Following the Istanbul Plenary Meeting in 2006, IETM once more met in Istanbul, this time for a Satellite gathering in collaboration with CUMA – Contemporary Utopia Management.

Our main concern was collaboration with and within the Balkans: imagining new models of collaboration. This is why we again teamed up within the Balkan Express, the ongoing dynamic platform for collaboration, coordinated by CUMA in collaboration with IETM, Bunker Ljubljana and other partners.

Balkan Express gathered artists and cultural operators from the Balkans and from other European regions to meet, exchange, get inspired and imagine concrete collaborative projects.

In the Balkans, even more than in the other regions, performing arts organisations are functioning in a duality. They can be either independent or state-led, either project-based or subsidised, either small, dynamic and fragile or heavy, relatively secure and bureaucratised. These two parallel worlds co-exist and rarely get the chance to collaborate, to learn from one another, to help and support each other. How do we reconsider this duality? How do we work with the advantages of both worlds? How do we imagine new collaborative models that will make us use the best of both to stimulate the sector and bring more artists to more diverse audiences? How do we change our policies and our practices to make them serve the nature and needs of contemporary art better?

In the 3 days of the meeting, we were inspired and imagined answers to these questions by hearing different experiences, looking at examples of good practice and good new models, talking to artists, visiting venues and seeing artistic work.

Image in banner: © Feyzan Demirci