bad video art festival open call 2024

The International Bad Video Art Festival (BVAF) is an independent, artist-run initiative. The Festival has been held since 2017. Video artists and B-movie fans Natalia Monakhova and Andrey Slaschilin once decided to explore whether something like bad video art exists. It is well known that B-movies have long since formed a unique cultural niche with their own heroes and fans. In other art sectors, however, the concept of “bad” has not been explored as actively.

We are looking for videos that are at the intersection of bad art, bad painting, and bad cinema. We propose to study extreme forms of video art and single out certain works as bad videos or “B-videos”. Join us if you are interested in the issue of quality and boundaries in art.

We are looking for works that meet any of the following criteria:

• Technically poor (low resolution, over-/underexposed, unstabilized, wrong focus, poor sound or no sound at all, bad editing, wrong color correction);
• Lacking content (irrelevant, empty, shot just for the sake of it, without any purpose, idea, or concept);
• Consciously/unconsciously exploiting the aesthetics of camp, trash, or B-movies.