The publishing house "Archipelag" organizes the Belgrade Festival of European Literature and, in this time of cultural poverty, asks - are culture and literature subversive?
The best of everything, the best for everyone - is the slogan of the Belgrade Festival of European Literature, which will be held from June 3 to 5 in the Dom omladine. Readings by famous writers, exclusive guests and a panel on contemporary literature and culture are the programs that make this festival recognizable and unique.
As before, the author and organizer of the Belgrade Festival of European Literature is the Archipelago publishing house.
Gojko Božović, editor-in-chief and founder of "Archipelago", tells "Vreme" that they have not organized literary and cultural events for the past six months, although they are recognizable for that.
Without any support
"We canceled planned events, we didn't schedule new ones. We did our job, but we couldn't just do our job. We published books and initiated topics that contribute to the understanding of social circumstances," explains Gojko Božović.
This year's festival will be the 14th in 18 years of "Archipelago". It is impossible not to notice that it continued in the very year when cultural programs were reduced to a minimum, primarily due to the absence of any support from the Ministry of Culture and the City of Belgrade, and the reduction of the already too low budget allocated for culture.
"We are organizing the Belgrade Festival of European Literature with a traditionally small budget. This year, Belgrade suspended its competitions for culture. We did not even apply to the Ministry of Culture because the restrictive conditions of the Ministry meant that we had to change the visual identity of the Festival, which we did not want to do."
Let us remind you that this is the decision of the Ministry of Culture to purchase from publishers for libraries only those books that were published in Cyrillic, which Archipelago, like many publishers, refused.
Festival guests
Gojko Božović says that the festival has had "excellent cooperation with the Goethe Institute from Belgrade for years. The fruit of that cooperation is Klemens Mayer's guest appearance at this year's festival. This year we also have the support of the Traduki network. Enthusiasm is the most important resource of our culture, this has been shown for a long time, but culture also requires a responsible and thoughtful cultural policy."
The festival is organized by Archipelago, but not only its authors take part in it. This year's guests are, in addition to the aforementioned German novelist Clemens Mayer, the famous Slovenian novelist and poet Jernej Županič, novelist Neda Bjelanović and poet Nenad Jovanović.
"At the center of the festival, as a driving question, is the topic of the festival panel with which we start this year's program: Are culture and literature subversive? The crisis of critical thinking and the marginalization of culture and literature are parallel processes. Without the renewal of the subversive, critical spirit of culture and literature, it is difficult to imagine the renewal of critical thinking without which there is neither a just nor a truly stable society," says Božović.
Free entrance
Clemens Mayer's novel "Projectors", known to local audiences for his work "Stone Beating", was awarded the Bavarian Literary Prize in 2024 and the LiteraTour Nord award this year, and will soon be published in the Serbian language. The novel of the second guest of the festival - Jernej Županič, laureate of the Award of Slovenian Literary Criticism and the Jenka Award - "Behemoth" was recently published in Serbian as well.
And the work of the only writer at this year's festival, Neda Bjelanović - "Red Roofs" attracted a lot of attention from literary critics and readers, and was in the short and narrow choices for our most prestigious literary awards. Neda Bjelanović wrote a believable, emotionally captivating, deeply moving and authentic story, according to critics in their reviews of "Red Roofs".
Another guest of the festival, Nenad Jovanović, who was last year's winner of the Diss Award for his entire poetic oeuvre, has been living in Canada for years and teaches film direction and dramaturgy at well-known world universities.
By the way, the Belgrade Festival of European Literature is one of the most visited events of its kind. Entrance is free.
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