Open Call: Installation, Live Performance & Moving Image Artists | New York Experimental Arts Festival 2026

Bring your work into a living New York garden.

ELSEHERE is now accepting submissions for Entangled Garden | New York Experimental Arts Festival 2026, a four-day outdoor festival for installation, live performance, moving image, sound, and site-responsive practice. Taking place at Le Petit Versailles in New York City from October 8–11, 2026, the festival is built for artists whose work gains force through site, proximity, atmosphere, and public encounter. The festival asks how experimental work changes when it leaves the white cube, the black box, or the private screen, and enters a living environment shaped by weather, proximity, audience movement, urban friction, and nightfall.

ELSEHERE is looking for works that can hold their own outside conventional exhibition and performance spaces. If your practice moves between image, body, object, sound, text, space, or action, this call is for you.

ELSEHERE is especially seeking strong work in three directions:

Installation / Visual Intervention
Sculptural works, spatial gestures, material interventions, light-based works, sound environments, and site-responsive installations that can live outdoors and hold presence across the festival. ELSEHERE is looking for works that do more than occupy space. The strongest submissions will understand scale, atmosphere, duration, and the garden as an active condition.

Live Performance
Movement-based work, durational performance, sound performance, participatory structures, artist-led activation, spatial guidance, and temporary live responses to the site. ELSEHERE welcomes performance that can handle proximity, shifting audience attention, and the unpredictability of an outdoor public-facing environment.

Moving Image
Film, video, experimental cinema, screen-based work, digital moving image, and hybrid forms for evening screening programs. The first three nights of the festival will present open-air moving image programs organized around memory, relation, migration, transformation, emergence, and threshold.

Artists may submit finished works, works in development, or proposals created specifically for the festival context. ELSEHERE welcomes emerging and established practitioners across geographies. You do not need to be previously affiliated with ELSEHERE to apply.

What selected artists receive:

Selected artists and works will be included in the official onsite program of Entangled Garden in New York.

Depending on the selected format, participation may include:

• Onsite exhibition or installation presentation
• Inclusion in the moving image screening program
• Live performance or activation within the festival schedule
• Visibility across official festival communications and promotional materials
• Official invitation letter from ELSEHERE
• Official certificate of participation from ELSEHERE

Selected artists may also be considered for future opportunities within ELSEHERE’s broader editorial and curatorial ecosystem, including:

• Future circulation through ELSEHERE channels
• Editorial feature opportunities
• Visibility through STRATUM Journal
• Artist interview feature consideration
• Critical review consideration
• Future curatorial or program-based opportunities

For artists, this is more than a one-time listing. Entangled Garden is designed as an entry point into a wider field of visibility, editorial attention, and ongoing artistic relation.

Requirements

ELSEHERE is looking for work that is:

• Experimentally driven, with clear artistic language
• Conceptually strong without becoming over-explained
• Attentive to site, atmosphere, audience, and scale
• Capable of shifting between stillness and activation
• Strong enough to hold presence outside conventional institutional framing
• Open to risk, friction, humor, ambiguity, and public encounter

This call is especially suited for artists whose work does not fit neatly into one category. If your practice moves between image, body, sound, text, object, site, and performance, ELSEHERE encourages you to apply.

Application Instructions

Key Dates

Early Bird Deadline: July 15, 2026
Final Deadline: August 15, 2026
Festival Dates: October 8–11, 2026
Location: Le Petit Versailles, New York City

Submission Materials

• Project information
• Work description or proposal
• Images, video links, audio, text, or other supporting materials
• Technical or spatial notes, where relevant
• Artist bio and contact information

Please submit only what is most relevant. Clarity and strong selection matter more than volume.

Submit through the official ELSEHERE open call page.