We are building a collection of references that can serve as a resources for cultural and political actors seeking to implement European values though culture in their place – region, town, neighbourhood.
The collections is structured in four categories:
– Artworks 
– Artists 
– Exhibitions and festivals 
– Cultural initiatives 
This collection is open-ended and should expand over time. It will be reflected by the participants of the platform along its development through the forum.
Exhibition: Becoming Europe and Beyond
Category: Art Project
Date: KW Berlin, 2005, Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, 2007
Initiator: Ursula Biemann with Angela Melitopulous, Lisa Parks, Anselm Franke
Partners: Federal Cultural Foundation, Institute for Art and Design Theory, HGKZ Zurich
Description: B-ZONE is a territorial research and collaborative art project about the territory that will almost be part of the European Union: the transitory geographies of Southeastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey to the Caucasus. Beyond the accumulation of information and facts from field research, the projects intertwine the production and meaning of subjective and collective perceptual spaces and representations with the “silent” language of infrastructure, questioning the democratic nature of the ideology of capitalist integration, considered progressive since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and having the status of historical necessity.
The project, which makes itself perceptible in exhibition, catalog and collective research platform, is a good example of how artistic research, collaborative and on the edge of perception and society, can function. An essential part is that also a working platform has been created (online video editingplatform) to share the research resources. It is also important that classical art institutions give access to topics that are difficult to perceive, such as infrastructures and their local and far-reaching effects.
Cafebabel.com, the European online magazine
Category: trans-European initiative of citizen journalists for a European public sphere,
since 2001. Transformation to a European media outlet since 2019.
Description: Cafébabel is the first multilingual participatory magazine by and for young people in Europe. Our stories revolutionize the image of Europe in the media and show what Europe is in real life. The online magazine is a unique platform on which a network of volunteer writers, translators, filmmakers, and photographers work together to report on the everyday life of young Europeans. What started as an online agora where young Europeans could share their ideas, has gradually transformed into a professional, multilingual European magazine.
Projects:
https://blueborder.cafebabel.com
https://borderline.cafebabel.com
https://beyond91.cafebabel.com
Comment: Cafébabel is a genuine attempt to create a European public sphere,
that goes beyond the national perspective - and from the point of view of young people. The institutional perspective of the EU, which is mainly reported on, was complemented by young opinions and ideas about Europe, including everyday problems and phenomena. Individual cross-border journalism projects also brought about the experience of self efficacy through one’s own European experience.
europefiction
#theatre, #performance, #sustainability, #selfempowerment, #reflectingeurope, #eyelevel
Partners
Consol Theater Gelsenkirchen Germany, Agora Theater St. Vith Belgium, theaterkohlenpott Herne Germany,Exquorum Evora Portugal, Helios Theater Hamm Germany, Kolibri Theater Budapest Hungary, Schauspielhaus Bochum Germany, Theater Rotterdam Netherlands, KJT Dortmund Germany, La Transplanisphère Paris France
Description
Europefiction is a theatre based network of 10 partners from all over Europe. The coworking of around 120 youngsters and around 20 artists from different disciplines consists different varieties. Groups working each on one European topic for one year. In summercamps in Germany all participants meet up, present their performances, reflect on topics and widen up their artistical horizons in workshops.
For a dissimenation of a good practice methodology the institutions developed the europefiction academy. The project is running till 2024 and started during the European Capital of Culture in 2009.
Website: https://europefiction.org
Comment: Ten theatres for young audience admit their responsibility for an European future and they trust in the power of change with artistical development. They empower young European citizens to codesign reflective and progressive productiona in performing arts including the contemporary disciplines and involving urban spaces. Almost casually, forms and necessities of living together are democratically negotiated and organised.
Artwork (Sculptor Street/ Events / Symposium):« Friedens- und Leuchtturm der sieben Künste » (1936) (Tower of Peace and Lighthouse of the seven Arts)
Initiator / Artist: Otto Freundlich (1878-1943) – based on his clay model „Friedens- u- Leuchtturm der sieben Künste“ (Peace- and Lighthouse of the seven arts) developed in continuation of different generations by contemporary sculptors (see contributors)
Contributors:
Leo Kornbrust (1929-2021) and Paul Schneider (1927-2021)
Rudolf Kaltenbach and Silvia Fohrer a.o.
Partners of the following developement:
Place, Date:
Europewide, since 1936 until nowadays
Description
At the crossing/intersection (in Auvers-sur-Oise) of two people-uniting sculpture-roads across Europe, the “Road of Fraternity” (French original title: “Une voie de la fraternité et une voie solidarité humaine en souvenir de la libération” (from north to south, from the English Channel to the Pyrenees) in honour of Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh, who is buried in Auvers-sur-Oise) and another road from west to east, i.e. from Normandy via Normandy to the Pyrenees. i.e. from Normandy via Paris to Moscow (realised to date: via Luxembourg, St.Wedel, Frankfurt, Salzgitter, Helmstedt, Berlin, Poland <with Otto Freundlich’s place of birth and death>, Vienna, Kiev to Moscow) the “Road of Human Solidarity in Memory of Liberation”).
Keywords/Topics: # coworking, #transeuropean Initiatives /Projects
Heritage, international Cooperation, Platform/Symposium, Visual Arts
Links
Otto Freundlich – Wikipedia (25.07.2022)
http://www.leokornbrust.de/downs/flyer_web_deu_2013_2.pdf (25.07.2022)
Leo Kornbrust – Wikipedia (25.07.2022)
Straße der Skulpturen (St. Wendel) – Wikipedia (25.07.2022)
Comment
This concept was developed during Otto Freundlich’s exile in France as a visible rejection of war and human violence and for the peaceful coexistence of different nations. Reason enough for ‘glocally’ engaged art projects of this kind, also prophylactically always ‘necessary’! (Link: See also “ruta de la amistad" 1968 by Mathias Goeritz)
Artwork/Highway Sculptures (Result of an international sculpture meeting, combined length 17 km): « ruta de la amistad » (Street of Friendship)
Place, Date: South of Mexico City, 1968
Initiator / Artist: Mathias Goeritz (1915-1990)
Contributor:
International sculptor meeting (18 artists from 16 countries / “Olympics of Culture” on the occasion of the 19th Olympic Games in Mexico 1968
Alexander Calder /USA, Mathias Goeritz/Mexico, Germán Cueto/Mexico, Ángela Gurría/Mexico, Willi Gutmann/Swiss, Miloslav Chlupáč / czechoslovakia**, Kioshi Takahashi**/Japan, Pierre Székely/Hungary, Gonzalo Fonseca/Uruguay, Costantina Nivola/Italien, Jasques Moeschal/Belgium, Todd Williams/USA, Grzegorz Krowalski/Poland, Josep Maria Subirachs/Spain, Clement Meadmore/Australia, Herbert Bayer/Austria, Joop Beljon/Netherlands, Itzhak Danziger/Israel, Olivier Seguin/France, Mohamed Melehi/Morocco, Helen Escobedo/Mexico, Jorge Dubón/Mexico
Goeritz was commissioned with this project by the architect Pedro Ramírez Vázques of the Mexican Olympic Organising Committee prior to its execution in 1967 and 1968.
Partners
Mexican Olympic Organisation Committee
Description
A special feature of the works united there to this day along a 17-kilometre stretch of motorway was to offer changing aesthetic structures/shapeshifts to the passing viewers in their vehicles, quasi kinetic art through the mobility of rapidly passing passers-by as an expression of a then still unchecked belief in progress - until this was also critically questioned in Mexico, not least through student rebellion.
Keywords: #coworking, #Kinetic Art, #Art&Research
Links:
Mathias Goeritz – Wikipedia (25.07.2022)
Ruta de la Amistad – Wikipedia (25.07.2022)
Comment:
O. Freundlich’s Sculpture Streets for Fraternity and Solidarity in Europe was a model here, too, but for a world event of international sports stars. Understanding integration as an artistic task, to develop aesthetically stimulating, innovative solutions from new kinds of living realities, could help to shape urgent transformation in a way that is fit for the future - the guiding principle: Europe’s own, specifically new impulses emanate from it, as an indispensable partner in the Earth community.
EIPCP.net
European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies
Category: Cultural Initiative
Date: 2002-2018, now continues as transversal.at
Initiator: Christoph Brunner, Boris Buden, Lina Dokuzović, Andrea Hummer, Bernhard Hummer, Therese Kaufmann , Niki Kubaczek, Brigitta Kuster, Isabell Lorey, Birgit Mennel , Raimund Minichbauer, Monika Mokre, Kelly Mulvaney, Radostina Patulova , Gerald Raunig , Ruth Sonderegger
Partners: Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria, Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien, Wissenschafts- und Forschungsförderung, and co-funded by Creative Europe programme of the European Union
Full List of cooperations: cooperation | eipcp.net
Description: EIPCP is a transnational research and cultural project led by philosophers, researchers, cultural activists and artists. It developed actively a multilingual research space and discourse anticipating what European cultural policies encompasses for theoretical questions and cultural practices. Through a very large network of activities and cooperations in different countries and with many institutions, the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies set up a substantial ground research (Grundlage), like a.o. the European Cultural Policies (Lind, Minichbauer, eds., 2005).
The EIPCP started with the project REPUBLICART (2002-2005) and continued with Transform (2005-2008), both co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
Link: eipcp.net
Contact: contact@eipcp.net
The institute achieved over the years an impressive organically grown network of institutions, researchers and events. The institute also tested many further formats, like for example a trans-european master for research-based art and activism.
Its legacy is a huge archive of research resources about how the think a European culture, or better said European cultural practises. At its heart lies a deep attachment to Europe’s multilinguality, or rather heterolinguality.
I personnally love the fact that a vast majority of the texts are available in two or three languages.
Dance-Theater (Duration: 45 Min.)
Titel «enSUITE »
Place, Date: La Moissie, Dordogne, Frankreich 2021
Initiator / Artist:
Mareike Franz (Dance/Performance / Choreografie)
Contributor
creation, choreography and dance: Mareike Franz
violoncello: Cédric Leprévost
music: J.S. Bach
Description
This performance combines modern dance / expressive dance with mime and clowning in high quality - both for the simplest performance practice outdoors (nature / urban space) and for professional stages, theatre festivals and other events. Her art, even as a soloist, is elementarily dialogue-oriented, lives from the poetry of contrasting forces, such as stillness and movement, play and seriousness. She can move emotionally, to stimulate thoughtfulness as well as to trigger liberating laughter.
Keywords/topics:
#coworking, dance + music, dance-theater, solodance
Links (max. 5) Pictures (min 800x600dpi):
enSUITE on Vimeo (25.07.2022)
enSUITE - Mareike Franz (08.08.2022)
Comment
Precisely unfolding language of movement shows authentic as well as exemplary expression across borders of complementary as well as encouraging communication, which also fulfils itself elementarily as magical ‘circling’ (EU star banner: spraying sparks in the blue universe of unifying possibilities - also readable as a continually striving “culture of togetherness”) and, if possible, constantly triggers renewal, evolutionary qualities - a perpetuum mobile, the eternal flywheel of all living nature.
Category: Participative Artwork / Workshop
Date: 2016 – ongoing
Initiator: Stine Marie Jacobsen
Partners: Nuuk Art Museum, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Danish Foremanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, Flat Time House (London UK), Galerie Wedding (collaboration with Nastaran Tajeri-Foumani from the German street work organization Gangway and Aktion Mensch, and Bilal Alkatout, a lawyer specialized in migration)
Description: Law is not justice! How can a participatory art project establish alternative knowledge and notions of civil agency within the law? Law Shifters (2016-) ignites civil agency within the law by inviting citizens, refugees, immigrants, children and teenagers to rejudge real court cases and to write their own laws. Without being burdened by legal terminology, young people discuss their own perspectives on current laws and write their own legislative proposals. Without changing their content, a professional lawyer then translates these into standard legal language. The young people experience how legal language is a writing style, which can be decoded just like a poem. (excerpt from stinemariejacobsen.com/law-shifters/ )
Link:
Listen to a Law Shifters interview here about french immigration laws and the EU right to initiative for the exhibition A World Not Ours (2017) curated by Katerina Gregos at la Kunsthalle Mulhouse (French/English speakers).
law-shifters.eu
stinemariejacobsen.com/law-shifters/
Contact and booking a workshop: contact@direct-approach.org
Comment: This project is for me a perfect example that gives people agency through artistic means. The state of law is one of Europe’s most precious values and achievement. This workshop allows to understand it playfully and enter its mechanics, while at the same time opening the process of translating new demands into the legal language, thus engaging bottom-up movements.
People Love Spaces
Platform collection of grassroot initiatives throught Europe
Category: citizens participation
Initiator: journalist and cultural manager Maxim Silva Vega
The platform peoplelovespaces.net is a collection of private initiatives that focus on the interaction between citizens and the public space around them. The grassroot projects, local activities, initiatives of residents from across Europe deal with local cultural heritage, sustainable businesses, transnational artistic projects. They show the creativity of local communities when it comes to improving the place around them.
Comment: The platform provides best practice examples and inspirational ideas for each one of us when it comes to improve the public space that surrounds us.
