Queer and trans people have never stopped making from scratch (family), from absence (mutual aid, communal/liveable spaces), and from refuse (art, worlds). Using our unbounded imagination, we have become expert builders from the remains of ruination, constructing avenues towards liberated futures. We dance atop the tension held by the slash in worldbreaking/worldbuilding, laboring between shattering what must be shattered and constructing more liveable worlds in the wake of apocalypse. OUTsider 2027 takes cues from earlier iterations of the fest where we’ve explored “time out of joint” (OUT of Time), have reveled in our spoiled fruitiness (Nasty Fruits), and have questioned the uncertainty of our fluctuating times (Future in Flux). As we build on these themes, we continue to ponder over our ancestral, artistic, and intellectual lineages grappling with and against the end of theworld–or should we say, aworld–by imagining future worlds beyond the catastrophic/dystopian. Tuning into lower frequencies, heeding ancestral cosmologies (as source for survival), and bending the arrow of time--all opposing corporate cultural mandates–we dream US into breathing, into being. 

For OUTsider 2027 we hope to center the power of queer and trans creatives who are inspired by–and who inspire–radical acts of worldbuilding. Our hope is that our time together yields possibilities for a queer futurity grounded in ancestral knowledge rather than technological optimism. We seek creative work that speaks towards envisioning more liveable futures for all of US.  

OUTsider welcomes LGBTQ+ art of ALL forms and content and especially encourages submissions that speak to the 2027 theme Dreaming US into Being.

OUTsider invites submissions from all artistic media, but our capacity is limited to time-based arts. In all instances, strong consideration will be given to works from marginalized subjectivities, including those related to differences of race, gender, sexuality, ability, size, generation, migratory status, and nation.