Text by CLOT Magazine
South by Southwest (SXSW) is one of the biggest annual confluences of artists in the world, celebrating all things film, music, and interactive media. Established in 1987, SXSW has expanded over the years to include a wide range of industries, aiming to bring together creatives from various fields and showcase the work of industry professionals and emerging artists. SXSW consists of Film, Music, and Interactive Media Festivals, as well as the Conference, and features several sessions, showcases, screenings, and exhibitions, attracting people from all over the globe who share a passion for creativity, experimentation, and discovery, and creates opportunities for networking and collaboration.
SXSW has commenced its 2020 season on July 1 with the Film and Music Festival submissions opening. In addition to those, this year SXSW is broadening its reach to include even more disciplines by opening up applications for digital art projects for the Interactive Innovation Awards, innovative startups for the SXSW Pitch, powerful and imaginative essays and short stories for the David Carr Prize, abstract visual artwork that employs new technologies for the Art Program, and nominations for the SXSW Community Service Awards.
This season also introduces the PanelPicker, an online platform that gives the SXSW community much more freedom in designing the SXSW Conference by making it easy to make proposals for topics, sessions and activities that make up the Conference and streamlining the voting process. The Conference consists of 20 programming tracks, each comprising sessions that concentrate on a particular area from the track’s extensive topic. The tracks for the 2020 season feature issues of climate change and social mobility, sports, the tech industry, politics and the future of film, music and gaming industries, to name a few.
SXSW 2020 will be held from March 13 to 22 in Austin, Texas, USA.
