The 5th getogether was held in the City Museum, Ljubljana, from 6-8 May 2007. This getogether was a moment to reflect upon the activities that have been supported by ALMOSTREAL so far, as well as the activities that are due to unfold in the next months. It has shaped the ideas towards the 5th stage to become a closing project for ALMOSTREAL.

FIRST DAY 7 May 2007

BRIEFING stage1 - On the first day, participants from stage 1 spoke about their collaborative project "Political practices in (post) Yugoslav art". The strongest intentions between the stage 1 organisations is to draw a bridge between the work and movements of artists of the modernist Yugoslav heritage and contemporary art practice: to re-examine and reconstruct the progressive attitudes and processes of conceptual artists from the former Yugoslav artistic discourse of the ‘70s and ‘80s in particular. WHW, kuda.org, SCCA/pro.Ba and PRELOM kolektiv are working together to retrieve positive alternative knowledges from this socialist heritage and to further realise new possibilities of cultural production (such as exhibitions, film screenings, journal publications, public debates).

Maria Lind, one of the advisors of the ALMOSTREAL projects, pointed out that “Political practices in (post) YU art” has very ideological and political implications. The Swedish Foreign Minister (previously international envoy in the former YU) for example could really learn about these examples…” It could be also interesting for the ECF in providing the context for developing, even marketing a public, political awareness on these political implications the stage 1 projects.

BRIEFING stage 4 - Jeanne van Heeswijk and Dennis Kaspori spoke about the Blue House and the departure point for AR stage 4, which concerns the theme of hospitality, particularly the notion of hospitality in the Dutch context. Stage 4 will take place in the Blue house, Ijburg. The Blue House is a meeting place for local residents and a temporary house for artists, creative thinkers, philosophers, architects among others to consider and realise new community structures. Through its activities the Blue House tries to create new possibilities for public life on the island, to create conditions for a more inclusive form of urbanism within the heavily predetermined urban regulations common to Dutch urban planning projects.

INTERCULTURALITY ≠ TRANSCULTURALITY The use of the concept interculturality was criticised by Sher Doruff and Maria Lind on the basis that it is only about interacting between existing cultural spheres. Transculturality on the otherhand is about entering into another sphere, whereas interculturality is not a transformative interaction. EIPCP articulates this distinction. Transculturality goes beyond existing cultures. Should we articulate transcultural as opposed to collaboration?

SECOND DAY 8 May 2007

INTRODUCING the technical and conceptual lay-out for ALMOSTweb - Rather than analysing and evaluating resulting artworks, ALMOSTweb focuses on methodologies of collaboration and attempts to formulate what collaboration could mean in contemporary art and how artistic processes could really affect political processes. The way ALMOSTweb is being created and implemented is, moreover, itself a ‘collaboration’ in practice.

ALMOSTweb is a tool that sets out to create the conditions for a more nuanced conversations and debate for contemporary art production and the policies which determine how art is supported. The key is to create a collaborative and self-governing infrastructure for communication between artists and the funding sector. This ‘infrastructure’ is not only a communication tool, but also opens information about art practices and its support to public debate. ALMOSTweb is about breaking down representation to smaller, molecuralised information in order to show the dynamics, and awareness of contexts of things that take place.

COLLABORATION - Maria Lind raised the importance of considering how the artistic collaborations supported through ALMOSTREAL are brought forward as propositions that affect a European cultural-political discourse.

“…it hasn’t happened before to bring together different cultural producers and policy makers, especially since cultural policy is (mostly) narrowly bound up with national funding. However, what’s very important is how cultural producers can use the situations.”

The discussions on the second day pivoted around the issue of funding and the possibilities (if any) of levels of collaboration between funder and funded: The participation of the funder in developing and shaping the instances of collaboration and processes of production with the artists was again met with very mixed views.

ECF has political ambitions: it cooperates in a transnational cartel of organisations who lobby for change and reform within current European cultural policies. Although ECF is not a dominant player in the cultural–political discourse within Europe, it does have access to political structures and therefore does have a potential for political efficacy: although modest, it’s at least something.

It should be ALMOSTREAL's ambition to make the most of this political potential by engaging in a more nuanced and accurate representation of the work it supports:

“All too often, the representation of art to policy makers and political structures is divorced from the practice, which leads to inaccurate recommendations toward future policies. “

“The ECF is trying to get really concrete, practical results that land on the table of European policy makers, politicians.”

“…we have 2 different funding models: in the US the funding is based on building individual social relations. In Europe it was public funding at an arms lengths principle – a distinct distance between the funder and the funded. In ALMOSTREAL it is a merging of the two since it involves both the funder and the funded to become more involved on a personal, individual level. It is necessary to ask as practitioners, how would we really like to see funding taking place?”

Whereas stage 1 particpants express a preference for the “arms length” principle, stage 4 participant Jeanne van Heeswijk believes

“…it is important to formulate what can be another structure beyond these two funding models. It’s always been about getting money, but for me it is never always about money, but also involves many other things, such as modes of support with visa application and access and more easy exchange routes that enables mobility between spaces and places…and about extending networks.”

“…the schmooze factor between the individual and the funder is not explicit in the current European trend (which is increasingly blurring the public and private models of funding) because the individual in Europe is situated within a particular governing structure and therefore there are many more layers and implications.”

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The 5th getogether coincided with the Balkan - Mediterranean Reflection group of the ECF; a gathering of cultural actors from Southern Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey and the Balkans to share interests and experiences in relation to local and transEuropean cultural practices.