This article has been published in June 2004 in the SICA magazine in Amsterdam, in Dutch and English EU Enlargement

NOT JUST AN EXPANDED MARKET FOR CULTURE By Dragan Klaic On countless feasts EU enlargement generated much of celebratory fog. After this fog is dispelled, it becomes possible to explore the cultural perspectives of this new phase of European integration. The EU market, thus also the cultural market offers 450 consumers. But what do new member states bring in as their specific cultural constellation? A tremendous avalanche of political phrases and truisms, uttered by the politicians and the media about the Enlargement, had little impact on the vast majority of the old and new EU citizens who remained in the best case indifferent, badly informed and quite ignorant about their fellow Europeans. In the last 2-3 years of legislative and political preparations of the Enlargement, culture has been mentioned rarely. The EU Treaty precludes any form of harmonization of the national cultural policies and obliges the member states only to open their territory to foreign commercial television, something they have done already years ago. The non-commercial cultural operators already had access to the Culture 2000 subsidies of the European Commission, in collaboration with their foreign peers. The other cultural matters remain firmly a national business, not an EU business. Steady clients, demoralized and impoverished In most acceding countries the national cultural systems have not been altered significantly since the ushering of the multiparty democracy and market economy. Cultural expenditure takes various percentages of the state budget but says little about priorities. Even per capita spending in culture (between eur 10 and 90 p/y) does not indicate the quality and efficiency of cultural subsidies and often hides major investment in representative objects (a museum, a national library, an opera house renovation) rather than expenditure in regular cultural output. Over the years, subsides were reduced across the board and lost ground to the inflation while the method of their distribution remained by and large unchanged. Old steady institutional clients are eternal clients, it seems. They receive the subsidy chiefly because they exist and because they used to receive it in the past and because cultural policy gets regularly confused with the social policy that strives to keep people on jobs even if they get paid less and less.

In several countries, national government pushed the financing of culture on the lower levels of the government, without securing additional means, while in some other countries the ministry takes responsibility for almost all of the existing culture, fearing that local and regional authorities, if left alone, wouldnt do anything to sustain it. Some forms of project financing have been introduced and in few countries (Hungary, Estonia, Latvia) special funds have been created to distribute incidental subsidies but they remain a breadcrumb of what goes automatically to the established institutions. Many established institutions lost a sense of purpose and direction, feel demoralized, abandoned by their most creative staff members while the most incompetent ones keep hanging on. Commercialization is the consequence, visible in the light entertaining repertory of the subsidized companies that seek to regain at the box office what they dont any receive longer from the Ministry. Or the disco club operating in the cellar of a museum, because extra space is suddenly a precious source of income. In many impoverished cultural institutions (which now have to pay the real cost of heating and electricity) every square meter has been sublet to some small business in order to generate some extra income to the steady employees. False expectations, widening gaps Initial wild expectations from sponsorship have pilfered out even though in Central and Eastern Europe new capitalists seek to achieve quick brand recognition, so in some instances sponsors contributions are higher than 5-6% that is a standard in Western Europe. Sponsorship is entangled with corruption and dubious ethic and rests on private connections rather than any policy. Exceptionally, a recently established arts and business council in Hungary seeks to bring the communication of those two worlds to another level of mutual understanding and transparency. Much expectation is directed at cultural tourism but that is a long term trajectory that demands substantial investment in tourist infrastructure, in people competences and in ruined, long neglected cultural heritage objects - something that the structural funds of the EU could improve in due time. For the time being, Prague, Budapest and Cracow have benefited a lot from the tourist inflow and some Finish tourists see a musical in Tallinn between the rounds of cheap drinks that bring them there in the first place, but rare are those who explore the splendor of Secession architecture in Riga, follow the trace of former synagogues in Hungary, or look at frescos and icons in Bulgarian monasteries. The wide gap in the quality of cultural provisions between the capitals and perhaps a few large cities on one side and the rest of the country on the other has become only wider. Even in small countries there is less artistic mobility than in the times of socialism because who would pay the real cost of travel and displacement? There is a steady artistic and intellectual brain drain from smaller places to big places and from the country to abroad but no one has statistics how many musicians, dancers and visual artists have left the 8 acceding countries, plus the EU candidates Bulgaria and Romania, in the last 15 years. Rare are the enthusiasts who went the other way, like a group of artists taking over a small railway station in Slovakia to make it into a cultural center, or Borderland Foundation in Szejne, in the northeast Poland, engaged to revive the trans-border

intercultural traditions on the triangle of Poland, Belorussia and Lithuania. Many provincial theater companies keep sliding into insignificance, museums with old shabby permanent exhibits cant attract no one, concert halls that provide few concerts and even less heating in the winter months are signaling a protracted agony of a large part of cultural infrastructure. But generalizations are dangerous, differences in resources and professional level of operation are marked not only among the acceding countries but among particular regions and cities. A visitor to the Gdansk (PL) city theater, with its huge output, generated by the turbo director Maciej Novak and his team, or to Tartu City Museum (EST) will be impressed by commitment, quality, and diversity of programs. And some international festivals popped up in small places that were never thought of as a cultural bulwark: Nitra (Slovakia), Sibiu (Romania), Gyr (Hungary), Rakvere (Estonia) New players internationally oriented There is fortunately a new, alternative cultural infrastructure that has emerged in the last 15 years everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe, consisting of festivals, galleries, cultural, artistic and media centers, studios, producing, programming, supporting and developing organizations, individuals and teams with new initiatives and ambitions, , spaces with scarce but precious facilities that regroup artists and a new, young public. This wide net of adventurous and dynamic forces has emerged thanks to much of hardly paid free lance work, occasional project subsides of the authorities, little bit of sponsorship and donations of foreign cultural centers and embassies and a few widely engaged private foundations. Among the latter, the investment of the Open Society Instutute network of foundations, supplied by the US speculator-philanthropist billionaire George Soros surpasses what all others could achieve. Soros had a sense of occasion and a vision so that for many years after 1989 he kept pumping hundreds of millions dollars of his own money each year in the region, hoping to help build civil society with its autonomous institutions, human competences, implicit rules of behavior and standards of integrity. His investment supported the emergence of an innovative, alternative and critical culture, enhanced mobility, provided trainings, internships, collaborative opportunities across the borders and in some countries effectively combated the trend of cultural centralization and cultural conservativism and nationalism. But Soros has came to a wrong conclusions that the acceding countries do not need his input any longer. He closed his foundations no other philanthropic initiative stood in the wings to pick up the tab and the governments wont be able to do much compensatory funding either. Moreover, much competence, know how and procedures of local staff, boards and advisory committees of Soros foundations has been wasted. The alternative cultural sector found much encouragement and support abroad, among international networks and their members. While established cultural institutions found it hard to maneuver internationally without the guiding hand of the state and felt demoralized and pauperized, new initiatives recognized that they can ensure their own survival through international partnerships, pooling of resources, sharing of risks, market

enlargement beyond the borders and institutional development in openness and experimentation. If originally the main axis of engagement was East/West, now some East/East and North/South and even regional (Balkan!) initiatives occur and the partnership mode acquires complexity as it shifts from a presenting to co-production and from bilateral to multilateral. Contemporary dance developed from almost nonexistence and today, for instance, several small Estonian dance group perform often abroad. Some strongholds such as Traffo in Budapest, new Latvian Theater Institute in Riga, Archa Theater in Prague, Red House in Sofia came along inspired by some Dutch cultural models to become the focal points of international work. Identitary anxieties, waning curiosity There is a parallel emergence of small scale cultural industry (media, design, fashion, publishing) while the larger commercial players operate as branches of international companies. The avalanche of the cultural industry products available on the market (with much pirated copies) lured away some audience of traditional cultural institutions and caused much concerns about national cultural identity, especially in smaller nations. The self-appointed defenders of national cultural identity take usually a protectionist, preservationist position, voice nationalistic slogans and rarely understand that they better invest in new talents and creative energy rather than in artificial propping up of the traditional and folk culture . Both globalization and European integration provoke some resistance and concern of the traditional intelligentsia while the younger cultural operators tend to grasp the interaction of the contemporary creativity and cultural industry, the creative challenge of the new media and the de-territorialization of cultural production and distribution. With the socio-economic stratification of their society, wide cultural preferences, tastes and habits will also become more divergent and the relationship of cultural producers with their own public less obvious and more dependent on distinction, talent and marketing. The governments of the acceding countries still prefer to regulate international cultural cooperation through old-fashioned bilateral agreements that usually yield little effect and favor the wasteful days, weeks and months of own culture, organized abroad as a selfpromotion. In the old EU countries there is less curiosity among the professionals and the public for Central and Eastern European culture as such. The exotic appeal of the newly discovered cultural neighbors is gone. Those who in the Netherlands strived to present the culture from Central and Eastern Europe (Paradise Lost and other manifestations) discovered the difficulties of marketing beyond shear exotica of unknown names and works on a crowded domestic market. Dutch cultural operators, many of whom rushed to the region after 1989 with much curiosity, have become more reserved and probably more self-centered as well. Those who remained longer engaged learned the value of protracted partnership, of curious foreign audiences, of the improvisational talent of their partners, and the radiation of artistic gesture in a rapidly transforming society. It is probably this curiosity and energy that take Dogtroep, for instance, back to the Czech Republic. While collaborating with cultural systems and organizations abroad that are less stabilized, structured and provided for than it is habitual in the Netherlands might be de-concentrating and even anxiety-inducing, it can also become a challenge and

an inspiration, a frame to gather artistic impulses and achieve trans-sectorial connections that are less obvious in the well segmentarized Dutch cultural world. Dutch EU presidency without a cultural initiative EU did not see fit to great the joining of ten new national cultural systems with any special welcome gift and even after the enlargement the cultural means of the European Commission remain at the trifle eur 33 million per year. Even structural funds of the EU have only one tenth to spend on every new EU citizen than what was available in the previous enlargement rounds for each citizen of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. This enlargement is to be achieved on a shoestring budget despite crying needs and gaps. The Dutch government assumes the half-yearly EU presidency on July 1 with no particular cultural agenda, package or initiative, directed at the institutions of the EU. Uncertainties over the EU Constitution, growing disputes about the EU budget after 2006 and the differences in the assessment of a possible Turkish candidacy play here a curbing role. Cabinet Balkenende 2 is in general not very EU oriented and remains obsessed, as the recent SER critique states, with countrys net contribution to the to the EU budget. The ministries of Culture (OCenW) and Foreign Affairs chose to initiate a cultural season of Dutch cooperation with the acceding countries under the title Thinking Forward. While this event series will certainly bring some new insights and might stimulate further cultural cooperation, one would like to see a reaffirmation of the role of the country as cultural free haven (vrijhaven) and a place of hospitality, multilateral encounters, dialogue and collaboration. Whatever the government invests in network development, in trans-border mobility and protracted forms of cooperation, led by the autonomous cultural organizations, works better than expensive and often superfluous self-representational activities, sometimes driven by the anachronistic concept such as Holland promotion, Nederlands image forming, Put the Nederland on the map. They belong to the old Cold War models of public diplomacy. D. Klaic 2004 (Dr Dragan Klaic is Permanent Fellow of Felix Meritis and President of the European Forum for the Arts and Heritage.)