Kolaj Fest New Orleans is 7-11 June 2023

Kolaj Fest will return to New Orleans on 7-11 June 2023 for a coming together of collage artists and art professionals; a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society; where the focus is how we celebrate and elevate the status of collage. Presenters will lead panel discussions and explore key curatorial issues. Artists will exhibit artwork, and create special activities and demonstrations. We will meet, network, share community, camaraderie, and fellowship. We will leave armed with new ideas for our artmaking, writing, and curatorial projects, but more importantly, we will leave Kolaj Fest New Orleans prepared to champion this artform in the year to come.

Where to Stay

Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a decentralized event that extends across New Orleans. There is no official host hotel this year. New Orleans is rich with housing options, from traditional hotels to B&Bs at a range of price points.

Thursday’s events are centered in the Central Business District. Friday and Saturday we are based at Cafe Istanbul in The Bywater. Sunday we will meet at The Domino. For reference, key sites include Café Istanbul in the New Orleans Healing Center (2372 Saint Claude Avenue), The Domino (3044 Saint Claude Avenue), and The School (1215 Japonica Street).

We recommend booking in the Central Business District/Warehouse District, French Quarter, or in the Marigny/Bywater, all places well served by public transportation and ride share services.

New Orleans & Co., the city’s visitor and convention bureau, offers a free hotel and B&B booking service.

WEDNESDAY EVENING

Welcome Reception & Collage Making

Located in the Bywater, The Domino is a friendly neighborhood bar and home base for the Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue, New Orleans’ collage collective. Join us on Wednesday, 7 June 2023 from 5PM to 7PM for a Welcome Reception & Collage Making. Attendees will be able to check into Kolaj Fest and meet the organizers and other folks attending Kolaj Fest. The fantastic Milkfish will be holding a delicious pop-up offering their signature Filipino food.

AT KOLAJ FEST

Symposium

The program at Kolaj Fest is a unique experience. We have multiple goals and are serving multiple audiences: We aim to breakdown hierarchy and foster dialogue among art professionals working in a variety of capacities. We aim to build bridges between the collage community and the larger art world; between the art world and the general public. Our hope is that participants will have fun, network, play, and socialize while engaging in deep, real talk about issues that are important to them. We aim that people will leave Kolaj Fest New Orleans connected to a community, armed with ideas for their art, the presentation of collage, their writing and curatorial work, or simply a deeper appreciation and understanding of collage and the people who make it.

NORTH AMERICAN DEBUT

Kurt Schwitters, Untitled

Among the works to be screened: David Rushton’s short, stop motion film about Kurt Schwitters, Untitled (2022), will receive its North American debut. Untitled is a ten-minute stop-frame animation based on imagined memories of German refugee artist Kurt Schwitters during his final months in Ambleside, Cumbria, England. The film was produced, directed and edited by David Rushton for MERZ and Summerhall TV with invaluable contributions from Mark and Denise Zygadlo, Amy Marletta, Laia Gimeno, Olivia Irvine and Raine Talley. Rushton premiered the film at the reunion of the Schwitters’ Army at MERZ in Sanquhar, Scotland on 10 September 2022. The film was one of 50 selected for the European Short Film Festival in Berlin, December 2022. An article about the film appears in Kolaj 37. 

THURSDAY EVENING

The Pixel Party

After the Collage on Screen event, head next door to The Broadside for an evening of live music, food, cash bar, and projected animated GIFs. At the event, the Kolaj Fest community will assemble a monument 12-foot by 8-foot artwork. As you enter the event, you will be handed a pixel in the form of a 3-inch square collage and be invited to place it on a grid. As the evening progresses, an image will emerge. In doing this, we perform in a full-bodied, living, breathing way what occurs in digital space. The project is led by Lance Carlson, an Atlanta-based artist with an architectural background. He is a founding member and past co-president of the Atlanta Collage Society and has been a Signature member of National Collage Society. Carlson will speak about the project at Thursday’s Daily Collage Congress. 

Want to exhibit animated GIFs at The Pixel Party? See the Call to Artists HERE

AT KOLAJ FEST

Collage Workshop Space

This year, we are pleased to announce a dedicated workshop space in Kolaj Institute’s Studio at The School. Located in a former elementary school, The School is a collection of artist studios and workspaces tucked away at 1215 Japonica Street in the Bywater. Kolaj Institute’s Studio is a permanent workspace that hosts the Institute’s residencies, workshops, labs, collage nights and more. During Kolaj Fest New Orleans, the space will host workshops centered around collage techniques.

SYMPOSIUM

Cut Me Up: Fifth Anniversary

Cut Me Up is a participatory magazine of visual call and response founded by Andrea Burgay. Each issue presents a call—a curated selection of original collage images that become raw material for reader-artists to respond by cutting, reconfiguring, and transforming them into new artworks. The newly created responses form the content of the next issue. Each issue of Cut Me Up includes 18 reproductions of the selected artworks. It is a compact exhibition, received primarily through the mail, that can be viewed and revisited at any time and place. Guest curators for each issue bring in unique perspectives on what the magazine can do and become. The curatorial calls expand how we think about collage as an art form and how it can address issues of contemporary concern. The calls introduce new processes, techniques and conceptual approaches. Cut Me Up reaches a worldwide community of collage artists. As they consider another artist’s process and psychological motivations when choosing and transforming their pieces, artists make authentic connections to each other’s work. In this way, artists collaborate from afar. They continue to develop these bonds through the Cut Me Up community on social media, where artists interact and comment on each other’s work.

At Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Andrea Burgay will host a panel of artists and curators who have been a part of Cut Me Up over the last five years.

Collage in Motion at Kolaj Fest New Orleans

Kolaj Institute seeks Short films, Animations, & GIFs for a theater screening and projection event at Kolaj Fest New Orleans. 

Deadline Sunday, 30 April 2023

Kolaj Institute seeks short films and other sorts of moving images for a screening as part of Kolaj Fest New Orleans. Collage on Screen will take place at 5:30PM on 8 June 2023 at Broad Theatre in New Orleans. Collage on Screen will focus on works that are generally between 1 and 15 minutes long. (The organizers may ask the creators for an excerpt from work if it is longer than 15 minutes.) Our goal is to showcase the diversity of this medium. Afterwards we will host The Pixel Party at 7PM at The Broadside, next door to the theater, which will feature submitted gifs projected onto the walls and have live music, food and a cash bar. The films will be featured in the festival program book. Artists and Makers are welcome to attend and participate in a panel discussion after the screening, but attendance is not required. To submit your work for Collage on Screen and/or The Pixel Party, visit the complete CALL TO ARTISTS. 

Collage as Street Art Residency: New Orleans

Final Deadline to Apply: 16 April 2023 (if space is available).

A week-long, in-person residency that coincides with Kolaj Fest New Orleans (7-11 June 2023), during which artists will explore the city, learn about the history and materials of street art, and make artwork for public display that Kolaj Fest attendees and New Orleanians will be able to view.

Collage Art & Book Market

Deadline to submit is 6 May 2023 (unless the market is full before then).

Part of Kolaj Fest New Orleans, the Collage Art & Book Market is an opportunity for the general public to meet artists and publishers and to take in the rich and diverse cultural production of the international collage community. The public will be invited to peruse vendor displays or attend a talk or demonstration. The market will take place on Saturday, 10 June 2023, 1PM to 5PM at Cafe Istanbul in the New Orleans Healing Center (2372 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117)

If you are an artist or book publisher, we invite you to sign-up for an exhibition space at the Collage Art & Book Market. The cost is included (free) to those registered for Kolaj Fest New Orleans, $30 for others. Vendors will be assigned a 30-inch table or may bring their own display. Vendors staff their own tables and manage all sales independently.