Exit Europe – New Geographies of Culture

EXIT EUROPE – New Geographies of Culture

12-15 November 2009, Zagreb

Community Center Kino Mosor, Zvonimirova 63 (view on map)

Exit Europe is an international conference focusing on European cultural polices, with a particular emphasis on new cultural practices in the former Yugoslav countries and a critical reassessment of the EU enlargement process from the perspective of emerging political and social geographies.

In the wake of the breakdown of the Cold War divide and of the collapse of state socialism, the entry into the European Union appeared as an exit strategy for Eastern Europe countries. Entire societies were dominated by this uniform, homogeneous geography of mass-mobilization whereby the East would become the West. However, a transformation of a far greater magnitude was unfolding on a global scale: reordering of the national and the transnational and redrawing of the borders between the public and the private. New heterogeneous geographies shaped by this twofold transformation have made that easy exit improbable and rendered inherited concepts ineffective, challenging culture to create a new critical imagery to account for these changes.

The aim of the conference is to provide critical reassessment of these developments and understanding how cultural and foreign policies of the European Union can be steered to support emerging cultural practices and to enhance cooperation, rather than to reinforce the barriers in the region.

We invite you to take part in four days of insightful talks, intensive discussions, info and work sessions that will bring together a variety of prominent actors from across the region and Europe: Dubravka Ugrešić, Mark Terkessidis, Želimir Žilnik, Vladimir Gligorov, Ugo Vlaisavljević, Nina Obuljen, Pascal Brunet, Chris Torch and many others.

Your input matters.

The Exit Europe conference is organised by three advocacy networks working on three different levels: the local (Alliance for Center), the national / regional (Clubture Network and its Regional Initiative) and the European (Culture Action Europe)