Pravdoliub Ivanov - "Border by Memory" - http://www.arttoday.org/

On January 1, 2007, 17 years after the fall of Communism, Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union amidst rapturous celebrations. The Romanian president said that this was an "enormous chance for future generations", while the Bulgarian president referred to accession as a "heavenly moment". The two most recent members bring some 30 million extra people to the EU, which now stretches as far east as the Black Sea.

So how have the artistic practices of the independent cultural sector in Romania and Bulgaria changed in the few last years, especially in light of intensifying cross-border cultural collaboration? What is the role of state support for this sector today and is there any promising future? How does the recent accession influence cultural life and what are the challenges of this process?

We put all these questions and more to prominent artists, arts managers, curators, researchers and policy-makers from both Romania and Bulgaria. Corina Suteu – director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York – and Bulgarian art critic Vladiya Mihailova gave an overview of our interviewees’ responses. Full texts of the interviews are available at www.cult.bg (for Bulgaria) and www.ecumest.ro (for Romania).

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