What can culture do for the development of South East Europe?
At the beginning of this month (Dec. 1999) there was a meeting of artists,
publishers, media and promotors in Sarajevo with the question 'What can
culture do for the development of South East Europe?' Unfortunalety POO
got the invitation several days after the meeting happenened (how
typical).
We got some reports though and the meeting was above all theoretical in
which the example of NorthRhein Westfalen, which changed from an area
with heavy industries to an area where culture and media became the
biggest industry, was mentioned. Theory because in my point of view this
example is not connected with this region at all; most young artists
left the country, there is no money and no middleclass to support free
marked economy culture and politicians are not prepared to support free
culture. Their main focus is the very limited spectrum of state
controlled culture, often connected with nationalistic ideology or an
anarchonistic understanding of arts.
So what brought this meeting? There was a statement of Melentie
Pandolovski, a art historian from Skopje, who said that arts should be
supported through the NGO's still active in this region.
Also agreement was found easily on the statement that young artists,
specially musicians, continued to maintain bordercrossing activities
throughout the years. But these groups often come from the underground
scene and therefor never got supported by local authorities and seldom
by international organizations.
Also a workgroup was established with the intention to connect all
artists in the Balkan region.
This group (Balkan Arts Network) made
their own webpages which you can see at at http://zayak.scca.org.mk/ban
The Sarajevo branch could be found at http://www.soros.org.ba/scca