..DAVOR MIŠKOVIĆ

The blue Adriatic ripples....
Davor Mišković

It is often noted that most (more than 50%) of Croatia's cultural infrastructure is located in the capital, i.e. in Zagreb. This then leads to the conclusion that the cultural system needs to become decentralized. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that this is not something that can be corrected with reasonable cultural politics. Cultural production is, as a rule, closely tied to economy - where there's money, there's music. Consequently, in order to decentralize cultural politics one must decentralize the whole country. The question is who is the one to do it? It has long been accepted that Croatian politics lacks vision, no reference is made to the future except for the purpose of immediate protection of a lifestyle and the preservation of the status quo. This leaves practically no room for expectations. Looking at the state of Croatian politics, our cultural policy is remarkable.

Beyond centralization

The remainder of the cultural infrastructure that is not located in Zagreb, is mainly scattered around bigger cities that are located on the Adriatic coast. These include: Split, Rijeka, Zadar, Pula, Dubrovnik, Šibenik and many small towns These coastal cities have a huge comparative advantage over cities in other parts of Croatia and the Balkans - they have the sea. This sets them apart from the usual meaning of a province. The coastal cities may be a periphery, but they are a periphery on the coast. Still, people living in these cities are there because: they did not succeed in the centre, they are not ambitious enough to leave, they are or they feel trapped in some way or they just cannot live without the sea. They represent a pathological element of coastal cities and their culture; since the resulting combination of frustration, ignorance, non-conformity and lack of will additionally burdens the periphery and diminishes their potential. A grey cloud floats above the periphery and the people who are trying to change this usually try to do so by inviting opera divas or famous actors or musicians, whose glamour would override the grey clouds even in these depressing social environments. That is why, in terms of cultural events, these cities prefer festivals and biennales - they are the generators of activity that sometimes manage to attract a celebrity or two. Since the cultural makeup of the inhabitants is disappointing, this tactic of attracting celebrities becomes uncertain and is consequently replaced by attracting anyone who remotely fits the description of a celebrity, usually an entertainer or a celebrity past her or his prime.
Personally, I'm not against these strategies, because they are still the result of a belief in cultural activity, of an attempt to incorporate distorted social values into the hierarchy of cultural values. In a strange way these strategies are romantic. The source of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the organizers of these events is that they are not aware of their own inability - inability to defend the theatre with Severina (a very popular singer and entertainer), for example. The irony is that the same people who introduced Severina to the theatre are now appalled by the election of Duško Mucalo (a popular folk entertainer) to the position of Split's theatre manager. It is absurd, because it would be logical to expect that Duško Mucalo could transform the theatre into an entertainment business much better than a theatrologist or a dramatist.
The generation of activity at festivals is vital for the comprehension of cultural activity on the coast. The generation of activity in terms of space means accumulating people, content, money and infrastructure in fewer cities, which are becoming bigger and bigger, thus expanding the periphery - that is characterized by a low quality social context and poor infrastructure. As the places that can be defined as a periphery grow, so grows the power of the centre in terms of space and culture, and the work in the cultural department in the periphery becomes automated. And it does so because cultural expectations are formed solely in the urban centre and cultural expectations in the periphery are always a copy of that centre.
That is why it is vital, for us at the periphery to follow the events in the urban centre, and then to use our key resources - the sun and the sea. The biggest festivals with most prominent names mostly take place in the summer, by the sea and under the sun. Summer is the best season to attract celebrities. Culture is consumed between sunbathing and a night out, offered as a tourist attraction and turned into kitsch. At these festivals (from Dubrovnik Summer Festival to Motovun Film Festival) art is exhausted in representation and consummation. This type of art does not need a subject or a social context; it exists solely on the account of the sea and the sun. However, during the summer, from Umag to Prevlaka (the furthest N and S points on the Croatian coast), different cultural programmes are also created, manifestations that blend in with context - cultural products that carry a message, products that need a subject.
How to differentiate one from the other? What makes some festivals valued and others not? Can these events and manifestations be valued by cultural criteria or only by attendance rate and consumption? How can we define any criteria, when square metres and minutes of media coverage determine the value of a certain event? Are journalists and editors, usually regarded by cultural workers as uneducated and/or corrupt, the real judges of quality? The criterion that I would like to point out seems abstract but still perceptible and understandable. Specifically, the logic behind events today is that they cease to be representative; they do not stand for anything. The event is simply present, it exists, it offers meanings - not meanings that can be read, but meanings through which we drift. These meanings are not something outside our reality; they are part of our reality that is interwoven with all other meaning. That is precisely why the totality of meaning - all that comprises an event - becomes relevant, especially to the public. If a cinema offers popcorn or not becomes as much an important element in the interpretation of an event as does the film itself. This means that the criterion is the totality of meaning produced by an event. Everything becomes important, not just the play, the film or the music played.
Today there are five or six places on the Adriatic coast that can easily be regarded as products of local individuals, where the location of the event represents the problem and not just the set. Products where the art programme is relevant locally as well as globally. Products that are results of cultural work, which are not merely pieces in the jigsaw of tourist offerings . These places are: Pula with Dr. Inat and PUF (Pula Alternative Festival); Zadar with Dance & Non-Verbal Theatre Festival San Vincenti and the International Festival of Contemporary Theatre 'Zadar Snova'; Dubrovnik with Art Workshop Lazareti and Scena Karantena; Split with Dopust (Days of Open Performance) and Rijeka with Drugo More and ZOOM Festival. What distinguishes these places is their strong cooperation with cultural centres of production, namely Ljubljana and Zagreb. The great potential of these places is the possibility to collaborate with other centres like Belgrade, Bucharest and Vienna. These collaborations create strong international networks that produce locally relevant meanings. Without such collaborations from different cultural centres, these coastal cities are unable to create relevant art programmes, and the only thing that enables the collaboration is the Adriatic Sea. If we compare the Adriatic periphery with the periphery in Slovenia, Serbia or Hungary, we soon realize that the Adriatic periphery is by far the richest, culturally. So the blue Adriatic Sea is the differentia specifica for these cities.

Theatre Dr. INAT (Dr. Spite) was founded in 1984 as a result of a need to establish an independent theatre scene in Pula. The founders were the director Branko Sušac and a group of young people. Numerous artists, producers and technicians, who are the core of the cultural life in Istria, emerged from this theatre.
The international theatre festival PUF was founded in 1994 in collaboration with theatres "Dr. Inat", Pula; "Lero”, Zagreb; "Daska”, Sisak and "Pinklec", Čakovec. PUF was born as a direct comment on the Croatian theatre reality, as a reaction to the disregard of non-institutional theatres as well as to the strict division between the professional and the amateur-theatre. Through its activities the festival established different poetics, it seeks new theatre directions and rallies artists and spectators round the idea of theatre.
A particularly interesting part of the festival is the project "Anno Domini." Each year a different director, local or guest, is invited to comment artistic, political and social ramblings, which marked the present year season. This practice has produced some legendary plays.

The Art Workshop Lazareti (ARL) was established in 1988 as an art initiative that brings together artists, philosophers, writers and theoreticians and promotes an active and investigative approach to contemporary art and culture, society, politics and its inter-relations. During the war years in Croatia the Art Radionica Lazareti was one of the few organisations in the Balkans that created an alternative perspective on the depressive reality. Its programmes and activities are numerous and cover all fields of art and social critique.
The Karantena Festival was established in 1996, as an international festival dominated with coproduction. The festival itself was created out of collaboration between ARL and Gromki Theatre in Ljubljana. Throughout the years there were many coproductions: Bad Company, Vax Factory, Mini Teater, Compagnie Begat, Teatar Exit, HIPP, Novo Kazalište, Hotel Bulić, Glej Teatar, Bitef Teatar, Ex Scena, Kufer
The festival's tenth and final edition was under the motto “If you've missed the past nine Karantena Festivals, miss the last as well.” ARL decided to end the festival and focus on smaller format projects to avoid being absorbed into Dubrovnik's scenery. The newly founded Scena Karantena is active throughout the year and is open to collaborations and resident programmes.

Zadar snova is an independent cultural organization, founded in 1997. The International Festival of Contemporary Theatre 'Zadar Snova' is a performance art festival that blends modern theatre, dance and music productions, art performances and art interventions with ancient Dalmatian settings. The festival has a history of presenting and supporting local independent artists and has produced a number of its own and collaborative productions. The organization “Zadar Snova“ has diversified its activities and now has programmes throughout the year. Their activities need to be seen in the political and social context of the 1990s, when creating this festival meant recapturing a place that for so long had seemed lost.

dance & non-verbal theatre festival san vincenti is a festival should be regarded as an exception to our coastal story, since it is located in the interior of Istria and is organized by people from Zagreb - not locals. However it belongs to the group of coastal manifestations as all Istria can be considered part of the coast (at least that seems to be the perception in the summer). The festival is localized as it produces local context by collaborating with local artists. The festival's aim is also to organise year-round activities through the Mediterranean Dance Centre.
The festival was founded in 1999 and has since established itself as one of the most interesting events in the region for contemporary dance.

Drugo more has been active in Rijeka since 2002 in the fields of performance and visual arts and all possible interdisciplinary combinations. Drugo More annually organizes more than fifty public events in Rijeka. Its aim is to introduce contemporary art and theory to Rijeka, but it seems to be more successful in introducing Rijeka to artists and theoreticians. Zoom Festival was created to produce a whole new context with different art programmes.

DOPUST is a performing arts festival that presents different forms of performance: live performance, live installations, actions, multimedia, and socially engaged, self-destructive and destructive performances. Each year the festival has a new theme - one was, for example, the local original. The aim of the festival is to create a network of performance artists.

Davor Mišković is President of Drugo more and Clubture Network