ZED Festival is an outpost to investigate the present in view of the future.
An immersive experience in screen dance.
Crossing borders between choreography, cinema, motion, new technologies, creativity and innovative storytelling, ZED Festival aims to become a landmark for screendance in Italy by facilitating immersive creative processes and programming short films & feature films, 360 ° films, VR / AR performances, talks and workshops.
ZED Festival welcomes international screendance and cross-media works, with a particular attention to virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, triggering connections between dance and new media.
After ZED + La Danza in 1 Minuto international Screendance Contest, ZED Festival launches a new open call for a specific event, called OFFLINE BOLOGNA – A Vaporwave Hypothesis, that we'll take place on September 17th in Bologna.
OFFLINE BOLOGNA – A Vaporwave Hypothesis
Curatorial Open Call for Moving Image Works
Deadline: August 30th, 2026
The Project
ZED Festival continues its research dedicated to new forms of the moving image with an international open call aimed at artists, filmmakers, digital creators, and students.
The question that initiates the project is as simple as it is radical: What happens when a city becomes a corrupted archive?
OFFLINE BOLOGNA stems from research into postmodernism, kitsch, and new technologies, focusing on the glitch as an aesthetic phenomenon. Vaporwave constitutes the main theoretical reference: a critical device through which to question the commodification of urban space, the standardization of experience, and the dynamics of the city-brand. Obsolete consoles, discarded digital media, and past interfaces become archaeological artifacts of a future we imagined would be better.
⚠️ ATTENTION: STRICTLY THEMATIC CALL ⚠️
This call is exclusively dedicated to the aesthetic and philosophical codes of Vaporwave and Internet Aesthetics. Generic short films, traditional documentaries, or standard dance videos not clearly aligned with these concepts will be automatically rejected.
The Curatorial Framework
We invite works capable of dialoguing with themes such as:
• Digital nostalgia & technological obsolescence
• Synthetic memory & AI-generated imagery
• Liminal spaces & Internet archaeology
• Digital ruins & post-Internet aesthetics
• Glitch, compression artifacts, and visual decay
Eligible Works
We accept moving image works belonging to different practices: experimental cinema, narrative or abstract works, animation, and hybrid projects.
Duration: Open, although works between 1 and 10 minutes are highly preferred.
Audio: Silent works are strongly preferred, as the installation will be accompanied by a site-specific sound environment. Works with original soundtracks will still be considered.
The Exhibition Format
Rather than a traditional linear projection, OFFLINE BOLOGNA takes the shape of an immersive audiovisual environment. On September 17, 2026, at Spazio Extended (Bologna), the selected videos will be distributed across a network of iPads, generating a constantly evolving visual landscape suspended between past, present, and future.
Contacts
Martina Trocano
martina@zedfestival.it | zedfestival.team@gmail.com
This is a curatorial platform, not a competition. There are no cash prizes or financial compensations. Selection grants participation in the exhibition installation.
