ENTANGLEMENT – Next year’s theme is announced!
Image credit: Detail from 'Soleil and Colin' from the series 'Talisman' by Kristina Knipe CPF solo artist 2023
At the closing event on the last day of the festival we were happy to not only present an inspiring and enlightening talk with three time World Press Photo winner, Mads Nissen, who will exhibit at the festival in 2024. We also announced the theme for next year’s festival: ENTANGLEMENT.
Calling all photographers, exhibition venues and collaborators
With the 2024 theme we hope to shed light on how closely we are all connected, not only to each other but also to nature, culture and the big events influencing our lives in so many ways. Furthermore we hope the theme will inspire photographers, artists, exhibition partners and creative collaborators to reflect and engage with some of the urgent issues of our times.
Just think of all the things that connect us. Visible relations like family, friends and communities or less visible like tech and AI that engages with your online footprints in unimaginable ways and connects us in vast datasets that we have no clue about. Whether we are included in neat, transparent networks or sweeped in unruly, messy or subtle bundles that seem impossible to untangle, there’s no way to evade the entanglements of our complex world.
A hope to inspire to new collaborations and perspectives
The theme will first of all be relevant for all the photographers and artist seeking to present a solo exhibition at the 2024 Copenhagen Photo Festival. The theme is also relevant for our exhibition partners around the Copenhagen region, who will be invited to engage with the theme in some way for the next edition of the festival. Last but not least we hope to inspire collaborators and sponsors to approach the theme in new and inspiring ways to create new collaborations and perspectives.
2024 THEME TEXT: ENTANGLEMENT
The overarching theme for the 2024 festival edition is ‘entanglement’. A word or concept which refers to the way we are correlated over space and time to each other. To how we can have a mutual relationship or connection, in which one thing affects or depends on another. To the footprint that we leave, more or less intentionally.
The thought of being interconnected or interdependent can seem basic. In the sense that it is something which happens in our everyday life – whenever I do something it impacts my surroundings or relations, but it can also create reverberations that I did not foresee. With the word ‘entanglement’ we wish to focus even more closely on how we today seem to be not just connected in neat and nice networks or webs that we can observe, adjust and control.
In a global perspective with climate changes, wars, Western consumerism, AI technology or drug trafficking it is pertinent to talk about a concept like ‘entanglement’ to describe how big historical events as well as our own everyday life are closely connected and can mutually impact each other in unpredictable, unruly and even messy ways. In a complex world the connections are no longer easily traced, controlled or predicted.
When a brisk decision is made to invade Ukraine and the bread prices impact families all over the world. When a girl in Sweden refuses to go to school and impacts how we talk about global climate laws. When we realize that our personal travel plans impact ice melting in Greenland.
With our focus on entanglement for the 2024 Copenhagen Photo Festival we want to encourage open call applicants to examine our own impact on the world on a personal level as well as on how big events may circle out like rings in the water and hit us in unexpectedly and make us marvel, cry, laugh or wonder.
We are particularly interested in applications that through camera-based media show us new perspectives in this entangled world of ours. Projects that both enlighten and inspire us to engage with the world, our relations and the entangled reality we live in.
Even though we live in an often frustratingly ever changing complex world, the complexity, the interconnectedness and the entanglement across time and space also possess beauty and hope that small changes can create large movements. That we as individuals actually can create reverberations, transform old structures and make a positive footprint too.
