewing

TACO! invites submissions for artist, short-form, moving-image for Viddy Horrowshow/Daytime Viewing (VHS/DTV). Selected works will be shown on a daily showreel at TACO! , presented as part of a special one-off screening event, and published and distributed as a limited edition DVD.

The slow-moving torrents of primetime, daytime and post-watershed programming have splintered into screens that are so much more intimate, that address us not as some vague, general consumer but as exactly as the consumer that we are, or that we soon will be. You’re in there, your image, and all your friends and acquaintances. Accidental uploads, overshares, and family members’ niche political views mean that the box has been superseded by the bubble.

We seek works that respond to that trace of a line that zigzags across the personal immediacy of the digital screen, and the television as a historical communal form, with its constant stream of non-hierarchical content engineered to be for ‘everyone’, all the time.

We’re looking for images that get inside the box and wriggle around, gnawing at the unspoken boundaries between the broadcast and the live stream, and that problematise the distinction between mass-media audience and the hyper-niche viewer bases of the digital.

We are looking for a diverse range of new or existing moving-image, film, video, and audiovisual vignettes within the following parameters:

•Between 30 seconds and 6 minutes in duration

•4:3 aspect ratio

•MP4 format (codecs MPEG-4 AAC, H.264, 1920×1080)

As an open-call screening event for vignettes and short-form moving-image work, VHS/DTV is, unfortunately, a non-paid opportunity that does not provide artist screening fees and are unable to pay for the creation of new work.

In lieu of screening fee payment VHS/DTV will be published and distributed as a limited edition DVD, with each contributing artist receiving 2 copies by way of recompense.  VHS/DTV/DVD is an open-submission, non profit making publication.