May 1st, ten new countries will join the EU. Post-Soviet realities are meeting welfare state
models. In what way will this new deal reflect upon the arts?
The Baltic countries are squeezed between post-Soviet realities and are now members of the EU. In this position what role does the so-called Swedish model play in a Realpolitik and in cultural policy perspective?
Artistic freedom has been one of the strongest driving forces for the development of the visual arts during the last century. In what ways do the experiences in the Baltic countries differ from Sweden in relation to the role of the art market and the grant system?
Welcome to a seminar on May 1st, 2004 at Europeiska kommissionen (European Commission) Riddargatan 7 A, Stockholm
Programme
17:00 17:15 Welcome address by Hans Alldén, Director of European Commission, Sweden, Liana Ruokyte, Cultural
Attaché of Lithuania, Sweden and Christian Chambert, President Swedish AICA
17:15 17:30 Arunas Gelunas: What are post-Soviet realities from a Baltic perspective?
17:30 17:45 Margareta Tillberg: What are post-Soviet realities from a Swedish perspective?
17:45 18:15 Gediminas Urbonas: Experiences of artistic freedom in the Baltic
countries before and after the wall
18:15 18:45 Rein Raud: Experiences of artistic freedom in the Baltic countries
before and after the wall
18:45 – 19:00 Coffee break
Globalization is a key word today. The world has paradoxically both shrunk and become bigger. The globalization effects have also created new economical, cultural and religious conflicts. Is it important to defend national differences in this development?
19:00 20:00 Panel discussion:
Lolita Jablonskiene, Irina Sandomirskaja, Peo Hansen, Rein Raud.
Moderator: John Peter Nilsson
A New Deal is arranged by the Lithuanian Embassy in Stockholm, the Baltic Cultural Centre of Stockholm city and the Swedish section of AICA in co-operation with the European Commission, Sweden.
The seminar is free of charge, but please note that advance registration is compulsory! The hall can only take a limited number of people. Please note that the seminar is held in English.
Registrate at e-mail: johan.etzler@kultur.stockholm.se or phone +46-8-508 319 76.
Arunas Gelunas (b. 1968) – Ph.D. (Kaunas, 2001), Dean and Associate Professor of Kaunas Art Institute of the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts (since 2003). Educated both as a professional artist in Vilnius at the Academy of Fine Arts (1988-1994) and in Tokyo at the National University of Art and Music (1995-1997), and as a philosopher at Vytautas Magnus University (1997-2001) where he defended his Ph.D. thesis in 2001 (title The Emergence of the New Paradigm of Order in Nishida and Merleau-Ponty). Arunas has had twelve solo exhibitions and has participated in more than thirty group exhibitions and art projects in Lithuania and abroad. His scholarly activities include extensive work as translator and author on subjects relating to phenomenology and anthropology of art, modern Japanese philosophy, and the comparative philosophy and the non-substantialist turn in science and the humanities.
Peo Hansen is Assistant Professor of political science at the Department of Ethnic Studies at Linköping University. He has written extensively on the question of European identity, locating today’s attempts to foster such an identity in the context of the deep-seated problems of anti-immigrant sentiments, racism and social disintegration that permeate societies across the EU. In his research, Hansen also explores the significance of European colonialism for the genesis and development of European integration. His publications include Europeans only? Essays on identity politics and the European Union (Umeå University, 2000).
Lolita Jablonskiene is an art critic and curator based in Vilnius. Since 2000 she has worked as head of the Contemporary Art Information Center (CAIC), which spun off from the Soros Foundation, and subsequently joined the Lithuanian Art Museum to work for Vilnius forthcoming National Gallery of Modern Art. In 2002 she was appointed chief curator of the National Gallery. Lolita Jablonskiene is a former commissioner of the Lithuanian pavilion at the Venice Biennial (1999). She has curated contemporary art exhibitions in her home country and abroad, and has published articles on art in the Lithuanian and foreign press.
John Peter Nilsson (b. 1957) is an art critic for the daily Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet and is an independent curator. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of NU: The Nordic Art Review. In 1999 he was curator of the Nordic pavilion at the Venice Biennale in Italy. Currently he is working in a committee for the Seville Biennial in Spain and is preparing a group exhibition with Swedish artists at the gallery Rhodes+Mann in London, which will open in the autumn 2004.
Rein Raud (b.1961) is a writer who published his first book of poetry in 1980. Then followed nine books – novels, short stories and more poetry. He is also a prolific essayist and translator, mostly from Asian tongues. Rein Raud is passionate about language, having also studied a number of them. He graduated from the St. Petersburg University in 1985, with Japanese as his major. He defended his Ph.D. thesis in Helsinki in 1994, and is now a Professor of two universities, Helsinki University and the Estonian Institute of Humanities in Tallinn.
Irina Sandomirskaja (b. 1959), received her Ph.D. in 1991, and in 2003 became Professor of cultural studies at the Baltic and Eastern European graduate School, University College of south Stockholm. Her background includes language theory, feminist theory and linguistic construction of identity. Her particular areas of interest are the politics of representation east-west and the globalized media, languages and economy. She is currently working on a project called De Patientia: Naked Life and Cruel Language (essays in Russian 20th century art and literature).
Margareta Tillberg, Ph.D., art historian, university lecturer and freelance critic from Stockholm. Studied in Moscow in the early 1980s (under Andropov and Chernenko). Worked as an interpreter from the late 1980s. She has written numerous articles on Russian and Baltic art. Former lecturer at the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany, and currently teaching History and Theory of Design. Her publications include Coloured Universe and the Russian Avant-Garde. Matiushin on Colour Vision in Stalins Russia 1932, Stockholm 2003.
Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas are an artistic couple who work closely together. With an interest in the flexibility of heterogeneous practice, they have committed themselves to studying the transformation of Lithuanian society to capitalism. Since 1993 they have run JUTEMPUS interdisciplinary art programmes – a model for social and artistic practice with the interest to design organizational structures that question the relativeness of freedom. They develop programmes which aim to build frameworks for new and old media practices and facilitate a creative debate. They have worked with numerous international projects in different media (Manifesta 4, Frankfurt, 2002 and Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002, among others).
