At the Crossroads of Cultural Politics: The Western Balkans

The project At the Crossroads of Cultural Politics: The Western Balkans resulted with the working pannel discussion with the same name which took place on May 12, 2008, in Atrium of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU). Conclusions of the discussion have been 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.

Project leader: Lev Kreft
Project coworkers: Aldo Milohnić and Lana Zdravković

Participants of the working pannel discussion discussed 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 discussed 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. Participants exchanged 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 was 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 also 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 / speakers:

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