The Culture Lobby is a long-term collaborative project, aimed at creating a participatory, ‘active archive’ of cultural memory in the Western Balkans. The archive consists of photographic, audio and textual material, and is based on an open process of communication with citizens of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, and their vision of transformations following the process of their countries joining the EU.
The results of the artistic research and collaborative work on the project are brought together in the form of an open Internet archive (http://www.theculturelobby.com), a publication, and a series of exhibitions in capitals of the region, launched with an exhibition in Belgrade, in May this year. The exhibition in Galerija Miroslav Kraljević will present a selection from the rich archive of photographs, audio and textual records, while the very methodology of the project – involving ‘art as (ethnographic) research’ and ‘the author as producer’ – will be the topic of the debate that is to take place on 7 October 2010, at 6 pm, involving Croatian artists who partipated in the project, Nives Sertić i Nebojša Sljepčević, together with other invited guests.
Authors of the project: Cindy Blažević & Pascal Paquette
Participating artists: Ana Adamović, Cindy Blažević, Aleksandar Grozdanovski, Armand Habazaj, Astrit Ibrahimi, Amer Kapetanovic, Imrana Kapetanovic, Dorijan Kolundzija, Duško Miljanić, Atdhe Mulla, Pascal Paquette, Lazar Pejović, Leonard Qylafi, Nives Sertić, Nebojša Slijepčević, Ryan Taylor, Lupćo Temelkovski
Curators: Milica Pekić (KIOSK, Beograd), in collaboration with: Ivana Bago (Galerija Miroslav Kraljević, Zagreb), Julia Farrington (Index on Censorship, London), Asja Hafner (SCCA-Sarajevo), Biljana Isijanin (Elementi, Bitola), Alketa Kurrizo (Tirana), Dren Maliqi (Prishtina), Svetlana Sošić (ProStory, Podgorica), Valbona Shujaku (LAB, Priština).
The Culture Lobby project is realized within the British Council\’s Creative Collaboration program and in partnership with Fund for Open Society, the European Cultural Foundation, Balkan Trust for Democracy, the European Fund for the Balkans, the City of Belgrade, Swiss Cultural Program and the Ontario Arts Council.
