The cradle of nationalism, Europe can be a laboratory for rethinking cultural diversity in a global denationalized world: this is the challenge to intellectuals in Europe.

The ‘return to Europe’ after 1989 marked a seismic change not only for Central and Eastern European countries (CEE), but also provoked a re-examination of the idea of ‘Europe’ and the future of the EU. This open, interactive event reviews the evolving cultural and political relationship building over the last twenty years between CEE countries and the EU, and asks what lessons could be learned for future EU members.

Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall fell. Over the last few decades, the world has not become a fairer place: disparities between the rich and the poor either remained or increased, not only between the north and the developing south but also within developed countries themselves. Today’s global economic crisis reveals that not only bureaucratic socialism but also ultra-liberal capitalism are in need of profound democratic reform.

European Alternatives is involved in an artistic/research project which aims to explore the thought-provoking potential of understanding post-national features of the now-called former-Yugoslavian identity.

With the pervasive trend towards the commodification of knowledge under intellectual property law, what is being challenged is the very ideal of the educational-cultural sphere as the locus of mutual understanding in a pluralist society.

In an area like Europe where languages being spoken outnumber the countries, France delays joining the move of multilingualism which is at the core of cultural diversity. Why and what can be proposed?

Rasheed Araeen is an artist and founding editor of the celebrated journal Third Text. In this interview he talks about the significance of globalisation for the arts, and the political significance of the artist.

Paul Gilroy on Alfredo Jaar’s cosmopolitan challenge to institutionalised indifference.
The growing inequality between the overdeveloped world and the rest threatens to compromise the ground on which a resurgent understanding of common humanity will eventually have to be erected.

In his work Chilean-born, New York-based artist Alfredo Jaar explores the relationship between the “First” and the “Third Worlds”. How the two are materially interdependent and the former implicated in maintaining the power dynamics of the relationship, and how this translates into visual representations of the “Third World” by the “First”.

As artists, writers, musicians and thinkers come to London for a Cultural Congress as part of the Festival of Europe, what is the relationship between the arts and engagement in Europe?