inSEEcp on Conference: A Network of Possible Paths

The representatives of inSEEcp - Informal Network of South-East European Cultural Portals - are among the participants in the panel discussion "A Network of Possible Paths", organized on September 19 in Belgrade by Cultural Point Office / CCP Serbia, Ministry of Culture and Information Society, in cooperation with Bitef, and dedicated to the topic of importance of networking in culture and gathering around common goals.

Dušan Dovč will present - inSEEcp, and Vesna Milosavljević will talk about SEEcult.org, networking and cultural portals in the region. Dušan Dovč is a member of editorial of cultural portal Artservis.org (SCCA-Ljubljana), and Vesna Milosavljević is editor of Portal for South-East European Culture SEEcult.org. Both portals are founding members of inSEEcp.

Participants in the panel–discussion are also the representatives of regional CCP offices well as representatives of European formal and informal networks such are: NEMO, Clubture, IETM, TEH , Culture Action Europe, Europa Nostra, Lab for culture, Independent cultural association, Executive agency EACEA, DGEAC/European commision.

The chosen topics for the panel discussion should help explain that the strategy of networking and cooperation between public and private sector represents a very efficient way not only of bridging the gap between the two, which still exists in most countries in Southeastern Europe, but also of overcoming the numerous problems and shortcomings regarding infrastructure (lack of space, equipment, technical tools…), human resources (lack of trained staff for new professions, lack of certain skills, use of common resources…), lack of partners and contacts, lack of communication with the government, lack of contacts with international financiers, the problem of not meeting contests’ criteria, etc. Although the presentations are aimed at general networking issues, they also analyze current trends and praxes through several case studies from Europe; they pose the question of the necessity for initiating an independent cultural network, the current state of networks, key agents, and prevailing approaches and challenges, through some of the topics: Presenting European Cultural Networks and Informal Initiatives to Professionals and to General Public; Why Do We Need Networks; Managing Networks and Participating In Them; Accessibility, Transparency and Sustainability of Networks; Gaining Acceptance and Status; Evaluation and Efficiency of Networks; Importance and Advantages of International Networks in the Field of Art; The Role of Networks in Development and Culture / Partnership and Networking as A Strategy; Networking as A Strategy For Overcoming Problems and Deficiencies in Infrastructure and Human Resources, As A Means for Creating Partnerships and Establishing Contacts, for Communicating with the Government, with International Financiers… Therefore, the discussion aims not only at exploring the issue of networking in culture but at emphasizing some concrete examples of cooperation, that give practical results valuable to culture workers and beneficial to the cultural and social community as a whole.

Find out detailed program HERE

inSEEcp - PRIMER NEFORMALNEGA POVEZOVANJA (Slovenian)

Mreža kulturnih portalov inSEEcp povezuje uredništva kulturnih portalov in vzpodbuja mednarodno kulturno sodelovanje. Mreža je rezultat delavnic in on-line aktivnosti, ki so se začele odvijati leta 2006 v Beogradu v organizaciji portala SEEcult.org in Goethe-instituta Beograd ter s podoro Pakta za stabilnost. Prva delavnica je izpostavila temo Kultura na internetu, druga leta 2007 pa temo Mreženje in sodelovanje kulturnih portalov v regiji SEE. Prva javna predstavitev mreže je bila leta 2008 v Ljubljani na mednarodni konferenci Re-Network!, ki je potekala v okviru srečanja evropskih Kulturnih stičnih točk in v organizaciji Kulturne stične točke Slovenija.

Mreža inSEEcp je danes neformalno združenje, ki povezuje portale: Zagreb: www.culturenet.hr, www.kulturpunkt.hr, www.culturelink.hr, www.knjiga.hr, www.teatar.hr; Banja Luka: www.kulporter.com; Beograd: www.seecult.org; Skopje: www.culture.in.mk, www.plagij.at; Podgorica: pro-story.org; www.startmontenegro.com; Priština: www.stacion.org; Ljubljana: www.artservis.org, www.evrokultura.org, www.radiostudent.si.

Danes se med portali vzpostavljajo sinergični učinki izmenjave informacij in skupnih projektov. Štirje člani so samostojno že izvedli projekt, podprt s strani Evropske kulturne fundacije: Let's Talk Critic Art (2009-2010). O kritičnih aspektih sodobne umetnosti (okrogle mize, intervjuji, teksti). Partnerstvo so oblikovali: SEEcult.org (Srbija), SCCA, Zavod za sodobno umetnost - Ljubljana/Artservis (Slovenija), Kulturpunkt (Hrvaška) in Forum Skopje (Makedonija). Pravkar pa poteka projekt dveh portalov in partnerskih organizacij, podprt s strani programa Kultura EU: Criticize this! Kritična diskuija o sodobni umetnosti. Partnerstvo sestavljajo: Kulturtreger in Kurziv iz Zagreba, KPZ Beton in SEEcult.org iz Beograda in Plima iz Ulcinja.

Mreža kulturnih portalov je tako tudi mreža kulturne produkcije, organizacij in umetnikov v vseh glavnih mestih, od Podgorice do Ljubljane.

Criticize This!

inSEEcp's members Kurziv from Zagreb (Croatia) and SEEcult.org from Belgrade (Serbia) started a new project Criticize this!, designed with three more partners from the region - Kulturtreger from Zagreb, KPZ Beton from Belgrade, and Plima from Ulcinj (Montenegro). The general aim of the project Criticize this! is to initiate a Europe wide discussion on the significance of contemporary art in enhancement of the common cultural space achieved by affirmation of critical reflection on art. The project is funded through the programme Culture 2007-2013 of the European Union.

Project description

After years of deliberate nation building narratives in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro in which state supported art was particularly instrumental, some national myths have informed the society at large. Mainstream contemporary art in these countries still very often reflects this sentiment, openly promoting prejudiced stereotypes and justifying national ideologies or political agendas. Simultaneously, these countries have witnessed a significant decrease in critical reflection on contemporary art. Since mainstream media treat culture as entertainment, it is almost impossible to publicly discuss issues such as nationalism or chauvinism in art. Art criticism has dwindled down to occasional specialized magazines catering for a very narrow and mostly academic audience. Proper newspaper art reviews have virtually disappeared.

Having this in mind, this project is conceived as widening the public space for critical discussion on contemporary art. This is of particular importance at this specific moment considering the European Union prospects of these countries, their connection to European common cultural space and adoption of European values of tolerance, participation, intercultural dialogue and inclusion. Criticism of contemporary art contributes to this dialogue inasmuch as it reveals the way in which contemporary art (de)constructs nationalistic myths, national identities and images of the other as well as the ways contemporary art deals with neuralgic and traumatic points of societies.

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Project aims

The general aim of the projects is to initiate a Europe wide discussion on the significance of contemporary art in enhancement of the common cultural space achieved by affirmation of critical reflection on art.

Specific objectives of the project are:

1. To create trans-national critical discourse on art in order to contribute to intercultural dialogue;

2. To facilitate the dialogue between artists and audiences by recreating the common cultural space;

3. To promote European values, particularly intercultural dialogue, inclusion and participation, by means of increasing their visibility in online and print media.

The project is defined by three main themes: dealing with the past, social transformation and identity. art criticism will be particularly focused on the way contemporary art treats: the past (emergence of new states, nationalism, chauvinism); social change (change of cultural framework, new economic system, decrease of public space, consumerism, censorship, freedom of speech); identity ((re)inventing national identity, building European identity, models of inclusion/exclusion of minority groups).

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Project structure

The project will focus on visual arts, performing arts and literature produced in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro in recent years. Art reviews will be produced during three Art Modules. There will be 11 participants (young art critics) per Art Module from all these countries selected based on their applications.

The Art Modules will be organized in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia and they will host prominent thinkers from the region, Europe and the world. The first part of each art module is a three-day initial event which will include: workshops for young art critics, public lectures given by international lecturers and a public discussion on the topic of building democratic and open society.

The second stage of each Art Module consists of writing essays on a predefined subject. Writing essays will be preceded by researches which will be conducted in all countries of the project (consulting archives, visiting events, interviewing artists etc.). Selected art reviews will be published simultaneously on the project web site and partner’ web portals, in daily and weekly newspapers in these countries and in other electronic media. Best art critics will be awarded a prize at the end of the project.

Find out more on the project's Criticize this! web site http://www.criticizethis.org

LTCA Publication on Critical Art Presented in Belgrade

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, was presented on April 11 at 7 pm at the Art Center of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade.


Among the participants were Dea Vidovic (Kulturpunkt – Zagreb), Miha Colner (SCCA-Ljubljana – Ljubljana), Ivan Mirkovski (Forum Skopje – Skopje), and Vesna Tasic and Vesna Milosavljevic (SEEcult.org – Belgrade).

Promotion of this multilingual publication was followed by presentation of Belgrade based artists Saša Stojanović/Ana Vilenica and Nikola Pilipović (Manik with Marija Vauda).

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).

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 LTCA project is 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.

E-book ‘Art in Critical Confrontation to Society’ launched!

The electronic book made within the framework of the international project ‘Let’s Talk Critic Arts’ entitled ‘From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010)’ has been launched. The book is free and could be downloaded from Let’s Talk Critic Arts blog.

Download the electronic version of the book HERE – 52MB (just click Save As when pressing your right mouse button)


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, was presented on April 11 at 7 pm at the Art Center of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade.

Promotion of this multilingual publication was followed by public interviews with Belgrade based artists Saša Stojanović/Ana Vilenica and Manik (Marija Vauda/Nikola Pilipović).

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 is 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.

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.