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“flow. Festival of Conversation for Culture and Science.” – A New Platform for a Creative Exchange in the Danube Region
Art&Idea is very pleased to announce the first edition of “flow. Festival of Conversation for Culture and Science”, which will take place in the Serbian city of Novi Sad from May 29 to 31, 2008.
The festival offers an independent platform, enabling eighty young and upcoming creative artists and scientists from ten Danube countries to collaborate on developing and advancing cross-border projects in the course of an open-ended, sustainable process. Being the first site of the three-day festival, Novi Sad represents the festival’s multicultural variety.
On the first day of the festival, the participants will have the opportunity to get to know each other in the flow café and see the performance “Mislim Reku” (“I Think River”) in the courtyard of the Museum of Vojvodina. This dance and music concept has been especially developed for the festival by AAC kulturanova in Novi Sad. The work artistically takes up the symbolism of proximity and distance, familiarity and strangeness, the flow of the river and the bridge building of the city. The day ends with a flow party, including a dj line-up on the banks of the River Danube.
Day two is fully devoted to the central element of the festival. This involves open space technology, a method of communication for large groups of people which allows participants to present their topics to the public, compose working groups, develop potential projects together and come to practical results within the shortest period of time. flow’s broad thematic variety makes it possible for biologists to meet artists and architects to share ideas with writers. The participants stay in a group just as long as they consider it meaningful. Different participation levels are possible: some can delve into a topic while others build bridges by changing their groups regularly.
On the third and last day, the participants can explore Novi Sad’s most exciting artistic and scientific institutions, such as the interdisciplinary media centre “kuda_org”, the Youth Social Center “CK13” that promotes public, opinion-forming events, the utopian artists’ project “ART KLINIKA”, the gallery quarter, where the oldest Serbian culture institution – Matica Srpska – can be found, the Serbian National Theatre and the radio station 021, which made a name for itself due to its independence at the end of the regime of Milo evi.
The participating artists and scientists have all been nominated by the following members of the flow Advisory Board:
· Dimiter Dimov (Bulgaria) - Faculty of Philosophy, Sofia University
· Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu (Austria) – Producer, AMOUR FOU Filmproduktion
· Nicoleta Esinencu (Moldova) – Writer
· Sándor Finta (Hungary) – Architect, sporaarchitects, KÉK
· Sejla Kameric (Bosnia & Herzegovina) - Artist
· Mira Keratová (Slovakia) – Curator, lecturer, editor, writer
· Dragomira Majhen (Croatia) – Molecular biologist, Ruder Boskovic Institute
· Zoran Pantelic (Serbia) – Artist, producer, educator, researcher, new media center kuda.org
· Rarita Szakats (Romania) – Artist, activist, teacher
· Yuliya Vaganova (Ukraine) – Director of the Center for Contemporary Art Kyiv
· Milan Vracar (Serbia) – Curator, producer, actor, performing artist, AAC kulturanova
The Austrian minister of Foreign Affairs, Ursula Plassnik, is excited about the innovative festival format: “I consider flow as a completely new dialogue forum for culture and science in the Danube region. This region’s future is defined by a European background. flow helps to build communities across national borders.”
flow festival-director Robert Punkenhofer looks forward to a collaboration across the Danube region and adds: “We facilitate dialogue without fixed expectations regarding the results. The success of flow is measured according to the number of projects initiated by our platform.”
flow, which is an initiative of the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs in cooperation with ERSTE Foundation and is conceived and directed by Art&Idea’s Robert Punkenhofer, will take place on a yearly base at changing locations in the Danube area.
For more information about the festival, its programme and participants, please visit
www.flow-festival.com or email Reanne Leuning.