In terms of an art festival, this was the worst experience I have had in my life! I paid the entry fee of 55 Euro and have proof they did not bother to watch any of the films I entered. This experience is what pushed me to create this blog and start this project. I want this to be publicly known so that any artist who stumbles upon this festival will be aware of how badly they operate.
I had already submitted a couple of works in the 2016 event that were not selected despite being appropriate, but that is irrelevant now. Given my experience, I was nevertheless tempted to participate in the 2019 event of the Luxembourg art prize because they are offering a very large prize of 50,000 Euro, which would greatly help me create future work.
The festival has a list of the type of art that is acceptable when applying to the festival (video is accepted, even though they have only selected one video in 5 years), every year they select 10-12 finalists. If you are a video-artist, just work out your chances of being accepted!
Since it was possible to enter as many works as one wished, after paying the entry fee of 55 Euro I decided to give the festival another try. I entered 6 works of mine in two different categories (for a total of 12 submitted works). I entered every work as a film installation and also as a single print on a white aluminum edition. I did this because considering the number of videos they have selected in the history of the festival —just one!— I would have at least a better second chance with the print editions of my work.
What follows is a very important point:
on their website, https://www.luxembourgartprize.com, in the candidate
area they suggest using a sort number to provide the selection committee with the order in which to watch the works. The films in my projects are very important and if you don’t watch the films first, the single frame doesn’t make much sense. The first work I entered was a film with sort number = 1.
Since I am very protective of my work, I prefer to use my website to upload my work. On my website there is an area that has restricted access. In order for people to watch my work I create private credentials for each festival. In combination with the restricted area there are also two log files. One log file shows me all of the successful log-ins to the restricted area and the other shows all of the failed attempts.
When the festival announced the 10 finalists you can easily guess what I did and what I found out. I opened the two file logs on my website and found no attempts made with the credentials I had set up for the festival. Proof they did not watch either work with sort number = 1!
I contacted the festival and with my first email I didn’t say anything about the logs, I just asked if they were sure that all the submitted works by each artist were examined. Their answer was that they understood my frustration for not having been selected but assured me that the selection committee had examined all my submitted works carefully.
I replied that in my opinion the selection committee did their job without much care because I had proof that what they were stating was untrue. I explained the log system on my website in which there was no presence of the credentials I had created for them (I didn’t speak about the second log of the failed access).
They replied that it was possible that the links to the films I submitted in my application did not work well or were not accessible at the time of the consideration of my application and that the members of the Artistic Commission could not be responsible for any technical issues. They stated that in such a difficult situation, as there were other works in my application, the videos could not have been watched and only the photos had been studied.
To be certain of how I should reply to them, I contacted Bluehost (my web hosting provider) who confirmed there wasn’t any server maintenance during the selection period (giving proof that everything worked correctly during the selection period). I then replied explaining there were no technical issues on the server side and there was no trace of their credentials in either of the logs in the restricted area of my website. This proves they did not attempt to watch the films as they stated, since no attempts were found in the failed log-in portion of my website. I explained this to them in almost every reply (from that email on) in response to their groundless statements until I felt so worn out by it all I asked them to put me in touch with the director of the festival. They replied stating the museum understood I was not satisfied because I was not selected as a finalist and insisted on the fact that my application file had been studied very seriously.
I asked them again to put me in touch with the director and if I didn’t hear back from him I would start a campaign against their festival, making my experience with them public.
They replied to me by closing my ticket with the justification that there was nothing more to say and wished me “an excellent day”!
