The Culture Lobby: An Archive of Cultural Memory (2007-2010)
The Culture Lobby (2007-2010)
At the transnational level, The Culture Lobby project (2007-2010) documented, photographically, aurally and geophysically the social and cultural changes that were perceived to be occurring in EU candidate countries in response to the process of harmonizing local political, economic and institutional laws with those of the European Union. The resulting collaborative body work is a people’s archive.
The project, created with Canadian artist Pascal Paquette and produced with the Belgrade-based KIOSK platform for contemporary art, took place in the Western Balkans – Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Throughout 2009, Pascal, myself and 13 other artists documented with audio and photographs and with geo-tagging this moment of transition, asking folks in the region what they thought would change or disappear in their everyday lives when their country joined the EU.
Their answers are now part of a permanent archive, the online version of which was launched in May 2010 and can be seen here. An exhibition of the photographs toured the Western Balkans and Europe in 2010 and 2011.
The Culture Lobby was supported by Creative Collaboration, a major British Council arts programme, the European Cultural Foundation, the Open Society Institute, Balkan Trust for Democracy, Ontario Arts Council, European Fund for the Balkans and Swiss Cultural Programme.
The images I created for the archive can also be seen in Empire.
