Modelling Cultural and Art Institutions

The book proposes an institution as a producer of sociality, or a socially and politically concerned and relevant content versus the institution as a producer of an aesthetics that is indifferent to the social reality in which it appears and functions.

How do we think and imagine cultural and art institutions nowadays? How they need to be transformed to meet the needs of the artists and professionals in the field?

This book examines the theoretical and practical tensions and questions related to cultural and art institutions in the context of North Macedonia and the wider region of former Yugoslavia. The author explores the needs in the art field of contemporary performing arts (post-dramatic theatre, dance, performance, choreography, etc.) and offers approaches to modelling and governing contemporary performing art institutions from the perspective of the independent cultural and art sector. The book proposes a post-modern cultural and art institution, or a co-institution, based on co-curation and shared leadership as opposed to the traditional or standard model of institution of arts and culture. The author offers an activist, self-organized and horizontal approach to governing, instead of vertical or top–bottom, and modelling based on shared policies and a participative approach, instead of authoritarian partocratic policy-making.

"Innovative and challenging analysis of the changing realities of the institutional cultural system. Conceptually sophisticated, compelling and with imaginative and ethically relevant solutions, this book is the timely response to the crucial issues in cultural management and cultural policy."

- Milena Dragićević Šešić, prof. emerita, University of Arts Belgrade