Manja Ristić is a professional violinist, an electronic music producer, short story writer, poet, video maker and a cultural and artistic manager. Manja is an active member of several music ensembles and has performed throughout Europe. She is the founder and director of the Association of Multimedia Artists AUROPOLIS .

These videos have been created to present an inside view of the local communities, cultural trends and everyday reality of the south Adriatic Sea region during the summer season, which is, generally speaking, the most active period of the year. Diversity in dynamics between seasons would perhaps be obvious only with a winter edition of these viewpoints clearly showing the different potentials for cultural activism.

Here I focused on the areas of Croatia that in the last ten to 15 years of “mass tourism” expansion attracted people with their immense historical and natural attractions. Therefore, my intention was to show the real need for independent cultural and artistic activities in the region. In a way, I’m also presenting the current status of arts and culture in this part of the Adriatic region that is so full of diversity and colours.

Behind the scenes, we see the difficulties and uncertainty of artists and cultural activists who are dedicating themselves in programme productions, events and a variety of individual creative projects. Focusing in-depth on the obstacles that our colleagues are facing is important to perceive and comprehend the region’s “peripheral” places. Because of their particular identity, these places build the common cultural heritage of the whole Europe.

Places such are Split, Korčula and Dubrovnik are truly dense and rich in historical terms, but in the framework of contemporary free culture, they are rather lost. These places, therefore, deserve serious attention, both in research for common values and roots as well as in contemporary cultural exploration.
The human potential is not a problem at all, since cultural curiosity is deeply embedded in the mentality of the region. But the obstacles for overcoming recent history and the struggle for cultural transparency in decentralised areas clearly show us the lack of sustainable cultural and social development policies in this part of the world.

There is still a huge gap between Croatia’s cultural policies and real cultural needs. In this context most of the showcased artists and activists depend on their local authority’s attitude to commercial/tourist culture and relations with central government structures.

From the exclusive interview with Petar Milat, one of the founders of Multimedia Institute in Zagreb (later the well-established cultural centre Club MAMA), we have a clear and in-depth overview of the last ten year struggle to build up free culture platforms, programmes, modules and policies. As Petar says, just by following the ideology of free culture, activity developed into initiatives aimed at changing and restructuring governmental frameworks, unwillingly becoming a political factor. This is a perfect example of the dynamics considering the process (still in progress) of major political and structural changes in one of the biggest ex Yugoslavian Republics. It is obvious that awareness among civil society and cultural activists is much more progressive and functional than the governmental policies.

The video viewpoints of Adriatic Euro-region are a creative and dynamic description of the atmosphere that is certainly more open to international cultural exchange than some years ago.

What can be done now is to support international collaborations with these centres and activists, implementing programmes or projects with them, as production structures are fully developed. The potential for collaboration can be seen in these videos.

Manja Ristić, October 2008