 session due to the absence of a chair. It's called Culture and Diplomacy. And I suppose kind of hits to the theoretical heart of this conference in understanding what the relation between culture and diplomacy in. It is and the various practical manifestations of that relationship. Well, I'm very pleased to welcome a very distinguished panel of speakers. I'll be introducing the speakers as we make our way through the order. But I want to start with Frederick Morro, who works for the French Ministry of Culture and he is in charge of international relations in the section of performing arts and visual arts. So welcome, Frederick. And once we've assured that the crowds are in, we could probably start. Just wait a moment. Thank you, Frederick. Good afternoon. Thank you very much, Jonathan. First, I would like to thank Milena and Mariana for inviting me to attend this panel and discussion about culture and diplomacy. I was actually first planned to be part of the panel discussing the art of theater and its geopolitical issues. But we considered with Milena that there were already enough Frenchmen there and I shifted to this panel. So thank you for accepting me in your gang and I have to say that I'm very much impressed to be part of the panel with such honorable persons who have done so much for culture and the arts worldwide. I'm not an artist myself, nor a scholar, nor a diplomat, but I consider my job within the public sector in France as a facilitator for the development of culture in my country and especially for the development of international control relations. Just to let you know about where I speak from, I have a career as a public art facilitator, especially in the dance field, first in Australia and then in France in diverse public dance institution, where I actually focused on dance production and programming of international artists, national and international touring, international cooperation and professional inclusion for tertiary dance students worldwide. I then joined the French ministry of culture and communication about 10 years ago, where I dealt with state policies in the dance field, including international relations for the choreographic sector. Since 2014, I'm in charge of international relations for artistic creation at the ministry, artistic creation being the generic term we use for performing arts and visual arts. There with a small team of four people, we try to facilitate international vulnerability, exchanges, projects, cooperation, collaborations, network inclusion for artists and professionals from the fields of music, dance, drama, circus, street arts, puppets, contemporary visual arts, design, fashion and artistic craft. Not yet tourism, maybe we will, next year. But we actually articulate our work with art professionals on one side, whether they are independent artists or belong to public institution or cultural structures. And on the other side, with our colleagues from foreign affairs worldwide, who actually deal with tourism, and especially the support of the French Institute, l'Institut Français. This description of my personal path is just to give you an example about the close and vivid relationship between culture and diplomacy in France for most of the people working in the art field. France has a long history of being at the cross paths of so many international artistic influences. France has a long tradition of welcoming artists from around the world, as well as a tradition to support the work of artists abroad whether they are French or not. In France, culture is certainly part of what we are, but it's also part of the perception of what France is for a lot of foreigners. And we are aware of that. More than a mean of influence, culture seems to be intrinsic to our identity abroad. And as well a bit more than 60 million inhabitants, let's talk about cultures with an S as a plural, rather than culture seen as a single, united, coherent fact. Cultural diversity is in our habits as well as cultural curiosity. And this might deeply contribute to shape our image worldwide. According to me, French cultural diplomacy is working on two feet. One foot is the strength of the art field in our country thanks to the support of both public and private sectors. And the other foot is the capacity of France to have developed a large diplomatic network of 162 cultural services in our embassies worldwide and to be part of 16 international organizations such as UNESCO, l'Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, or the Council of Europe. This network is also supported by 98 instituts français focusing on cultures and nearly 400 alliance français developed with local civil society, mainly focusing on teaching French but also on spreading French cultures. Not to mention 140 archaeological missions abroad. First the French cultural network with its 6,000 workers initiates or takes part or support or is involved in about 26,000 cultural events per year around the globe. As far as the Ministry of Culture and Communication is concerned, 80 state institutions such as Paris Opera, Philharmonie de Paris, Theatre Nationale de l'Odéon, Comédie Française, Centre Nationale des Arts Plastiques, Centre Nationale de la Dance, for example, are deeply encouraged to develop a European and international strategy. The benefits of developing such a strategy for business institutions actually spread out to the other structures of the field. The development of international strategies not only a focus for the state, it's also very important for local authorities. In France, a great number of artistic and cultural structures are supported by both the state and local authorities. In this cross-public funding, the state dedicates about 14 billion euro per year to culture out of which 3.6 billion euro managed by the Ministry of Culture. Local authorities on their side support culture for nearly 8 billion euro per year. Local authorities also have international issues and want the structure of the support to develop an international strategy too, evaluating that territory abroad and contributing to the European inclusion of their inhabitants. Therefore, the official scheme of nearly 360 artistic structures supported by both the state and local authorities comprises international objectives and actions. And here on the screen, you have the list of all those structures with international objectives both supported by the state and local authorities. In the performing arts and visual arts. Not to mention that circus and street arts, which can be sometimes as French specific, are spreading out very rapidly, as you know, and are great means of international cooperation worldwide. A quarter of the 1,200 independent companies receiving state support for creation also have international objectives in their scheme. This is especially the case of the companies supported on a three years agreement by the Ministry of Culture. The main issues raised by the Ministry of Culture within the French cultural diplomacy actually meets most of other governments and civil society goals abroad. Our main current concerns actually question the relation between art and society. To quote a few, freedom of creation, freedom of programming, freedom of expression that have been recently outlined in a new bill voted by the French parliament last July. This subject is, of course, of high concern in Europe and beyond Europe. Art education for a greater number of people, not only a French specific issue, but a worldwide one. Artistic creation for kids and youth, whose country doesn't care about its youth, too. Arts and culture in public space, I'm sure this rings bells among you all and not only in France. Artistic creation in the digital age, security of cultural space, events and festivals, this is a new challenge since the recent terrorist attack in France and it's unfortunately a challenge for whole Europe. Other current concerns actually directly focus on the support we give to artists like in many other countries. Wage and employment benefits for artists, the role of artists in cultural institutions, directing the institutions, being associated to it or in residence in it. The different generation of artists that work at the same time, in most fields we actually have three different generations of artists working at the same time, sometimes four different generations. This means that we need to give appropriate support to each generation. The support to emerging artists, artist tertiary education and lifelong training. These concerns are also shared by most of our partners country abroad and we like spotting good practices together and share experiences. More specifically, the artistic creation department for which I work for is currently facing international challenges such as developing the potential of French producers to take part in European productions, increasing artistic presence and export capacity in international arts markets and fairs, reinforcing our partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Institut Français to support long-term, deep professional cooperation with specific parts of the world as we do here in the Balkans through the Theatroscope Initiative which is led from the Institut Français in Serbia. But it will be another panel discussion tomorrow afternoon about it. Also increasing our ability to develop cultural engineering and take part in competence sharing and building, questioning our strategy around artistic creation in the French-speaking parts of the world, developing an international strategy for theater, creation and drama writing, including translation and interpreting issues, developing a strategy for more international cooperation for the sectors of design, fashion and artistic crafts, benchmarking foreign public policies in the field of artistic creation. And maybe one of the most important issues nowadays for all of us, it's embracing the question of supporting, support to migrating artists, refugees artists or artists in exile in Europe as well as connecting these migrants to the whole society they live in through art and first contributing to a serene, appeased and peaceful future of our continent. This directly leads me to my conclusion at this stage. Culture and diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, diplomatic culture, whatever we prefer calling it, is also a tool to build together the European Union we want tomorrow. Art professionals in the European Union have already raised their voice about the necessity to place culture in the art of the objectives of the European Union for the 2020, 2030 period. Culture should not only be a specific program in the next generation of EU programs but should be incorporated in all programs, educational, economical, social, research program but also sustainable growth, partnering, cooperation and European enlargement programs and of course citizenship and European inclusion programs. And the debate we have today certainly contributes to a better Europe that I wish we would build together. Voila. Egalite, fraternite, liberte, USA. What's happened with the French evolution? Thank you, Patrick. European integration. 12 minutes. It's exacting as I'd expect from the French ministry official. Excellent, thank you. Please retain your questions and the issues until after our speakers have spoken so we can have a specific and in-depth discussion. I'm now very pleased to welcome Aparva Potrocin who is a diplomat, author, film and music producer and a cultural diplomacy veteran with posts in Los Angeles, New York and London of huge experience and from 2008 until recently he was director of the Adam Mitskevich Institute of Warsaw. Is that right? An arms length organization. Excellent, thank you, Pavel. Over to you. And you're speaking on the ethics and ethos of cultural diplomacy in the times of populists, pressure and curatorial aspirations of political class, is that correct? Well, thanks, Jonathan. Good afternoon. I want to begin with my heartfelt thanks to Mariana for having me here, although I'm not the director of the Adam Mitskevich Institute any longer. The political shift has swept me away three weeks ago. So I appreciate the gesture and really it means a lot to me. I don't exactly know where to start. Should I first introduce my organization or should I introduce Adam Mitskevich first? As I suppose not too many of you do know who Adam Mitskevich was. Well, get this, friends with Pushkin, all right? The Russian poet. They practically invented the term binge drinking in their St. Petersburg years. They were best buddies. Friends with Gethe. Gethe offered a quail to Adam Mitskevich and dedicated him several poems. A quail from Gethe in 19th century Europe meant probably more than a Nobel Prize, literally a Nobel Prize today. Friends with Byron, Lord George Byron, translated Byron into Polish, became first foreign professor of College de France. There were no foreigners before Mitskevich. His monuments are in Vilnius, Lithuania, Minsk, Bielarus, Lviv and Kiev, that's Ukraine, Warsaw and Paris. Poznań, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Poland. Hard drinker, opium smoker, womanizer, a prophet who has invented the EU and actually, one of his treatises, he actually foresaw the European Union. Actually, you may think of him as a Umberto Eco slash de Morrison of 19th century Europe. Had punk rock been invented in 19th century Europe, Adam Mitskevich would have been an icon of punk or rap or... This, I think, is the perfect patron for any cultural institution in my country. The institute has been established 16 years ago with a single goal to promote Polish cultural abroad. And that's exactly what we don't do. I mean, we don't promote anything, anywhere, any longer. We think that the very term has been compromised long time ago, that on one end, it sounds, you know, promotions sale of slightly rotten tomatoes, local Tesco store, or on the other hand, that really has this aftertaste of propaganda, doesn't it? So what I think, we have described 360 degree of what we do with one word, one term, relationship. We're in the business of initiating, inventing if necessary, managing, maintaining, evaluating and treasureizing relationships. If you look at it at the whole cultural diplomacy as a process, it's all about relationship. It's good to have a government behind your back. It's good to have 8 billion euros, local governments and free at the national level, that's fine. It's good to have ambassadors and diplomats. But when it comes down to it, it's a human being talking to human being, artist to critic, critic to audience, audience to artist, and so on. It's all relationship. We cover, we are a boutique organization. There's roughly a hundred of us in downtown Warsaw, in headquarter in downtown Warsaw, but we operate globally. And we cover everything from visual arts, to performing arts, to cinema, to literature, to food, cuisine, design, architecture, fashion, alternative music, even some sports, as I'm sure you all remember. Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, the festivals of arts, not only athletes, but artists, poets, singers, actors, were showcased at the Games. An example, when we delivered Polish cultural season in the UK, we have organized a rowing kregata in the heart of London, with the finishing client in front of the Westminster. Because we found out that for an Englishman, traveling on water, it's not recreation, it's not sport, it's profoundly interculture. So we organized a rowing kregata. It was Oxford versus Cambridge, versus Polish crew, BitGosh Polish crew. Well, embarrassingly enough, Polish crew won, that was quite, not by this, but holding of the boat. It was quite a brilliant embarrassment. Thousands of people on both banks of the river. We were number one news on every TV station. So we do sports on some occasions. And what I wanted to, having said this, having described the specter of what we do, I wanted to share with you three rules of our three pillars of policy, or three mantras, as we used to call them at the Adam and Eve Games. And they were in effect until September 6th this year. I'm not taking any responsibility for anything that is happening at the organization after that date. So rule number one, as Jonathan mentioned, arms length. We have kept, we kept, we were keeping our stakeholders at arms length. We didn't allow the stakeholders to interfere with the program. We accepted geography of our actions. We accepted marching orders, oh, go to Turkey, go to Israel, go to UK, go to China, go to Korea. Yes, we do. But we never accepted any interventions in our programming. Arms length, we keep them at arms length. We've managed to persuade politicians that curatorial ambitions of political class harm both culture and politics, and they accepted it. I know it sounds almost unbelievable, but I can prove it. There is tangible proof. The institute has had nine directors in its first eight years, or it was like revolving door, or ejection seat. I have been the institute's 10th director, and I lasted eight years. The mantra works. The mantra, the arms length mantra, if you pardon my French, proper translated, the mantra goes, give us the money and fuck off. And it worked. They stayed away. The proof one is that the director lasted for eight years. Another evidence is that we suffered a major economic crisis in Poland as well between 2008 and now, and 16. The economy kept producing growth, but still we suffered symptoms of crisis. And as you know, austerity measures are applied to culture first during the times of crisis. And we have managed to triple the funding for the institute between 2008 and now. The mantra works. The arms length policy works. And the last argument, if well, I'm sure that to a certain extent, the experience of many of you, in Poland, in my country, to depoliticize an institution, an organization, the best way to depoliticize it is to politicize it to the most. I have had three former prime ministers sitting on my board, each from different political options. They kept carrying the umbrella, this autonomy or sovereignty or independence umbrella, over our shoulder, not myself. I was just delivering the talent, the ideas, the IQ. They kept carrying the umbrella, they were protecting my arms length policy. Rule number two, and I have to refer to my American experiences. I spent 10 years there. And in the US, when you first, for the first time approach a key influencer or a major figure in the arts scene or a politician or author or CEO of a major corporation, one is confronted with very sophisticated system of barbed wire, trenches, bankers, minefields. It's called assistant to the assistant to the assistant. Those people's time is precious. They are protected by chain of assistants. And they screen or scan or filter their visitors, their guests. So the moment you get a hold of the proper assistant, the assistant who at least sees the boss's calendar, the first question one is asked, usually goes, what is the nature of your call? Is it personal or business? And I have quickly learned to answer, it's a personal business. And that's how you run this business, the cultural diplomacy, how we conducted at Adam Mickiewicz Institute on the personal level. I told you, relationships. It's all about relationships. Relationships are about confidence, trust. And it takes time. You've got to be personal. You cannot be a used car salesperson. Because nobody will show any interest in what you've got to offer. You've got to be as highly personal as the simplest example. One of my friends who runs Lincoln Center Festival, he spends 200 days every year on the go, programming his theater halls, concert halls, cinemas, jazz club and so on. If he is to come to Poland for shopping, to find talent for his venues for three or four days, he's got to know that his time will not be wasted. This type of confidence is being built over the years. It's got to be personal. It's got to be about relationships. So mantra number two, personal business. And then rule or idea, number three, and again I have to refer to a conversation some seven years ago. In conjunction with a very reputable college in Warsaw, we have launched a postgraduate program in cultural diplomacy as a natural reservoir of talent for the institute, for the company, for staff, for the next generation of our employees. And when first class was graduating, this young man came to me and asked, so what exactly is the difference between conventional diplomacy, traditional diplomacy, and cultural diplomacy? And I told this young man, well, some conventional diplomacy tells the story. Cultural diplomacy tells the truth. No matter how complex, complicated, perplexing, embarrassing, on many cases, hysterical funny, this truth could be. In that sense, the Adamis Kivitschens cultural diplomacy as we understood it is more of an axiological project, ethical project than propaganda campaign or marketing gimmick or nation branding effort. There is at least two solid reasons to be a truth-saving organization. First is what, 3,000 years old. We know from Aristotle that on the truth is beautiful. The whole civilization has been founded on this conviction and there is no reason to manipulate or to interfere with it. Yet there is also very pragmatic and mercantile reason to be the truth-saving organization, a truthful organization, honest organization if you are sincere, genuine. Namely, international audiences worldwide, they are profoundly and totally immunized against all kinds of propaganda. I mean, they can detect it, in a blink of an eye, nanosecond. They will leave theater, they will leave the exhibition hall, they will throw the paper, flip the channel. The response and they will retaliate on Facebook or on Twitter. They have no doubt. And we aspire to attention of quite sophisticated people, smart, intelligent, well-read and educated. And propaganda is this type of bullshit that doesn't sell anything any longer. And we steered as far away as possible from it. I let me give you a very simple example. A few months ago in a hotel room in Singapore, I watched CNN and some moron broadcast three so-called promo films, back to back. I'm sure you've all seen it. The promo films are completely generic, like formulaic, minute-long spots. Take one is Sandy Beach. Take two, Blue Ocean or Blue Sea. Take three, tall, beautiful palms. Take four, beautiful blonde. Take five, handsome brunette. Take six, beautifully photographed food. And take seven, this God night. And these were promo films of Azerbaijan, Morocco, and I forgot the third country. Well, I was probably the only person who watched all those three spots back to back because no one else would. And that's exactly what we don't do. We don't lie. We don't propagandize. We don't use not to. So this is the philosophy behind that. And let me share with you my deepest conviction that it works. The institute has amassed in the last eight years. The institute has amassed 45 million audience. And that's not estimate. That's ticket sold. 45 million audience in eight years. I think that the truth delivers. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. Our next speaker is a man close to my heart, Mr. Mike Van Kran. He was until recently the Executive Director of the African Arts Institute, an important NGO in Cape Town. Right now, he is a German von Weizdecker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. He has done many, many things. I first met him, I think, in sort of UNESCO circles. Mike has done various kinds of work as a UNESCO technical advisor. He was the founding Secretary General of the arterial network. I'm sure many of you have heard of a pan-African network of artists, cultural activists and creative enterprises that play a very, very important role in cultural policy debates across Africa and is also a celebrated playwright in South Africa. He's a prodigious playwright, won many prizes and I think his best is yet to come. Thank you, Mike. Could you try and use the microphone with the lead that we're doing? Grab it. Okay, thanks very much for that introduction, Jonathan. I submitted a different abstract for a talk for today, but the last month being a Richard von Weizdecker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, part of what we had to do was engage in a study tour about how different cities in Germany are dealing with the refugee crisis and then seeing the topic for this particular panel, which was a different topic to what I had submitted a proposition for, I thought I would use my time as a kind of provocation about the theme of culture diplomacy. In the 80s, I served as the coordinator of a festival with the theme Towards a People's Culture in Cape Town. It was in the midst of a state of emergency an intensely repressive period during which the arts had emerged as some kind of a shield behind which to continue to resist apartheid. The festival was supposed to celebrate alternative values and ideas like democracy and non-racism and anti-sexism and the like, but just before it's opening, the festival was banned by the security beliefs who deemed it to be a threat to national security. The following year, I returned to the University of Cape Town to do a postgraduate degree in drama. My thesis topic was international models of political theater and their relevance to the development of political theater in South Africa. The drama department at that time had no staff member to supervise me because notwithstanding the drama department and the university being based on the African continent, our curriculum was kind of overwhelmingly determined by the European canon and by contemporary American theater. The university was a very prestigious institution but it was reserved for white people. I was classified colored in the apartheid system. So to gain undergraduate entry into the university, I had to do a subject not offered at the university that apartheid's rulers had designed for me and my permit subject was drama. So I always say if I'm a bad playwright today, blame it on apartheid. But as black students, because that's how we self-identified in terms of Steve Beko's black consciousness philosophy at the time, we had an ambivalent relationship with the institution. This was not our institution. We boycotted our graduation ceremonies, for example. We were there to obtain the best possible education available to us in order for us to be appropriated to best serve the anti-apartheid project as we saw it. My two sons are now studying at this university except that the university has been shut for the last two weeks. This because of national student campaigns for free higher education that have at times turned violent with university buildings being set alight. The fees must fall campaign evolved from the roads must fall campaign of last year to remove the statue of Cecil John Rhodes, British mining magnet politician who had bequeathed land on the slopes of Table Mountain as the location for the university. This campaign was a proxy for the campaign to decolonize the university. Art and photographs of previous mainly white leaders of the university were taken from the walls of different residences and were destroyed in a bonfire. Much to the outrage of many who believed these to be acts of barbarism unbecoming of civilized study. More than 20 years into South Africa's non-racial democracy, black students who have no institutional memory of colonialism or of apartheid are now demanding the fundamental transformation of their publicly funded institution at which they feel still uncomfortable, other. They are reminded on a daily basis through the semiotics of the university that despite living in a constitutional democracy with non-racism as one of its founding principles, whiteness and white privilege as they call it in terms of the international discourse, still holds sway, which brings me to the five points I would like to make about culture and diplomacy. First, if cultural diplomacy is about persuasion through engagement around values, ideas, beliefs and worldviews through cultural means, then cultural diplomacy has been exercised all the time. Whether we are consuming these abstractions constantly or consciously or not, we are surrounded by architecture, by language, by symbols like monuments, street names and commemorative events that reinforce dominant ideas, histories and worldviews. A student may now enter university unrestrained by political impediments as was the case in my time, but the language of education is not her mother tongue so that she may feel inferior when expressing herself. The lecturers are predominantly white, the art and photographs on the walls speak of white dominance and so on. Translate this into a global context and our cultural diplomacy strategies play themselves out in addition to, not as separate from, but in addition to a backdrop of Western cultural hegemony articulated and disseminated through news networks of global reach, television programs and movies with embedded worldviews, international events like festivals and commemorations, the dominance of colonial languages and mobility and freedom of movement that are reserved for a minority, thereby othering most of humanity. The apartheid university permit system that I experienced having its contemporary expression in stringent global North visa regulations for people from the two thirds world. I like David's point this morning about visas for artists and so on, it's not going to happen. I promise you. Well, not, yeah. Anyway, point number two. We speak of cultural diplomacy as soft power yet as the creative sector, we know that human beings are more than physical entities. In my view, by perpetuating the myth of soft power, we ignore the psychological, emotional and spiritual violence committed to the semiotics of conquest, symbols that remind many of their subjugation and the assumption of superiority, much of which has been built not that long ago on the barbarism of slavery and apartheid and sustained today through cheap labor outsourced to countries far away, ruled by elites armed with weapons supplied often by Western democracies. Why then are we surprised when those whose human dignity has been trampled upon and who experience such psychological, emotional, cultural and physical violence engage in acts of violence? Thirdly, diplomacy seldom happens in isolation from other forms of persuasion. The U.S. military budget, apparently, I attended the conference that David referred to earlier about mobility of the arts in New York and a speaker there spoke about there being more money for arts and culture in the U.S. military budget than there is through the federal arts program. In other words, winning hearts and minds are the flip side of bombing the enemy into submission. Diplomacy serves particular political, economic and strategic interests and is often pursued in parallel with other forms of hard power, economic sanctions, trade boycotts, military intervention. I often wonder if artists who engage in cultural diplomacy projects understand or are committed to the diplomatic ends to which they are being used or if in their always desperate need for funding they are useful idiots to serve some agenda, to which they have not even the slightest commitment. And then I wonder too about the effectiveness of one of cultural diplomacy events or projects like festivals. Real diplomacy, as the speaker before me referred, it takes years of building relationships, trust building, perhaps mutual respect building. Our cultural diplomacy projects often dependent on public funding appear to be designed to tick some kind of appropriate box at that particular time. Festivals are expressions of cultural democracy, of cultural diplomacy, but they're also sites for the engagement of ideas, ideological assumptions and values. But beyond the festival, beyond the seven to 10 day event, how is cultural diplomacy sustained? Whose responsibility is it? Then forth from the global south and particularly African perspective to come back to some of the language we heard this morning. We do not subscribe to a culture of humiliation as some might ascribe to us because that takes away our agency. Rather what many perceive and experience is still a culture of racism. Let's be frank about it, where black and brown people or simply faceless collateral damage to serve and secure the interests are primarily white nations. A culture of global north superiority, a hegemonic culture that arrogantly sets the terms for engagement with other cultures. A culture not of fear, but of ignorance that breeds a culture of fear among its own. All of which in turn give rise to cultures of resentment, of anger, ultimately of disengagement or perhaps of violent engagement. And then finally, cultural diplomacy projects often take place in the context of inequality, particularly where they involve some form of artistic collaboration to promote intercultural dialogue. Within these projects, there are unspoken power relations with those who bring the resources, having unspoken power in terms of the aesthetic form, the content and the like, and others who are only too happy to be able to engage in the project, accepting that those who are only too happy to travel abroad to collaborate with their French, German, other counterparts in international festivals, accepting it. In a world characterized by enormous inequality with respect to economic, political, military, and cultural power, it is those with resources who mostly determine the geopolitical needs and focus of major cultural diplomacy projects. Yesterday it was because of the Arab Spring, North Africa. Tomorrow it will be China. The day after, it will be Brazil. What we really need currently is a global dialogue about the challenges our world and the next generation face and about how we will deal with this globally. But within the creative and cultural sector, we tend to follow the leads of our governments, so in the case of failed or failing states on the continent where I come from, of international donors, who themselves are subject to funding directives. Perhaps we need some more challenging dialogue amongst ourselves and less diplomacy. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Mike. Wonderful. We now have Borca Pavicovic, who I must say from this morning's session probably needs no introduction, which is good because as a replacement chair, I wasn't given your biography, so I can't introduce you, so. No, I know. It's impossible. Thank you. But can I, this or this or what? It's up to you. What are you comfortable with? Yes. I will grab the first. Okay, I'm wondering now what we are doing here. I'm in all together. And I see a lot of young people here and we are gathered toward the 50 years of the beat-up, as I understand. And now we have a talk about culture and diplomacy, which is a title of that. In that context, I would like to suggest that as a culture diplomacy, we all sign a letter to the Turkish writers and theater people which are in jailed in this moment. Will it that be diplomacy? We have to sign the creation artists, Raukar and the creation artists which are in the rebellion against their minister of cultural or circumstances. Send us a letter in which they are asking us to support the Turkish, because the minister for the theater in Turks, he said, even then it's a quotation on the beat a few days ago. I mean not on beat-up, but somewhere and then it should be performed only national place with a patriotic content. In the state for which the whole world said that it is a rule of law and that this is a democracy and that Erdogan is a democratic elected president. So let's do that. I think that in the department of beat-up, there is a letter in which we collectively and as a beat-up can support our Turkish friends and the collaborators and the journalists and judges and prosecutors which are now imprisoned in the jail. Of course, that in Turkey is not only that situation. I know that in Poland during the constitutional law is that all communistic symbols has to be erased in one year. What I want to say, we have a very complicated situation in Europe, in Serbia very often it has to be said that it reminds on the 90s, but what is very worrying is that everything reminds very much on the 30s. In each of those countries, especially in so-called post-eastern European countries. And of course, everything comes from the make all totalitarianism equality day of the Europe and a lot of, lot of, lot of things. Convergation to making equal Auschwitz and Gulags and everything what's happened till the moment when actually through the whole documents, culture documents, maybe we are a cruiser. And that's what's happened on the Jericho Medusa is now Costa Concordia, you remember the ship. And this is contemporary Jericho. What a friend of mine, Srećko, called, I would say. But we are not here, we can connect it to all of that. But today we are here on a 50-bitef and reading a book of Stanley Cohen, The Status of Deny. I understand very well what you want to say with the South Africa and let me make this metaphor. A lot of philosophers, I'm not a lot, but those who, about we are taking care like Stanley Cohen, which is a sociologist, actually says that in a few years because of class of the division, those who will be in the public space will be refugees, unemployed people and extremely poor people. This is a class division and therefore we have a Europe from 30s, the London economist actually wrote the division between extremely rich and extremely poor people in Europe is on the level of 1830, that's Dickens' time. From that moment is used the national ethnic and element, what we have already now in Bosnia again. Actually, because of the great robbery. So all these ethnic stories and the rest are actually used for question of the citizenship and the question of class division and of the traveling of the richness in a hands of very small bunch of people. You know that all of you, you are sitting here. We are today here, I would say thank you to Mira Traylovich thanks to Jovan Chirilov, they learn me that you always have to form your own theater and this is my heritage. I did it 81 when Mira told me listen, leave at the year 2012, this is the time that you have to make your own theater and that was her great blessing and I have to tell to her thank you so much. I am now older than she was when she died and she died because she went to pension and this is what Jovan Chirilov told me, all these nice stories are not so nice in our circumstances, we can talk, this is Artillery 2012, Dragan Klayich and me were sitting just opposite to there on the round tables which are very important on Bitev, why? Because the critical culture, critical art has been developed and this is very big difference because all these young people who are sitting here and my age because something like authorship art, this is not a question of culture diplomacy. Yes it is, here I brought you the, Katarina give me all these catalogs of Mira Trilovic, this is a brilliant analysis by Ivan Vavoda, which was the advisor of Zoran, assassinated Zoran Djingic and we did an interview here and everything about, mostly about Yugoslavia between two worlds, Yugoslavia as culture diplomacy, listen I understand now the time here in some way to defend the adaptation of the meaning in context, that was something else and that a culture of interpretation is going to kill the culture of remembers. Please don't interpretate the things from this position and from these documents and from this moment in politics especially in the difference between being Europe and being European Union and that what is actually that what's happened when that's happened. So it was not the beginning of this seminar. When you say culture diplomacy, this is now another meaning than Bitev was when it was formed, it was formed in the name of freedom, in the name of rebellion, in the name of progress, in the name of modernity, in the confrontation, in every moment in the quarrel, in dialogue, in dispute, in scandal, in dangerous, in so-called unconvenience, you shouldn't be decent, Bitev was not decent and it was controversial and provocative and these are the things which are most horrifying today. Yes, we should be provocative, should be free, should overthrown all this interpretation and all this bureaucracy pushing of the talent. Today you can invent atomic bomb but you should write properly the European Culture Foundation what you have to write. And this is the question of relation between critical thinking, human being, like one whole person, the culture is something whole. It's not the segmentation, it's not the fragmentation. There is no the dance, the painting art, the choreo drama, the... Vinikolai and all the people, the theater is all together. We are the whole beings and the theater is something whole. That was I want to say from the moment when the Bitev was formed and all these years were actually the years of protest, protest. I mean, culture has its meaning when it is in the deep protest and the Bitev was the center of that. Yugoslavia has to be easternized that it can be dissolved, that it can be destroyed. Yugoslavia was not eastern countries and this is the big difference in today contemporary explanation of the position. For the many years, Biter, if you follow the line, like with Bob Wilson on the beginning this year, you can draw the whole biographies line of Europe and the history of the world theater. Roberto Cciulli, Peter Schumann, Living Theater, Open Theater, Joe Chaikin, Peter Schumann, Dionys in 69th, German Theater, Franz Sauerkratz, the authors, the dancers, the Yugoslav from Kugla Glomishton, the fourth Bitev to the production of the Oliver Frilich performances and other people. So if you follow the creative line of some people which were present for years and years and years, probably Roberto Cciulli, he's all present in this theater. He was directing in 81 in this theater. All these relations were not diplomacy in that sense. We're the sign of equality. We live in a country which we have been equal to each other and it didn't exist that culture of arrogance and inferiority that that's what something is from abroad is coming here. It was a normal friendship relation, normal creative relation, thematic relation, problematic relation. The people were coming of Bitev because they were sharing some problematization, some thematic theory, some interest, some well-tunned sound was in question. You're well-tunned sound and your enlightenment, not in that sense, how to say, the diplomacy concerning the today documents of UNESCO in which I was working, you know. That's what it is, my some kind of, I'm trying to find the place inside of everything what you have said and it is written somewhere here that you have to witness something and then I am witnessing that, that please don't adapt, don't eat, don't expropriate, don't adaptate, don't, how to say, politicize in the sense we have our regime. Nothing can be used, Bitev can't be used, art is not for using. Nothing can be said through culture. The culture is a culture, art is an art. Personally, I mean we needed 15 years to put in the European documents the chapter of culture because as you remember many years ago it was written no culture, no art, human rights, how it was possible to deal with human rights without culture and art, I don't understand but we succeed somehow. But in this moment we should not use it, that in a sense that we have a consensus of equality and not a consensus for being exceptional. If you understand me what I want to say. Bitev was a lot of authors on Bitev, many of them. We're exceptional, this is the individual gesture and only with supporting and having the individual gesture we can talk about real agreement between the people. So in this theater Bitev has been formed 67, then it comes 68, 68, change the world. In this theater was performed Kosa which was Radoragničosic, which was the marginal sign. What Slavoj Žižek would say. Till that moment of Kosa the imperative of the world from my generation was stand up and shout and be rebelled. From the next moment what Slavoj Žižek would say. It is be and enjoy your life. Don't be rebelled, you enjoy. Today we have a survival guide. Today everybody has to survive instead to live. And this is the main subject of our meeting. How to live, not to survive. How to be alive and not to be modest. How to be exclusive, not to be inclusive. And all of those many things are leading just to kill creativity, to kill authorship, to kill exceptional, to make democratic consensus, can consensus of mediocrity. If we allowed that then we will alter on Bitev. Bitev will be alive till the moment that personal witnessing and personal attitude what Kami would say in 20th century. Rebelled man is a substrate of the 20th century and we have to find this substrate for the 21. But that what is lacking in European documents is what a philosophy we have. What is the philosophy? What is Utopia? What is Bitev or Utopia? Can be Utopia. But what is the belief? What will be in the content of Europe? What is that which will not turn us back to the national movement, to the church, to the things which we already thought that they are in the past. Obviously in these days they are not in the past, they are present again and very dangerous. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, I feel like we need a coffee break after that. No, we have to move straight on to our last speaker, Professor Darko Lukic, who is an authority in his field, the author of many books and he's a professor at the Academy of Drama in Zagreb in Croatia. Thank you, Darko. Thank you, Jonathan, and thank you, Borca, for giving me such a nice introduction to what I'm going to speak about. When Jonathan kindly introduced me, he said a few words about, a few of the most important things about my professional biography. But the reason why I'm here is something much more important to me and I would call it my emotional biography. It's my last 35 years' connection with this festival and with these people here. And during that period, I saw different agenda settings and I'm talking to speak about the agenda settings or activism during the festival programming and also in the context of extremely interesting, for me, excellent discussion and presentation of Professor Aleksandar Avicic, thank you so much for that. My research is going into the agenda settings in contemporary festivals, so I will connect that research with a bit of experiences. When I say agenda settings, I'm thinking about what Borca called philosophy. What is philosophy of the festival? And this is the answer for the simple questions. For who are we making the festivals? Which people are we doing that? By which means are we working? And what is our intention? What do we want to succeed? What is our goal working in the festivals? That agenda settings can make different types of festivals. Festivals of pure excellency with a beautiful, excellent artist and with perfect presentations, performance exclusively dedicated to beauty of the art or very commercial, very popular, very profitable festivals or with festivals which are filled with activism and with engagement, which I call agenda settings. So in agenda settings we are operating always with different and very hard questions which are representation, domination, oppression and privileges. Because answers to all these questions, with who are we working, the festival, for who, by which means, by which tools, by which resources is practically coping with representation, with rights, with domination, with oppression and with privileges. During the bit of festival, I saw a little lot of different agenda settings. When Catarina today sharply, as usual, pointed the Catechali invitation had nothing to do with conservatism and then turning back to a traditional theater. It was post-colonial agenda setting much before than post-colonial approach was a fashionable good in big European festivals. So that kind of agenda settings bring us to some kind of audiences and topics and performers which I call invisible. When I say invisible audiences or invisible performers or invisible topics, I say I'm naming the groups and individuals which are in vulgar marketing strategies are called uneligible audiences. Uneligible audiences means the audiences which we don't count on, which cannot buy the ticket for different reasons. So we are talking about people with disability. We are talking about socially unprivileged, which we can vulgarly call poor or uneducated. We are talking about immigrants, people who are not settled in their own culture, people which are linguistically, racially, ethnically, religiously different from the mainstream culture in which they are found. Talking about immigrants today. Then with the prisoners, about prisoners, about different type of children with challenge with the problems in development and so on and so on. How many festivals do we know now in Europe which are setting agenda to present or represent that kind of performers to address that kind of audiences, to raise awareness about that kind of topics instead of mainstream artistic agendas? Very little, I would say. And when I say about invisible audiences, invisible performers, invisible topics, we came to the word, I hate so much, it's the word minority. Why I dislike it so much and despise it so much. Let's see, for example, in total population, I'm using United Nations official records from 2015. In total population of almost eight billion people, we have 15% people with different kind of disabilities. We have 10% people living with serious chronicle conditions. We have 20% people living in poverty. We have 15, we have 26, sorry, percent children under 15. We have 11% people over 65, or elder community. We have 7% of prisoners, 3.5% prisoners, 51% female population, and 8% of LGBT population. So in total world population, we have 150.5% of minority. So who is majority and by which right and for which reason we are talking about majority, when the total population counts on 150.5% of minorities. But raising awareness of these types of minorities as a performers, as an audience, and as a topic of the artistic impression is very, very small and very poor. That's why I think agenda setting in festival programming is something which is our task and which is like let's say one of the possible proposals for philosophy in 21st century. In order to find a way how to make different festivals, how to make different events, then just to produce another one entertainment business because we have so much, so many of them today. What festivals can do really? They cannot change this situation, they cannot change unfortunately the, how many percent of people living in poverty, they cannot change the social inequalities, but they can address, by setting agenda, they can address the problems, they can raise the awareness, they can start, they can give media visibility to invisible groups and that is not small business, it's very, very much we can do. We are not so helpless because just by setting agenda we are giving visibility to large groups of people which remains invisible without that. That's facing the question of otherness because we are on the mainstream festivals. Now I'm speaking about mainstream big theater festivals. We are watching year by year, let's say 20 same directors, very similar aesthetics and very similar topics for the very similar audiences. I meet not similar but the same people from one festival in France to another festival in Germany and another festival in Austria. So agenda setting means activism which is making that pool much bigger than this exclusive small elitist pool of the people which are talking to each other on the same language about the things they already know perfectly because it's, sorry, just wasting time. Using the time would be agenda settings and making these invisible groups more visible in our societies through the festivals. So when Bitov always did it during last 50 years, Bitov did a lot of these agenda settings, I think that this is the right place to rethink the possibilities, to use that experiences for the, not only for programming like even Medenic has said this morning for new programming of future Bitovs, but of course for that, but also for agenda settings for the future festivals, for new festivals and even for the changements of the existing festivals. So thank you very much for your attention. Excellent, we are at the end of our allotted time but the afternoon's proceedings are running late. So we have time for questions and a discussion. You can have two kinds of questions, one to a specific speaker about their talk or a general question to the panel for our discussion. And you'll have to ask it into this microphone so that... Okay, I've got a question that is both for the panel in general and specifically for, sorry, I missed... For Frederick. So this is a question about the, sorry, my name is Jonathan. I'm from the Fidham Theater in Palestine. And my question is about the political contradictions of cultural diplomacy and specifically about the national institution's role in that. So I want to use an example from my own region related to the French Institute. Earlier this year, the French Institute in Israel launched a campaign together with a well-known supermarket chain that was clearly present on the occupied territories. So in that supermarket stores in illegal settlements, there was big signs with the French Institute with a logotype. And at the same time, the French Institute in Palestine were engaged with us in the Fidham Theater of developing corporations for liberating Palestine through what we call cultural resistance. So this kind of contradiction with one branch of representation of a country's foreign policy supports illegal settlements and the other branch of it is trying to participate in some kind of policy of freedom-building, state-building, two-state solution, et cetera. So what happens when these things, how can it be that these things are allowed to happen where there's not some kind of vision that stands behind a state's cultural diplomacy interventions in the world? Thank you for this question. I think the role of the casual diplomacy for France is actually to have a dialogue with everybody. And so, with everybody. And so I think we are not raising any line, black line or white line. We are trying to have a dialogue with everybody so that at some stage, everybody can talk together. So the example that you are giving, which can be really a contradiction of political line, global line, is actually the way that we try to talk and exchange and work with everybody so that at some stage, everybody can come around the table and talk together. I know it's not a statistical theory, but at this stage, it's not only diplomatic, it's also how artists works, because it's not only a diplomatic line, it's also the line that our artistic field in France actually works with everybody and is not necessarily taking strong position. There's not one position of the artistic field. There are actually as many positions as there are artists and audiences. So the solution is not a single solution, but always to collaborate with as many people and as many institutions we can. Thank you, Jonathan, very much for reminding me. I didn't mention in my presentation the specific kind of agenda setting. It's like a conflict and post-conflict societies and communities, which is also a specific task for the theater festivals, and I understand completely your question, and I know it's really very hard to deal with that kind of situations, because post-conflict and conflict situations are extremely vulnerable situations, and I also was, we all, I think, was in that kind of situation after the war in Yugoslavia. We met each other in different spaces in Europe, and there was so many people which tried to reconcile Borca and me, but I said we never had a conflict. I never fought with Borca. You don't have to reconcile me with Borca just because your diplomats have to earn their salaries. So I understand that you should be very, very careful when you are dealing with conflict and post-conflict situations, because sometimes, or mostly, you can produce much more damage than good. So it's very, very slowly, I see Sun Chitza agree because she knows what I'm talking about. You can use then psychodrama, drama therapy, different types of approach, but not classic, not ordinary theater approach because it can produce much more damage than good. I'm Alexandra Joriciewicz, and of course, not because you told that you liked my paper, but I have to say that you tackled something which is very important about the festivals because the festivals are always like fortress. They're closing themselves up before they were opened to the people, to the streets, and to the environment where they were staged, but now I can see everywhere you go in the world, not only Bitev, but also Avignon, Edinburgh. You have like, these are the fortresses for very specialized people, elite like Bayreuth, where only people who are music lovers, Wagner lovers can go and nobody else. So it's like, you don't have this kind of, how to say, dialogue with the cities where the festivals are going on, and that is something, it's a result of whatever. I mean, we spoke about that of new market logic or post-capitalist society, which is thriving exactly on this kind of industry. Also, festivals can be a big, big industry, and I see that attitude and behavior of the people. On the other hand, I noticed in what you call social theater, there is a growth of this kind of, what you mentioned, as an action agenda or new ways of integrating these people. For example, again, I'm giving an example in Italy. A group of people started to do theater in the jails. And slowly, now it is a big movement in Italy where you have several jailed troops in the prison, which are really exceptional artistically. Ravano Punta, who is doing in Volterra with really heavy criminals, theater, which cannot travel around, but people are coming to see that. And there are two or three festivals of prison theaters already in Italy. So it needs, festival is always something like a cherry on a topping, because it has to be, it's a result of something. I'm not sure if you can start with the festival. I think the festival has to be something which has to be built up and worked on. So it's a small comment, no question. I don't have any specific question. Why is he recording? Am I on? Now, now going back to your comment and going back to Drago Lukic, I think it's really difficult to consider the role and the shift in the meaning of what a festival is, isolated from the overall trends in the city and urban development. So when we're talking about Bitef, or I'll come from Dubrovnik, hence I was brought up, but, sorry, I'm not sure about Dubrovnik, I'm not sure. Oh, yeah, of course. I wear black, thanks, that's famous. So I obviously come from a city which has a festival that's even older so it's like 67 years old. It was starting from 28, then finally was founded in the 50s. And when we talk about agenda setting, it was really moving to read Tito's rationales on why to set up first Dubrovnik, then Split, then Belgrade, and all these points that were opening up this seemingly backward, yep, open communist country, of accommodating to new trends in cultural and artistic gestures all around the world. So I think that the crucial point is that festivals that we know and that brought us up or they shaped our environments, our social imaginaries, our ideas about arts and cultures are not in the same format anymore. We are talking about institutions then. You know, Bitef was an institution in literal sense of representation, what it stood for, for public representations of the interests and the needs of the working people and classes of Yugoslavia. It shaped the city and the city shaped festival jointly. So it wasn't that it was using one or the other as it does now. Whereas now festivals, even in my own meaning, in my own research words, are these fleeting things that are looking for the places, how to make themselves more attractive with the space, or with the city, or how the city makes itself more attractive with the festival. So it's this mutual instrumentalization between festivals and the urban environments now. So in that sense, it would be sort of interesting when talking about agenda setting to see what is the mandate in the sense of representation. And why today we have, in the sense of festivals and institutions, many festivals, especially now parts of this Europe, that take over some of the mandates of chores and roles from the institutions that the institutions themselves don't do. I mean, in Croatia, going back again to Dubrovnik, we had Dubrovnik summer festival that started going back in sort of experimental contemporary theater, and then Art Workshop Lazarity, and NGO took over that part and started doing the festival on their own. Why? Because these guys stopped doing it. So in a sense, there's a whole, I think, this confusion about what we mean when we say what festival it is, what it does, who does it represent, what kind of domination does it communicate, and what's its mandate at the end of the day? Just one sentence. Thank you, yes. For all you who are not from Belgrade, this, we are sitting in Atelier 212, and the street in which the Atelier 212 was formed and Bitev was established was Ive Lole Ribara. And this is the name of the big revolution and fighter and incredibly beautiful young man who died, who was killed in 1943, when first Yugoslavia has been formed through the League. Today, we are sitting in a street called Svetogorska. That means this fighter and second war enough, he moved to Svetogorska, Svetagora, this is something very, really, I don't know. Yes, yeah, but Svetogorska, that means some holly, holly. And this is actually this changing of the name of Topponym, he's showing you the changing between two countries. And what Jovan Cirol would say to the director, I was living in a four, he was living in a four countries. Before, first Yugoslavia said in the same house. In the same house. Well, we're halfway through the coffee break, so I think we should, the whole schedule is running late, so that's, thank you to our distinguished panel. Thank you. Thank you for stepping with the last minute, Jonathan. I was working with the Popcash Foundation. Oh yeah? Yeah, and we've been there in Mario, Jonathan. Yeah. I see you've been working with the Foundation. Yes. You've been actually there, you've been working with the Foundation.