2025 O+ Kingston Theme: PO+wer
The O+ Festival will return to Kingston, NY for the 15th annual exchange of art, music and wellness October 10-12th, 2025.
Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.
~ Ossie Davis
What is power? Who holds it? How is it sustained? When do we wield it, when do we resist it? How do we, consciously or unconsciously, uphold structures that reinforce inequitable access to it? How do we share it? What happens when it is redefined or redistributed? How do we reclaim it when attempts are made at taking it from us?
In a time marked by political turbulence and division, art emerges as a potent instrument of the people—a medium through which voices are amplified, dissent is visualized, and collective resilience is forged. Power is, however, neither inherently good nor bad—it is an omnipresent force that governs societies, shapes relationships, and defines identities in complex and often contradictory ways. Power is at once tangible and elusive, oppressive and liberating, inherent and constructed.
Friedrich Nietzsche said “Happiness is the feeling that power increases – that resistance is being overcome” perhaps defining power, in all of its forms, as a force. And perhaps possessing or harnessing power is the sense that if you push against something (whether physical, metaphysical or metaphoric), it will move.
The fascism in us all causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.
~ Michel Foucault
The 15th Annual O+ Festival offers a space to reconsider power not just as something to be held, but as something to be shared, dismantled, or reframed. We welcome the work of artists exploring power in ways both practical and political. Structural power or the literal power grid. Renewable “green” power or economic power. Interrogations of authority, questioning of systems, celebration of movements, or even explorations of physics all present power as a force, a medium and a subject that we encounter and contend with in our everyday lives.
and the armies ceased advancing
because the people had their ear
and the shepherds and the soldiers
lay beneath the stars
exchanging visions
and laying arms
to waste in the dust
in the form of shining valleys
where the pure air recognized
and my senses newly opened
I awakened to the cry
The people have the power
~ Patti Smith
The measure of a man is
what he does with power.
~ Plato
From the heart
It’s a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothing’s strange
People, people we are the same
No we’re not the same
‘Cause we don’t know the game
What we need is awareness, we can’t get careless
You say what is this?
My beloved lets get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness
Don’t rush the show
You gotta go for what you know
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say
Fight the power
~ Public Enemy
Submissions are welcome from artists, musicians, and writers of all mediums, genres and modalities that explore the nature of power in all of its forms, structures, expressions and complexity. We welcome work that examines how it is wielded, challenged, distributed and reimagined. The structures that sustain power, the forces that resist it, and the possibilities for its transformation. Some pieces confront systems of dominance, exposing the weight of authority, surveillance, and inequality. Others celebrate empowerment, resilience, resistance and the transformative potential of collective action. The interplay between these perspectives underscores the fluidity of power—how it shifts, adapts, and manifests in both visible and invisible ways.
Sometimes people try to destroy you,
precisely because they recognize your power
— not because they don’t see it,
but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.
~ Bell Hooks
In an era where institutions and services are battlegrounds for ideological control, as seen with recent political interventions in both art and healthcare, this year’s O+ Festival stands as a testament to the essential power of creative expression as a form of resistance, a catalyst for dialogue, a celebration of connection and a way to imagine new ways forward using power as a force.