At the crossroads of cultural politics: the western Balkans

Peace Institute is preparing a workshop At the Crossroads of Cultural Politics: The Western Balkans, which will take place on May 12, 2008, from 15.30 till 18.30, in , Novi trg 3, Ljubljana. Conclusions of the workshop will be presented at the conference New Paradigms, New Models: Culture in the EU External Relations, organized by the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on May 13–14 in Ljubljana. Participants of the workshop will discuss the lessons learned so far with regard to instruments used for supporting contemporary art producers and cultural operators in the Western Balkan (WB) countries.

Bearing in mind the past experiences of donors active in the WB, participants will discuss supporting instruments and the most urgent needs of cultural producers and operators in the region. Furthermore, a new realm of independent cultural production as a result of transition and accession processes is questioning its positioning and re-positioning along the old and new divisions, such as national / european, national / international, traditional / contemporary, etc. Workshop participants will exchange experience, opinions and views on the existing relations between these art / cultural practices and national cultural policies (of the WB countries) as well as with possible EU foreign cultural policies. One of the possible outputs of the workshop is to develop proposals / recommendations on how to achieve more ambitious presentations of the EU contemporary art practices in the WB and vice versa, and on how to support a stronger presence and visibility of WB contemporary art in the EU. It will also have to be noted that independent cultural producers from different WB countries have already created contacts, events and networks which are in themselves producers of trans-national culture.

Participants:

• Aida Kalender, Programme Director, Akcija Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Emina Višnić, Cultural Manager, Clubture network & Multimedia Institute, Croatia
• Miško Šuvaković, Professor, University of Arts, Serbia
• Suzana Milevska, Program Director, Visual and Cultural Research Centre Eurobalkan Institute, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
• Svetlana Racanović, Director of the Nansen Dialogue Centre, Montenegro
• Lev Kreft, Director of the Peace Institute and Professor, Ljubljana University, Slovenia
• Aldo Milohnić, Researcher, Peace Institute, Slovenia

Prepared and organized by: Peace Institute – Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies

Venue: Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) Atrium, Novi trg 3, Ljubljana

Contact: Lana Zdravković (coordination & PR) + 386 (0)1 234 77 20

A publication with papers of all the speakers in English is available here.