CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Stroom X Museumnacht 2026
Universal Language: Call for Short Video Works
Saturday 10 October 2026: screening during Museumnacht Den Haag
Submission deadline: 25 September 2026
Apply: Click here to submit your work
During Museumnacht on Saturday 10 October, Stroom presents a special video program in the entrance area, inspired by the exhibition Universal Language: Concrete Composure. Are you an artist based in The Hague, a KABK BA/MA student, or a recent KABK graduate (within the past five years)? Do you explore the relationship between poetry and algorithms in your work? Do you see poetry in karaoke machines, microwave displays, and intercom systems? Does your work search for new forms and structures of translation? Then we invite you to submit a video work for Stroom’s Museumnacht program!
Theme: Universal Language
Universal Language: Concrete Composure explores how language operates within a network. The works in the exhibition revive old, almost forgotten ideas and bring them into dialogue with today’s large-scale technological systems.
Rather than treating language models and neural networks as ready-made products, the artists investigate what these technologies actually are and how they came into being. They ask: how do these systems ‘think’—if they think at all? This research opens up new ways of looking at how these systems learn, and what we might learn from them about communicating with one another.
For this open call, we are looking for video works that connect to Universal Language. This could include videos exploring multispecies intelligences, DIY technologies, or relationships between beings at micro- to macro-levels.
If this resonates with your practice, we invite you to submit your video work for Stroom’s Museumnacht program.
Who is eligible?
You want your work to engage with the theme of Universal Language.
You are an artist based in The Hague, or a KABK student, or a KABK graduate who graduated within the past five years, or an autonomous/self-taught artist who started working professionally in The Hague within the past five years.
You have a work that can be presented as a self-contained, single-channel video, such as a short film, experimental video, digital moving image/collage with sound, music video, animation, etc.
For this occasion, we do not select GIFs/screensavers or internet works, installations or videos that are inseparable from an installation, interactive works, performance registrations, or multi-channel works.
The work you submit can be new or existing, adapted or unchanged, a work in progress or completed.
The video must be a minimum of 30 seconds and a maximum of 40 minutes long.
Complete the application form by 25 September 2026.
If you are unsure whether your work is eligible, please get in touch with us.
What will happen during the event?
Five submissions will be selected for this occasion. On Saturday 10 October, the program consists of an evening opening of the group exhibition Universal Language: Concrete Composure. The selected videos will be screened in a loop, in an order to be determined, using a large wall projection, high-quality projector and sound system in Stroom’s entrance area. Each selected artist will be asked to briefly introduce their video before its first screening. Handouts with descriptions of the works will be available, and visitors will be informed which video is playing when they enter the space. The selected videos will be compensated with an artist fee of €140 excl. VAT.