LTCA Publication – From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010)

The publication From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010), created as part of the regional project Let’s Talk Critic Arts, will be presented on April 11 at 7 pm at the Art Center of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade. Presentation of this multilingual publication will be followed by public interviews with Belgrade based artists Saša Stojanović/Ana Vilenica and Manik (Marija Vauda/Nikola Pilipović).


Among the participants will be members of Editorial Board of the publication, as well as authors of its segments and representatives of the organizations involved in the LTCA project.

The publication explores practices of critical contemporary fine arts – practices of research, progressive and experimental actions by contemporary fine artists from the 1990s to the present, in four countries in the region – Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. These are practices which focus on issues such as identity aspects (national, cultural, religious, ethnic), workers’ rights, social integration of minorities, global market fluctuation trends and its impact in the local context, unscrupulousness of capital, the position of women, spatial devastation, art institution system issues, and many others.

The publication maps out and theoretically reviews critical and research practices, and contemporary fine arts practices oriented towards the contemporary civilization moment, which have been active in the context of the independent cultural scene since the 1990s, but which have also been present in the institutional frame. The authors provide only drafts of the political, social, economic and cultural changes of the local contexts, through four segments, due to a lack of space. Each segment focuses on the practices and context of a given country, i.e. the capital as the primary focus, and in addition to the introductory word by the authors, it includes interviews (with authors, theorists, curators, organizers…) who contribute to the recording of these artistic practices based on their experience, work and knowledge.

The segments deal with the Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb scenes. All the authors devised their approaches in an effort to present the fruitful and creative production of these cities, to the greatest extent possible. The authors involved in the creation of this publication are Jasna Jakšić (in collaboration with Tihana Bertek, Maja Gujinović, Ana Kovačić, Srđan Latrezom, Petar Novak, Tino Novak, Tamara Sertić and Leda Sutlović) from Croatia, Nebojša Vilić from Macedonia, Vesna Tašić (in collaboration with Vesna Milosavljević and Miroljub Marjanović) from Serbia, and Miha Colner and Nika Grabar (Slovenia).

The authors of the segments faced a gruelling task – how to tell the story of a period on only 50 pages (which was predefined for every segment), and how to select only four protagonists for every city, among the many protagonists of the art scene? The authors applied different criteria – they strived to select precisely those respondents who could provide a cross-section of the discipline development, some were selected because their work is a paradigmatic of critical and socially engaging practices, while some were inescapable authoritative and creative minds…

Contemporary visual art is discussed through the works and experiences of Igor Grubić, Sanja Iveković, Andreja Kulunčić and Darko Šimičić (Croatia), Stevan Vuković, Milica Tomić, Danilo Prnjat and Živko Grozdanić Gera (Serbia), Neven Korda, Marko Peljhan, Marija Mojca Pungerčar and Maja Smrekar (Slovenia), and Bojan Ivanov, Zoran Poposki, Mira Gakina and Žaneta Vangeli (Macedonia).

Editorial Board (Dušan Dovč, Vesna Milosavljević, Jasna Soptrajanova i Dea Vidović) believes that selection of 16 voices provides a possible cross-section of the events in the contemporary fine arts scenes of Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb from the 1990s to the present, but it is certainly not the final or only one.

The publication is a type of platform that is available to the public, with the wish to encourage further collecting and evaluation of art and cultural endeavours in the past 20 year in these four cities, as well as in those that could not be included in this project (for financial reasons).

The book was conceived as a multilingual publication in English, in addition to the local languages (Croatia, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian), in order to enable better insight into contemporary artistic practices in post-Yugoslav cities both for the local and international public.

The publication is made available by the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported unless it is not differently stated.

The publication will be also distributed in CD form to galleries in Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje and Zagreb.

The LTCA project will be concluded by promotion of the publication From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010), but it is open for comment and further research.

The LTCA project was initiated and implemented by the cultural portal SEEcult.org (the SEEcult.org Civic Association) from Belgrade, Serbia, in collaboration with the Artservis.org portal (Center for Contemporary Arts, SCCA-Ljubljana) from Slovenia, Forum Skopje from Skopje, Macedonia, and the Kulturpunkt.hr portal (Alliance of Associations Clubture and Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Cultural, Media and Society) from Zagreb, Croatia, with support from the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), and national/local donors.

Open Talks on Contemporary Visual Art Practices in Zagreb (1990-2010)

Kulturpunkt.hr is organizing an event entitled Open Talks on Contemporary Visual Art Practices in Zagreb (1990-2010) which will be held on Thursday and Friday, 9th and 10th of September at 5:00 pm in club Booksa in Zagreb (Croatia). In these Open Talks will participate artists, curators, theorists, cultural managers as well as wider public, and will be moderated by journalists and art critics Marko Golub and Vesna Tašić.


The themes of the Open Talks are critical practices in contemporary arts – practices of research, progressive and experimental character which take critical approach to reality, but also work and role of the institutional system. As the frame is rather wide and comprehends period of twenty years, it also comprehends generational gap, which is why we envisaged these Open Talks as a place of solidifying and exchanging knowledge, information and interpretation of artistic phenomena from the period. The other aspect takes into focus institutional and non-institutional, economic, social, political and other context giving the frame to the practices in focus. Although the focus of the projects are “critical practices”, the intention is to regard them in these talks in the wider context, and instead of one, unique story of two decades, to reconsider them and evoke more different narrative lines.

Open talks on Contemporary Visual Art Practices in Zagreb (1990-2010) are organized by portal Kulturpunkt.hr in cooperation with club Booksa and partners from the region – SCCA/Artservis (Slovenia), ForumSkopje (Macedonia) and Seecult.org (Serbia).

Open Talks on Contemporary Visual Art Practices in Zagreb (1990-2010) are organized in the frame of the regional project Let’s Talk Critic Arts initiated by portal for culture Seecult.org from Belgrade in cooperation with partners from Slovenia – SCCA/Artservis.org, Macedonia – ForumSkopje and Croatia – portal Kulturpunkt.hr. Project is supported by ECF – European Cultural Foundation.

Open Talks also make part of the project In Focus of Kulturpunkt.hr. Let’s Talk Art, Design & Media – Critics or Analytics supported by The Netherlands Embassy in Zagreb (Croatia), and is implemented by portal Kulturpunkt.hr. Events are also supported by City of Zagreb – Office for Education, Culture and Sports, Republic of Croatia – Ministry of Culture and National Foundation for Development of Civil Society.

The Time of Media

Public interview and Open forum: Media and culture will take place on April, 8th and 9th, 2010 in club Booksa in Zagreb (Croatia).


Public interview and Open forum are parts of the series of public events The Time of Media initiated by portal Kulturpunkt.hr with the aim to open a public discussion on culture and policies of media in Croatia through different aspects. The first round table was dedicated to the non-profit media trying to define their role and importance in Croatian society and present media landscape. The second round table dealt with journalism as profession and the challenges it is encountering today. The third event is taking into focus media and culture.

Public interview Media and Culture we will try to analyze culture and arts contents published in commercial, public, non-profit and specialized media through examples from four countries of the region. Participants of this dynamic discussion are Dejan Budjevac (Macedonia), Saša Ćirić (Serbia), Dean Duda (Croatia) and Mojca Planšak (Slovenia) who will give an overview of the state of the space for culture in the media in the region. The discussion will be focused on evaluation of quality and ways culture and art topics are presented. The discussion, which will be held on Thursday, April 8th at 18 hours in club Booksa, will be moderated by Miljenka Buljević.

Open Forum of culture media and journalists aims to gather representatives of periodicals, magazines, editorial boards, programmes and media for culture. The lack of space for presenting and analyzing themes from the field of culture in mass media, made us to turn our attention to different types and forms of media which are trying to present cultural and artistic contents and are paying attention on the quality. On the other hand, communication between representatives and producers of these media is very rare, and when it appears it is rather an exception than the product of systematic conducting and structural networking. For all these reasons on Friday, April 9th at 17 hours in club Booksa, in the frame of Open forum journalists and representatives of media for culture will be gathered and will have the opportunity to discuss their problems, exchange experiences and start possible cooperations.

Both events are organized by portal Kulturpunkt.hr in cooperation with portal Booksa.hr and magazine Zarez together with partners from the region – SCCA/Artservis (Slovenia), ForumSkopje (Macedonia) and Seecult.org (Serbia).

Public interview and Open forum: Media and culture are organized in the frame of the regional project Let’s Talk Critic Arts initiated by portal for culture Seecult.org from Belgrade in cooperation with partners from Slovenia – SCCA/Artservis.org, Macedonia – ForumSkopje and Croatia – portal Kulturpunkt.hr. Project is supported by ECF – European Cultural Foundation.

Both events also make part of the project In Focus of Kulturpunkt.hr. Let’s Talk Art, Design & Media – Critics or Analytics supported by The Netherlands Embassy in Zagreb (Croatia), and is implemented by portal Kulturpunkt.hr. Events are also supported by City of Zagreb – Office for Education, Culture and Sports, Republic of Croatia – Ministry of Culture and National Foundation for Development of Civil Society.

Third World Culturelink Conference

call for papers - programme - registration form

Networks – The Evolving Aspects of Culture in the 21st Century Zagreb, Croatia, 13-15 November 2009 With the support of: UNESCO Office in Venice - UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe (BRESCE); Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (Hivos); Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, Croatia; Ministry of Culture, Croatia Call for Papers  The Culturelink Network celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. To mark this occasion, we are organizing the Third World Culturelink Conference under the title "Networks – The Evolving Aspects of Culture in the 21st Century", to be held from 13 to 15 November 2009 in Zagreb, Croatia. The conference is envisaged to bring together Culturelink Network's members, researchers, professionals, and many others who perceive networking as one of the most intriguing phenomenon of contemporary culture. The Third World Culturelink Conference will aim to investigate the role and relevance that cultural networks hold for cultural development. A retrospective overview of the cultural networks phenomena in the past 20 years will pose as grounds for debate on new perspectives of cultural networking in the 21st century. Special consideration will be given to issues regarding the position of cultural networks within cultural policies structures, as well as to the effective usage of innovative ICT and networking applications that significantly develop the modes and scopes of activities of cultural networks. The event will include discussions on the promotion and affirmation of cultural diversity and intercultural communication through networking processes and will closely look at case studies from all regions of the world, thus providing comparative examples and experiences on a global level. We invite the submission of papers to be included in the Third World Culturelink Conference programme. Paper abstracts should thematically correspond to the themes and topics listed in the preliminary conference agenda. Conference participants interested in holding a paper/presentation, should comply with the following requirements: all prospective speakers must submit a presentation proposal and a short CV, presentation proposals should be given a precise title that falls well within the scope of the chosen programme theme, and proposals should be submitted in the form of a written Abstract or Executive Summary on not more than one page (approx. 500 words). All proposals should be submitted for revision by 15 July 2009 to clinkconf@irmo.hr. Conference languages are Croatian, English, French and Spanish. For the conference programme, please see here. Contact: Conference Secretariat, Culturelink/IMO, P.O. Box 303, Vukotinovićeva 2, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia; tel.: +385-1-4877490; fax: +385-1-4828361; e-mail: clinkconf@irmo.hr; http://www.culturelink.org/clinkconf.html

Forum 'Culture 2007-2013 Programme – possibilities of co-operation'

Organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, Cultural Contact Point Croatia and Croatian Movement & Dance Institute in cooperation with Cultural Contact Points Austria and Slovenia on June 1st at the Mimara Museum in Zagreb.

Programme:
 
9.00-9.15   Registration

9.15-9.30  Foreword: Božo Biškupić, Minister of Culture
 
Presentations:

9.30- 9.45  Vesna Jurić Bulatović ( Museum for Arts and Crafts, Zagreb)

9.45-10.15  Stephane Re (Institut Française de Zagreb) and Emma Lecoeur ( L’Oreal Croatia)

10.15-10.45  Alemka Lisinski (T-Hrvatski Telekom) and Snježana Pintarić (Musem of Contemporary Art, Zagreb)

10.45-11.15  Marina Dijaković (Zagrebačka banka) and Vesna Kusin (Gallery Klovićevi dvori, Zagreb)

11.15-11.45  Polona Lovšin (Riko Group, Slovenia) and Ranko Novak (Brumen Foundation, Slovenia)
 _______________________________________________

11.45-12.30  Coffee break
 _______________________________________________

12.30-13.00  Dubravka Jusić (Vipnet) and Ivica Prlender (Dubrovačke ljetne igre)

13.00-13.30  Leonie Hodkevitch (Austria): ”Sponsoring: Alter Ego in Arts”

13.30-14.00  CCPs Austria, Slovenia and Croatia: Presentation of the Culture 2007-2013 programme

14.00-14.30  Matjaž Farič and Ksenija Kaučič (Flota, Slovenia), Manfred Biskup and Liz King (Verein für Neue Tanzformen, Austria), Alfred Masal (Offenes Haus Oberwart, Austria), Barna Petrany (Pro Progressione, Hungary), Mirna Žagar (Croatian Movement & Dance Institute, Croatia): Dance Explorations Beyond Front@

14.30-15.00  DISCUSSION/ CONCLUSION

(Source: CCP Croatia)

inSEEcp members at the Intercultural Dialogue and Digital Culture round table in Zagreb

The Culturelink Network is organizing the round table entitled Intercultural Dialogue and Digital Culture, to be held in Zagreb, Croatia, on 20-21 November 2008, marking the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (EYID) 2008.

Culturelink is one of the founding member of inSEEcp.

inSEEcp will be presented by Dusan Dovc from Evrokultura / Artservis, whilst Aleksandra Uzelac (Culturelink),  Dea Vidovic (Kulturpunkt) and Deborah Hustic (Culturenet) will attend the event on the behalf of their portals.

The event aims to discuss and share knowledge about the possibilities that digital culture provides for intercultural dialogue and to identify examples of existing good practices that allow for participation of users in virtual cultural projects, thus enabling democratic participation of citizens in the building of virtual/digital culture.
We feel that issues related to digital culture and intercultural dialogue are insufficiently discussed and researched. In the roundtable discussions, we hope to clarify issues that often have diverse and imprecise meanings, focusing on the following topics:
- Intercultural dialogue – concept and its realisation (clarifying issues)
- Digital culture - how it relates to intercultural dialogue
- Digital culture participatory practices - building shared spaces?
- Digital culture new trends – portals, blogs, participatory internet: does the cultural sector recognize the current trends as a tool for enabling intercultural dialogue?
So far a number of speakers have confirmed their participation, including Colin Mercer, Don Foresta, Myriam Diocaretz, Kelvin Smith, Rob van Kranenburg, Katherine Watson, Vesna Čopič, Vuk Čosić, Filip Stojanovski and Tomislav Medak.
The round table is supported by UNESCO-BRESCE, the Croatian Ministry of Culture and the City of Zagreb.
The working language of the symposium will be English.
See here more detailed programme

(Text by Culturelink / inSEEcp)

Working meeting of the network

Working meeting on the theme of:
- collaboration of the network at the meeting of the Cultural Contact Points Network during the Slovene EU Presidency
- possibilities of further developments of the Informal SEE Network of Cultural Portals

Present (representatives of InSEEcp and of CCPs HR and SLO):
- Anja Jelavic (Ministry of Culture of Republic Croatia / CCP HR)
- Deborah Hustic (Ministry of Culture of Republic Croatia / Culturenet.hr)
- Dea Vidovic (Clubture Network / Kulturpunkt.hr)
- Marija Mojca Pungercar & Dusan Dovc (SCCA-Ljubljana / Artservis & Evrokultura)
- Mateja Lazar (SCCA-Ljubljana / CCP SI)

Zagreb, February 7, 2008

A. Informal SEE Network of Cultural Portals
As the follow-up of two regional workshops of cultural portals, held 2006 and 2007 in Belgrade, the SEEcult.org portal for South-east Europe culture with its partners from region continues developmental project of networking in the field of digital culture in region.

At the meeting in Zagreb, members of the network discussed the aims of the network and how to start expanding the network by including portals from different SEE countries (1st stage: in the region of ex-YU countries).

The members agreed that first steps should be taken as follows:

Network
- to define ways of a formal operating of the network
- to review the statement of the network
- to describe the history of the network
- to review short descriptions of all members portals
- to prepare some questions for editors (politics, langugae, finances) in order to get similar descriptions of cultural portals
- to research culture on-line in BiH, Montenegro, Macedonia in order to detect possible new partners/members

The blog
- to start working on the inSEEcp blog
- to prepare links to network members
- to provide a domain for the blog
- to start organizing different contents for the blog (e.g. rubrics for cultural policies) and to search for interesting themes for the articles
- to prepare an article / editorial comment from the perspective of language (which language is used by different cultural portal) in the light of promoting multilingualism in Europe

Fundraising
- to prepare a project proposal for the ECF open call, deadline April 1, 2008

B. Meeting of the CCP Network during the Slovene EU Presidency

Mateja Lazar (responsible for the CCP SLO) presented the program of the CCP meeting (to be held in Ljubljana on June 12-14) including also a public conference dealing with the subject of networking in the cultural sector with a special emphasis on cultural cooperation between the EU and SEE region. This public event will be organized as a moderated discussion with guest speakers and panelists, aamong them two representatives of the Informal SEE Network of Cultural Portals.

Re-network!
International conference on networking in the cultural sector and stimulating transnational cooperation and free flow of information

In the light of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008 (EYID), the meeting will focus on intercultural dialogue between the EU and South East Europe (SEE). The SEE region is an integral part of the Slovene orientation not only due to its historical and geographical links but also especially in the light of further enlargements of the European Union. On practical level, the meeting will be structured around the topic of fostering the networking and information flow between different arts and culture stakeholders in the EU and SEE region.

The international conference entitled Re-network! will be dedicated to the topic of networking seen as an indispensable prerequisite stimulating free flow of information and transnational cultural cooperation. Networking in arts and culture has had a long tradition in Europe and there is hardly any professional organisation that is not a member of at least one international network. However, networks as well are facing radical changes affecting cultural industries: new technologies enabling free flow of works and information, audience being transformed into active users… It seems that the only problem to be solved remains free flow of persons, i.e. transnational mobility of people working in the cultural sector.

With the special emphasis put on the intercultural dialogue between the EU and SEE the conference’s aim is to find out how “old” and “new” cultural networks respond to these circumstances and how they manage the problem of free flow of information especially if relevant to transnational cooperation.

The conference (public panel) will focus on the political and cultural context of developing and enabling cultural networks as a link between local, national and international cultural milieu.



(Text by Dusan Dovc: SCCA-Ljubljana / Evrokultura)