From Complicated Past Towards Shared Future

The project „From Complicated Past Towards Shared Futures” is built on project partners’ (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz (Poland), National Gallery of Art in Lithuania, Art Museum in Malmo (Sweden) and OFF-Biennale Association in Budapest (Hungary)) shared interest and recent work on the complex past of Europe in 20th century, uncovering silenced and difficult histories across abovementioned countries. The project will explore and communicate these entanglements of past and present, and will seek for new approaches how art and culture can raise awareness on these issues for wider public, and influence current realities. An embedded vision of this project is to stand against the rise of the right-wing movements, hostility and discrimination towards national, ethnic, sexual minorities and other underrepresented groups by inviting artists from these groups to take part in content creation.To extend the scope of the recent local and national activities, all of the partners have engaged in shaping a collaborative project to reach a wider international audience and to strengthen their capacity of cross-disciplinary working and transnational cooperation and together search for and share novel and best working art mediation and education strategies. The primary aim of this project is collaboration among small scale art institutions joined together to develop new shared methods and practices in audience development and facilitate transnational mobility opportunities of culture workers and artists. In order to overcome viewpoint that is restricted in local and one specialty area, the project will be based on creative co-productions and transdisciplinary collaborations between professionals from the fields of art and media, education, activism, memory studies etc. Cross-disciplinary teams of experts will share their competences and together with art institutions will develop unconventional perspectives dealing with difficult past and present.