Entangled Garden
New York Experimental Arts Festival 2026

Presented by ELSEHERE
Hosted at Le Petit Versailles, an Allied Productions program

New York
October 8–11, 2026

Open Call for Moving Image, Live Performance, Installation, Sound / Hybrid Work, and Site-Responsive Practice

A four-day experimental arts festival unfolding in an outdoor garden in New York.

About the Festival

Entangled Garden is a four-day experimental arts festival bringing together moving image, live performance, installation, sound, and site-responsive practice within an outdoor garden in New York.

The festival begins from a simple but charged proposition: that experimental work does not need to remain inside the spaces where art is most often expected to appear. In a city defined by concrete, speed, enclosure, and control, an open-air garden already proposes another order of attention. It creates a pause in the surrounding architecture. It allows for drift, interruption, gathering, and forms of encounter that do not belong easily to the logic of the white cube or the black box.

Entangled Garden takes that condition seriously. The garden is not treated as a backdrop. It is the ground of the festival’s thinking. It shifts how work is perceived, how audiences move, how time is felt, and how different practices come into relation with one another.

This is not a conventional exhibition, nor a traditional performance program. It is a temporary artistic ecology in which projected images, installations, live actions, sculptural gestures, sound, and site-based responses remain in tension with one another across four days. Works do not sit apart as isolated units. They enter a shared field.

What is encountered in daylight is not the same as what unfolds after dark. What first appears in stillness may later be reactivated through movement, altered by projection, interrupted by sound, or transformed by proximity to another work nearby. The festival is built around this unstable but generative condition.

Artists are invited to think not only about what a work is, but how it might live in relation to atmosphere, site, duration, audience movement, and the presence of other forms nearby. Audiences are invited not simply to view, but to move through an environment in which image, body, sound, and spatial gesture continuously reshape one another.

At its core, Entangled Garden is an experiment in site, relation, and public artistic life. It asks what becomes possible when a festival unfolds outdoors, in friction with the city around it, and when experimental work is given room to gather, shift, and remain open.

Apply Early

The first 15 applicants may submit free of charge, on a first-come, first-served basis.

After the first 15 submissions:

• Early Bird: $29 USD
  available through July 15, 2026

• Standard: $39 USD

• Late: $49 USD

Open Call

ELSEHERE invites submissions for Entangled Garden across the following categories:

• Moving Image

• Live Performance

• Installation / Visual Intervention

• Sound / Hybrid Work

• Site-Responsive Proposal

This call is open to artists whose work can enter an outdoor, time-based, and relational environment with clarity and force.

We are not simply looking for works that fit a medium category. We are looking for works that can hold their own within a shared field, and that become more charged, more vulnerable, or more alive when placed in relation to site, duration, weather, audience movement, neighboring works, and the unpredictability of public space.

We are especially interested in work that is:

• experimentally driven without becoming diffuse

• conceptually clear without becoming overdetermined

• attentive to atmosphere, scale, and relation

• capable of shifting between stillness and activation

• responsive to context without becoming merely illustrative

• strong enough to remain present outside conventional institutional framing

Artists may submit finished works, works in development, or proposals conceived specifically for the context of the festival.

If your practice moves across categories, that is welcome. This call is built for artists whose work does not sit comfortably inside one disciplinary boundary alone.

Festival Structure

How the Festival Unfolds

Selected works may enter one or more of the festival’s three interwoven dimensions.

The Garden

Ongoing Spatial Interventions

This is the festival’s continuous presence across all four days. Sculptures, installations, material gestures, sound interventions, and site-responsive works remain active within the space as a living environmental layer. By day, they can be encountered as independent works. By night, they become part of the atmosphere through which screenings and performances unfold.

After Dark

Night Screening Programs

Presented across the first three evenings, the moving image programs transform the garden into an open-air screening field. Each night is shaped around a distinct curatorial cluster, offering different emotional, spatial, and conceptual relations to the work.

The Pulse

Daily Live Activations

At least one live activation takes place each day. These may include movement-based performance, durational work, sound interventions, spatial guidance, artist-led activation, or temporary live responses to the site. This is the festival’s shifting center of energy.

Daily Rhythm

Day 1 — Opening

Live: Opening activation, spatial guidance, movement-based introduction
Night: Opening Screening Program

Day 2 — Resonance

Ongoing: Garden installations and spatial interventions
Live: A full live performance in dialogue with the evening’s screening program
Night: Expanded moving image program with live elements

Day 3 — Experiment

Ongoing: Garden installations and spatial interventions
Live: Experimental site-responsive performance, including durational or fluid audience-viewing formats
Night: Screening program and performance dialogue

Day 4 — Gathering

Ongoing: Final day of garden installations and interventions
Night: Closing live event featuring live score, movement, reading, and sound
There is no film screening on the final night. The festival closes through shared presence and collective gathering.

Program Details

Night Screening Programs

Day 1 – Day 3

The moving image programs trace a loose trajectory from buried memory to emergence.

Program I: Roots
On memory, burial, return, and the forms of connection that remain difficult to sever.

Program II: Vines
On bodies, relation, attachment, migration, and the pull between lives.

Program III: Bloom
On emergence, transformation, thresholds, and what comes into light.

Live & Spatial Interventions

Presented across all four days, these works form the living environment of the festival.

Live Performance Program
Including durational works, movement activations, sound-based performance, and temporary site responses.

Garden Interventions
Including sculptural works, material and light interventions, and site-specific actions developed for the festival context.

What We Offer

For Selected Artists

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

Depending on the selected format, this 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

• an official invitation letter from ELSEHERE

• an 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 Applicants Not Selected for Onsite Presentation

Even when a work is not selected for physical inclusion in the festival, a submission does not disappear into a void.

Depending on fit, direction, and future programming needs, non-selected applicants may still be considered for:

• an ELSEHERE participant artist profile

• future editorial or feature consideration

• future open calls, publication, or program opportunities

• continued visibility for the artist’s practice within the wider platform

We want this open call to do more than separate artists into acceptance and rejection. We want it to function as an entry point into an ongoing field of artistic relation.

Why Apply Through ELSEHERE

There are many places to send work. What matters here is the context it enters.

ELSEHERE does not approach an open call as a numbers exercise. We work through selection, framing, relation, and long-term artistic attention. We are interested in how a work is encountered, what kind of conversation it enters, and what kind of afterlife it may have beyond a single event.

For Entangled Garden, that means several things at once.

A New York festival context with real spatial stakes
This festival does not unfold inside a neutral room. It takes place in an outdoor garden in New York, where the site itself shifts the terms of visibility, attention, and encounter.

Physical presentation, not only digital circulation
Selected works will be experienced onsite through screening, installation, performance, sound, and spatial activation. The work enters a lived environment, not only a screen or PDF.

An editorial and curatorial ecosystem beyond the festival
ELSEHERE’s wider structure includes publication, artist interviews, STRATUM Journal, feature opportunities, and longer arcs of visibility across projects and platforms.

Selective review with real attention
We are not trying to fill slots quickly. We are shaping a festival environment with care. Selection is based on artistic strength, conceptual fit, and the ability of the work to enter this field with force and relation.

The possibility of continued connection
For us, a submission is not only a transaction around one event. Strong work may continue into future editorial, curatorial, or cross-platform opportunities.

Who Can Apply

This call is open to artists, performers, filmmakers, choreographers, sound artists, installation artists, and interdisciplinary practitioners across geographies.

You do not need to be previously affiliated with ELSEHERE to apply.

We welcome both emerging and established practitioners. What matters here is not career stage on its own, but the strength of the work, the clarity of its direction, and its capacity to enter an experimental festival context with conviction.

Selection & Review

All submissions are reviewed individually through a curatorial and editorial process.

We are looking for work that shows:

• artistic rigor

• conceptual clarity

• sensitivity to site, audience, and form

• the ability to resonate within an experimental festival structure

• strong potential for dialogue with other works across image, sound, space, and performance

Only selected artists will be contacted for participation in the onsite festival.

We are not looking for works that simply fit a category. We are looking for works that can shape, disrupt, or deepen the field they enter.

Submission Fee & Early Access

To encourage earlier submissions and strengthen the first round of applications, Entangled Garden uses a phased submission fee structure.

The first 15 applicants may submit free of charge, on a first-come, first-served basis.

After the first 15 submissions, the fee structure is as follows:

• Early Bird: $29 USD
  available through July 15, 2026

• Standard: $39 USD

• Late: $49 USD

Submission fees support application review, artist communications, program coordination, and the overall development of the festival.

Submission Materials

Please prepare materials that allow us to understand the work clearly, both on its own terms and in relation to the festival.

Depending on the format, this may include:

• project information

• work description or proposal

• images, video links, audio, or other supporting materials

• technical or spatial notes, where relevant

• artist bio and basic contact information

Please submit only what is most relevant. Strong selection matters more than volume.

Key Dates

June 15 – July 15
Phase 1 open call launch 

July 15, 2026
Early Bird deadline

By August 15
Final stage of rollout

September 1
Completion of submission review and unified publication of festival project content on the website

September 6
Confirmation of selected artists and final participation list

Mid to Late September
Production preparation, artist materials, and final festival assets

October 8–11, 2026
Festival takes place in New York

Festival Team

Festival Leadership

Selina Zhang — Executive Director & Performance Program Director
Yifan Zhang — Program Strategist Director
Valkyrie Yao — Festival Director

Curatorial

Jiaxin He — Lead Curator
Valkyrie Yao — Curator
Yuyang Hu — Curator

Strategy, Outreach & Marketing

Xiaoyue Li — Business Development & Outreach
Yuhan Zhu — Strategic Communications
Yang — Marketing, China

Production

Jiaxin He — Festival Production Support
Kyrie Yao — Production Support
Glo Li — Production Team

On-Site Team

Yuhan Zhu / Yuyang Hu / Gloria Li — On-Site Staff

Apply

Deadline: August 15, 2026

Entangled Garden is not looking for works to simply occupy a program. It is looking for works that can enter an environment, alter it, and be altered by it in return.

If your practice is willing to work with site, friction, atmosphere, encounter, and the unstable relation between art and public space, we invite you to apply.