stiff 2026. – open call for artworks
**International Student Film Festival - STIFF invites artists to submit their work to the international exhibition as part of the supporting program of the festival.
With the supporting program of STIFF, we want to create a space for critical reflection, meeting, education and dialogue with the public. The exhibition program brings together artists from all over the world whose works we further analyze, question and with which we emphasize the layering of the thematic focus of the festival.**
Works dealing with the theme of error, created in different media, can be submitted - from audiovisual media, performances, participatory works, digital works (GIF, memes, NFT, computer graphics, 3D objects, video games, websites, applications, video) to photographs, installations, interactive objects and text works that can be interpreted in an exhibition or public space.
Thinking about a mistake, we tend to impose a negative connotation on it in everyday language and social structures. In a world where “defective goods” are automatically devalued, failures are hidden, a mistake is a sign of failure, imperfection, or a bad decision and deviations from the expected plan require correction.
But when does something become a mistake, and who determines the value of what is “defective”? Why does deviation from the norm often automatically mean less value? A mistake in work is often a hidden trace of the process as a remnant of an experiment or an unexpected path to the final form, but is it really an omission if it is present as such exclusively in the eyes of the author? Can intentionally doing something wrong be an act of resistance or freedom?
When a mistake manifests itself through anachronism, temporal dissonance, or a sense of systemic non-belonging, it destabilizes the usual power relations, while in our moral code, through the prism of morality and religion, a mistake is transformed into sin and guilt. Is the cyclical repetition of the same patterns and returning to old decisions an insurmountable burden or an experience that is a solid foundation for growth? Through various artistic approaches, we want to open up space for reflection on mistakes as an inevitable part of the process and question their creative potential as a space for new meaning, learning, reversal, and healthy change.