Let Our Hearts Speak : Open Call

When we love we can let our hearts speak - bell hooks
Inspired by hooks’ reflections on love, voice, and radical relationality, Let Our Hearts Speak is an open call by Rethinking Eastern Europe for a forthcoming collective publication.

We invite artists to submit work that engages with the idea of "Eastern Europe" as a lived, shifting, and often contested space, not only as geography, but as memory, inheritance, migration, and emotional landscape. We are interested in projects that explore how histories are carried and transformed across bodies, borders, and time. The publication will bring together visual and written works that reflect on intimacy, love, identity, displacement, and belonging.

"Rethinking Eastern Europe" is understood as plural and expansive, shaped by diasporas, post-socialist realities, and the personal archives of those who move through or away from it.

Application form with further information > https:// forms.gle/kv9LGC3XP7D4BbFg9

Eligibility

This open call is open to:

Artists of any age

Artists of any nationality

Artists based anywhere in the world

Artists at any stage of their practice (emerging, established, or outside institutional definitions)


We welcome submissions in any form of artistic practice

This includes, but is not limited to:

Photography/ expanded image-making

Text and writing

Moving image (including still extracts or sequences)

Collage and assemblage

Archival material

Experimental or process-based work

Visualised sound and sonic work

Scores, songs, and musical works

Hybrid or interdisciplinary formats


We especially encourage experimental work that resists traditional categories and expands what a publication can hold. This is a publication-based project. Submitted work need to be able to be reproduced in print and digital formats.

This may include:

Full images or selected details

Video stills or extracted frames from moving image works

Text excerpts or edited sequences

Reformatting, cropping, or layout adaptations to suit publication design

We will work carefully with all selected works. Artists will be credited appropriately throughout the publication.

What we are interested in

We are especially interested in work that:

Engages with "Eastern Europe", its diasporas, or post-socialist contexts

Explores migration, memory, identity, and belonging

Questions fixed narratives of nation, origin, or cultural purity

Draws on personal, documentary, or archival approaches

Considers intimacy, care, and emotional life as political space

Judges

Diane Smyth
Editor of the British Journal of Photography and the Photoworks Annual, lecturer at the London College of Communications.

Max Gorbatskyi
Curator at Open Eye Gallery, and co-curator of the Ukrainian National Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. Co-founder of Ukrainian Photographies

Zula Rabikowska
Artist, curator, writer, lecturer and founder of Rethinking Eastern Europe.

Selection & Awards
A number of artists will be selected for inclusion in the Let Our Hearts Speak publication. Selected works will be curated as part of the editorial process and featured across the printed and/or digital publication.

Alongside the publication selections, three highlighted awards will be given:

1st Prize
£150 honorarium
Featured placement in the publication
Portfolio review with Zula Rabikowska, founder of Rethinking Eastern Europe
Featured spotlight across Rethinking Eastern Europe platforms


2nd Prize
Featured placement in the publication
Portfolio review with an artist from Rethinking Eastern Europe
Social media feature


3rd Prize
Featured placement in the publication
Social media feature

Additional selected artists
Other selected contributors will be included in the publication as part of the final curated selection. Some artists may also be invited to additional opportunities, including:

Rethinking Eastern Europe Instagram takeovers
Editorial spotlight features
Future collaboration opportunities