The second European Creative Camp (ECC), the ECC017 was on one hand an upgrade of our first European Creative Camp, the ECC016, we held in Germany. At the same time the attempt to create a broader coalition around the idea to gather young creatives and question them about essential questions, they all are concerned with, probably more than us that will disappear much earlier for the face of earth.
After certain difficulties we had with our German partner, the planning was unstable, the people involved quite fragile and more like participants themselves, we decided to challenge our capabilities in doing the ECC017 in our hometown Slovenj Gradec. There was just one major issue we would have to confront; we were about to lose our Postaja Raum AU and therefore all our exhibition spaces, our offices, due to construction plans of our municipality. We needed therefore some alternative location and by bringing an international project like the ECC017 to Slovenj Gradec, we rightfully thought, to have a better advantage towards our municipality.
The talks with our major Andrej Čas went well, the city of Slovenj Gradec agreed to support us by offering us a, at that moment empty house, formerly used by the local music school. Perfect starting condition!
Starting with the condition of having a house capable of hosting up to 60 people on mattresses and the agreement with the neighboring sport facilities to use their showers. We sontinued setting up the concept. Our partners remained the Körmendi Kulturális Központ (Hungary) and the association Future Icons e.V. (Austria). We did not renew our partnership with the Germans due to mentioned difficulties, but we enlarged,
content-related our partnership towards southeast, with the European Center for the Study of War and Peace in Zagreb, Croatia.
The core team was composed, as in the first edition, by Lym Moreno, Gerald Baumgartner, Urška Čerče and me Rado Carlo Poggi. Additional impulses came from our new partners and from our resident cook for the time of this camp, Irena Šisernik, who cooked every morning and evening for us. Lunch was also locally inspired but served in the neighboring restaurant of Vili Hirtl.
In fact the challenge we faced was quite exciting, to research the role of inventive initiatives at developing the European society. We needed to understand the state of affairs, we needed to research inventive initiatives and we needed to enlighten them in the context of how they can, could and should influence the future of the EU.
The camp itself was full of engaged talks, presenting and explaining of various standpoints, elaborating a visual explanation of them, etc. We were able not only to organize an Open Studio at the end of the camp, but also two separate artistic projects within this camp, one being a video-work named “12”, by the Hungarian artist Tamas Karadi and the other the public intervention “Prste proč”, by Slovenian art historian Tina Kralj.
However, also a publication was going to be produced, just that we went on enlarging it, due to our common impression, that we should invite a broader authorship than just the participants of this camp.
Resumed it was a good week, inspired by working in our hometown. Thank you!
Look for yourself at our video fly-through on the raum AU youtube channel.
