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The Cincinnati based non-profit arts organization and gallery, Manifest, invites visual artists and designers to submit original works of art about becoming outdated or no longer useful. Open to any and all traditional and non-traditional visual arts 2d or 3d media.

How long does something matter?
How long is a thing in vogue?
At what point is something worn out, no longer useful, unredeemable?
Obsolesence is often recognized like an afterthought, after we’ve already moved on from a thing’s purpose. Our bodies are littered with evidence of our biological histories, from our appendix, to the tailbone, to wisdom teeth. Goosebumps will spread across our skin, a vestigial response to cold or fear, but we lack the heavy hairs that would warm us or make us appear larger.
Many objects, ideas, and communication styles we use don’t last a lifetime, some hardly last a full year. We shape our habits around tools with shelf lives—how long can you trust a phone charger to remain compatible?
Sometimes obsolescence is planned. A lightbulb is designed with its lifetime already measured. A company can choose to no longer support a machine, a program, an operating system, and we know then that its days are numbered.
There is an existential threat along with this ecological one—if your CD player is now sitting on a shelf, gathering dust, how much of that metaphorical dust is falling to rest on you? Rather than being frightening, could it be a relief to no longer be relevant?
Can something be obsolete, but still have worth? If so, what does that look like?
OBSOLETE will be an exhibition about the vestigial, the replaced, the out-of-style, and the things that remain without necessarily being dead.

ANNUAL CASH AWARD: The annual Manifest Grand Jury Prize will result in the awarding of one significant cash prize ($5000) to a single work selected as the ‘best of the entire season’.

http://www.manifestgallery.org/obsolete

Opportunity Website

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