COME PLAY BALL WITH US

What the Ball Are You Doing?

Take a deep breath and imagine this with us.

Suppose you’re holding a ball right now. Maybe one. Maybe several.

Would you inspect the surface, study its weight, try to understand what it is for?

Would you toss it away?

Would you play with it for a while?

Would you make rules for it?

Would you let it make rules for you?

A ball rises and falls. It bounces, rolls, slips away, returns. It can be used for competition, research, discipline, entertainment, repetition, obsession, or passing time. We give it systems. We assign it function. We expect it to follow a path.

But a ball has its own logic.

It moves. It repeats. It escapes.

It rolls out of line.

It refuses to stay still long enough to become only one thing.

This open call begins there.

We are looking for artists, thinkers, movers, makers, and rule-breakers who want to work with the ball not only as object, but as force, symbol, memory, game, control system, absurdity, repetition, choreography, pressure, play, delay, or drift.

We are interested in works that understand the ball as more than equipment.

We want works that ask what happens when play becomes structure, when structure becomes ritual, when repetition becomes meaning, and when something so ordinary starts to feel slightly uncanny.

We welcome responses across disciplines, including but not limited to:

• performance

• dance

• moving image

• photography

• installation

• sound

• text

• interdisciplinary and experimental forms

What we are looking for:

• strong artistic language

• clear conceptual thinking

• unusual but precise responses to the prompt

• works that can hold play, tension, humor, and thought at the same time

• practices that are willing to take the prompt somewhere we did not predict

This call is an invitation into a field of motion, repetition, friction, game, and mischief.

So here’s the real question:

When was the last time you did something with no obvious use?

When was the last time you let time go soft?

When was the last time you played, not to win, not to optimize, not to perform productivity, but simply to enter another relation with the world?

And maybe more importantly:

what is the ball for you?

If you already have an answer, good.

If you don’t, even better.

Come waste five more minutes with us.

Or more than that.

Submit your work.

Come play ball.