[spectre] Fwd: Biennales of Eastern Europe unite and outline the future of their collaboration

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Betreff: Biennales of Eastern Europe unite and outline the future of 
their collaboration
Datum: 	Mon, 09 Nov 2020 17:01:12 +0000

			
November 09, 2020 	

East Europe Biennial Alliance

Biennales of Eastern Europe unite and outline the future of their 
collaboration

Biennale Matter of Art Prague, Biennale Warszawa, Kyiv Biennial, and 
OFF-Biennale Budapest

https://eeba.art

The East Europe Biennial Alliance (EEBA) is comprised of the Biennale 
Matter of Art Prague, Biennale Warszawa, Kyiv Biennial, and OFF-Biennale 
Budapest. It was established in 2019 to shape new forms of international 
solidarity, expand socio-political imagination, and develop alternative 
cultural strategies. By connecting aesthetics and politics in a 
strategic manner, the Biennial Alliance aims to propose a new narrative 
of the Eastern European region and redefine the way cultural 
institutions collaborate.

The Alliance is the first network of its kind, bringing together 
multiple biennales in order to develop a shared vision and engaging in 
regional collaboration resulting in cross-border meetings and public 
events as well as working on a common agenda for the years to come. It 
attempts to rethink the biennale format as a committed institutional 
practice working with contemporary art practitioners from around the 
world. The Alliance’s envisions its activities as being conceived and 
carried out jointly. The Alliance is organized so as to lay the 
foundations for a network of both (infra)structural and thematic support 
with the possibility of expanding its membership in the future by 
including other biennales and similar initiatives in the region.

The desire to collaborate stems from a common way of thinking with 
regard to the biennale format—for all of the members it is a tool to 
intervene critically in the public space, taking a form which is to be 
re-defined by the practices of the socially engaged institutions that 
are embedded in and have grown from their respective cultural scenes.

On September 18, 2020, the Alliance organized the symposium Culture at 
the Crossroads: What Collaboration Do We Want in Eastern Europe? 
Streamed live, the event offered insights into the challenges each of 
the founding members are facing and outlined possible futures for 
trans-border collaboration within EEBA and beyond. This symposium took 
place within the framework of the first edition of the biennale Matter 
of Art in Prague and was held online due to complications related to the 
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A complete recording of the event is 
available online: https://vimeo.com/464891317

The creation of this kind of international inter-biennale alliance sets 
an important institutional precedent as a contraposition in culture to 
the ideological trends that define, in particular, the political state 
of affairs in Eastern Europe. Over the last decade, this region has 
become a battleground for proxy wars and has borne witness to the rise 
of authoritarian right-wing populism. Consequently, the Alliance mirrors 
the wider dynamics of the Eastern European region, where state policies 
are often in conflict with city governments as well as cultural 
institutions, and where international cooperation on various levels has 
become key for survival. The hardening of borders, the narrowing of 
public space, and the vulnerability of the civil sphere all contribute 
to the political context in which this association of biennales 
represents the creative power of a self-critical institution employing 
the biennale as an artistic tool for political emancipation.

Follow and find out more about the East Europe Biennial Alliance on its 
website: https://eeba.art

	
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