Mobility Justice: Fairer Policies, New Practices, and Radical Solidarity

Yeah, yeah, if you need anything, come to us. Don't hesitate. And what we'll do now is slowly but surely kick off this event. And to kick off this event, I will first invite Boyana Kostova, the president of the board of On the Move, to take the floor. >> [applause] [applause] >> Thank you, Johan. It is my pleasure to open this conference because On the Move each year organizes these cultural mobility forums to collectively investigate international artists and cultural [clears throat] mobility trends. This year, 2026, the focus is on cultural mobility justice. Talking about this topic here in Skopje is very relevant. But, it can also be seen as an ironic. Cultural professionals, artists from the Balkans, Eastern Europe in general, have been dealing with mobility injustice for a long long long years. And the world in which we currently live is full with injustice. A world increasingly governed by the erratic impulses of blind power, with figures like Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, who turn politics into a theater of irrational violence and extreme bureaucracy. Bureaucracy being the culprit. Bureaucracy has a very special quality. In its ideal form, it's one of modernity's greatest gifts. With it and democracy, All are treated equal and everyone stands equal before the law. Farmer, teachers, doctors, artists, they all find themselves conscripted into this labyrinth system. Never-ending process of collecting documents, spending money that you very often you don't have, wasting time, having your patience and believing in the system tested. And eventually, you can win >> [clears throat] >> and you do get that visa and you do travel. But even when you get to travel, you don't always get to participate. It is an endless road. It is an endless loop. For many around the world, this road is not a metaphor. It is lived experience. It is the road to the embassy. It is the desert road, the sea crossing to Europe, the corridor between camps. And very often this road ends not in safety, but in more borders and more walls. I was born and raised here in Macedonia, but I'm living abroad for some 25 years. And I myself am still on that road. Maybe not geographically anymore, but but emotionally. And looking around in this room, knowing some some of you, I know you share the same experience. And sometimes I wonder, is there a way forward in this road? Because I've seen many different many many obstacles in my personal and professional life on this road. But it also reminds me that we tried and that we keep on trying. I I that's what matters. Trying to claw our way out or our way in whatever that means. We have lived the experience and our task may not be to preserve the past but to ensure that the future cannot be built without changing and accounting for this all moments unbearable present. But we have an amazing group of panelists and speakers who have shared and touched upon these topics. Uh before I leave I also want to express my gratitude and thank you to everyone who's been involved in organizing and supporting this event. Supported by the European Union in collaboration with Cooperativa that is on the board member. Cooperativa being represented by Aris Shkota from Bombardi Foundation, Nikola Saric and Ana Grabar and some other members from uh from North Macedonia. An enormous thank you to the venue and the colleagues working in these venues, Albanian Theater Skopje, MKC, Faculty of Things That Can't Be Learned, Lokum Fest for Contemporary Arts, Center Jadro, Lokomotiva, Center for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture, the Creative Europe Desk North Macedonia, Password Production and Labora Of course, an enormous thank you to our producer Galina Strachkova and Milica Ilić, the curator for the morning sessions tomorrow with visual arts, performing arts and art in public spaces. We also have here representatives from the European Commission, the Nevena Jovanović and Gosia Słomka. So I thank them as well. And finally, thank you to my fellow board members that you can recognize with the blue stickers that have lost. And of course, final thank you to the guests. Thank you both to the team of Nomad the here physically represented by Johan, Maria, and Bernardo. >> Woo! >> And >> Woo! >> [applause] >> I'M VERY GLAD TO CHOOSE AT LEAST ALL THESE wonderful organizations that you have to work with to put together this edition of the festival. Of the festival of the forum. I'm really into the festival. Um we are also very happy to have our dear member board Cooperativa who partnered to organize this event and we could rely on so many good tips and advice on their wonderful communication channels. So, Aris, I would like you to take the floor and say a few words in the name of our board Cooperativa. >> [applause] >> Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for having us here and thank you for doing this together. I'm very happy to attend the Nomad the event for the very first time and partner new member. I had a bumpy mobility situation last night related to the day maybe but I'm happy to be in Boyana City and happy to be in Skopje where we keep coming back as Cooperativa. Um Skopje last night I had a moment when I was struggling to enter my hotel at 2:00 a.m. and I saw the Swedish Embassy was a place where uh, I could get a visa to Germany through the streets where the Germans didn't need to be Christian. Skopje is also the place where, if I'm invited and permitted, I can come and apply to get a visa for my mother's birthday in Bosnia. And also I can come back to pick it up a few days later. Uh, so for visas, and it has been a place where there were no embassies in the country we live in that we would come and apply for visas. So for our mobility, it's important. And also for our mobility before we could even get visas, it was one of the few places we could actually go to as Kosovo citizens, or UN citizens, or whatever kind of citizenships we had during my brief, uh, uh, life. I'm not very well versed in, uh, mobility, but our lives and experiences have been shaped by it or the lack thereof. So I'm, uh, really happy that, uh, we will get to look at our current challenges and current, uh, environment from the, uh, prism of mobility justice and mobility injustice today with many, uh, brilliant friends and, uh, colleagues who have come here. I really look forward to, uh, share discussions in this space with you and the off space. So welcome to you all and I, uh, wish you a pleasant stay in Skopje. Thank you. >> [applause] [applause] >> Thank you very much, uh, and as he said his kind words, I maybe want to say a few words myself. As we prepared this edition of the forum, having in mind mainly the questions that you, as forum members, as artists and cultural managers active in Europe, outside of Europe, in Skopje, in all of past Macedonia and South East Europe. We wanted to bring as as much as possible all the issues and questions you might encounter in in your professional trajectory. So, what we try to do is to create a forum where we propose many different parallel conversations and where hopefully, as much as possible, you will be able to contribute. So, the spirit of the day is really to hear from you. We are not, you know, top-down approach. There are no people that know more than others. We are full of kindness and generosity in this world. And I trust that we will not only respect one another, listen one another. The purpose of the day is to build on collective knowledge, but also to look at what could be potential solutions. I don't expect to have full-fledged blueprints at the end of the day, but I do know that many of you have innovative practices, interesting case studies, leading phenomenal initiatives at local, national, or international levels. And we need to have you in the spotlight and explain what you're doing and share this knowledge, this know-how with your colleagues. So, I hope you are in this mindset, in the sharing and kind mindset, in the generous one. And I'm sure we'll learn a lot about you. I know that the theme of this forum, cultural mobility justice, will raise many questions. What is justice? What is fairness? How do we define it? Also, how do we recognize it? How do we work towards a goal that could be more justice and more fairness? And I have no answers to this, but I know that collectively we will be able maybe to identify unjust and unfair practices. But I hope that collectively we can not have group therapies or come and spend the day and talk about the awful situation here and in many places around the globe, but try as much as we can, you know, to go towards solutions or positive aspects. I hope. I have a lot of hopes. I want to say that we start the day with a rockstar. I'm not sure you want me to present you this way, Mariana, but we are very, very happy to welcome Mariana Serkovic with us today. And she very kindly agreed to to deliver a speech. What we wanted to do and this is something that was also a key concern of ours during the duration of the of the forum is to situate our conversation, to make sure that the voices from the regions are heard because it's not that often that European and international networks come to this particular part of the world. And even if we have a couple of break moments for networking moments that we can interact with the Balkan regions, we really wanted to situate our conversation and not stay in this kind of meta Um so Mariana, I will give you the floor. I will invite you to come with me on stage. You are a cultural activist, a producer, a lecturer. You are doing many things, not only in Europe, but across the the globe. And we are looking forward to to hear from you. Thank you very much. >> [applause] >> Good morning, everyone. Uh first I want to thank the On the Move platform for this invitation. Uh and it's really both an honor and a privilege to be here and to share some of my experiences and insights here. And I really hope that this uh these topics and these insights will contribute to a better understanding of how global political and cultural conflicts are perceived from a small European country, from uh the so-called Western Balkan country, and also from within a current resistance a resistance movement in Serbia. And I say I'm uh especially grateful for this opportunity to speak about this experience and about the students uh Serbian students movement and civil movement because they really need to be heard and they need allies uh among you. I would also like to thank everyone of you uh who came outside of this region or outside of Europe, have to swap here to this beautiful place rich with remarkable people who deserve the support and recognition of the international arts and culture community. Organizing an international gathering outside of European centers for me is always more than just a meeting. It is an act of solidarity and a gesture of implication towards local artists and cultural actors. And I must also remind you that just a few weeks ago a new procedure of control at the borders of the Schengen zone started for all of non- Schengen country citizens, including [clears throat] all of us in this region. So, we are controlled in a much stricter way, which makes us feel very strange, if not unwanted, and this increases the obstacles that the number of obstacles for our mobility, not just for cultural workers, but for all citizens. Many of the European European Union citizens actually are not aware of this of this change. Finally, I must say I'm extremely happy to be in Skopje because I also feel at home here. In recent years, you all know it, we wake up every day to the reality of a world that is dramatically changed. The intensity of injustice, terrorized wars and genocide, hatred spread through media and social networks, including our parliaments, the acceleration of inequality where the rich grow richer and the poor poorer, the erosion of rights, the dismantling of public services such as health care, education, and social protection, and the destruction of natural environments and safe food systems has created a climate of fear, depression, suspicion, and denial. This is the reality in which we, as artists and cultural workers, must find motivation, strength, and reasons not to give up, and we do it every day. The mobility of artists and cultural workers has been one of the most important features of the European space in recent in the last couple of decades. It has enabled dynamic exchanges of ideas and practices of being together, not only across borders, but also across social classes and communities, including micro-mobilities within cities, regions, and countries. These exchanges, both within Europe and beyond, have transformed practices of hospitality, softened institutional rigidity, and introduced care, sensitivity, and diversity into how we relate relate to one another. This has made our societies richer and perhaps slightly better. 25 years ago, when I first encountered European networks in the art art world, and coming from the politically, socially, and economically devastated [clears throat] country, I saw the cultural landscape largely dominated by older white men, directors, curators, and mostly male superstar artists who held power and who decided who mattered. Today, the situation has shifted. Many strong women have become leading voices. Their perspectives are reshaping artistic spaces. Numerous artists from other continents and cultures are present on our artistic in our artistic spaces and stages. Numerous networks and platforms are moving beyond beyond Euro-Western frameworks toward greater diversity, horizontality, and openness to what lies beyond the visible center center. However, alongside this expansion of mobility and exchange, culture has also undergone increasing change starting with over-bureaucratization. Endless project applications, reporting, fundraising, and the pressure to meet imposed metrics have weakened the capacity of cultural infrastructures to respond to social realities and to the shrinking spaces of democracy. The freelance condition of many among us has become a trap. Instead of enabling freedom, it isolates knowledge, making it harder to share and build collectively. Precarity goes hand in hand with the mentioned bureaucratization, but also spectacularization, commercialization of culture, and all this pushed culture to the margins of public life. At the same time, economic pressure on institutions has reduced their autonomy and increased political control. We are witnessing a shift from supporting cultural autonomy to managing a as an instrument of political objectives. The rise of right-wing political projects has further intensified this shift, promoting militarization and a culture of fear. Their strategies, the right-wing strategies, rely on simplification, emotional manipulation, and algorithm-driven narratives that fracture social cohesion. We are witnessing the erosion of the public sphere and of trust in democracy. Culture, education, and scientific scientific research are increasingly treated as expendable costs rather than essential public goods. >> [cough] >> Cultural [clears throat] budgets are shrinking, higher education is becoming less accessible, academic mobility is restricted, and science is being privatized and subordinated to corporate interests. Public space itself is being transformed into a controlled environment where citizens feel unsafe and where appeals to the common good become increasingly difficult. Peaceful protests are often met with violence. State forces no longer defend public safety but rather protect dominant empty narratives and interests of the capital. We have become accustomed to violence. War is no longer distant. It is part of our daily lives, and it is coming closer. All of this reduces the space in which we meet, think together, and sharpen our critical understanding of the world. This is why we must defend our right to gather. We need time and space to sustain collective intelligence and a shared imagination as tools against right-wing governments. Meeting, discussing, and learning from one another are fundamental processes of emancipation, both individual and collective. As a cultural worker and a Serbian post-Yugoslav independent culture scene, I have participated to creation of many self-organized initiatives and platforms because self-organization was the only way for us to work. Being in the state of permanent crisis in that part of the we were and we are still articulating principles of common work behind that were and are focused on people as resources because there are no other resources available. We have developed culture based on solidarity, equality, and critical examination of our societies, our own work and relations that we establish among ourselves. It has been a long and difficult journey, but it created resilient communities that are capable to resist different kinds of oppression. In those conditions when the cultural policies were transformed from socialist to hardcore neoliberal, large-scale spectacles, resource-intensive festivals, and oversized cultural projects were not a solution. We developed networks instead of these large projects, the networks that allow people to people communication on a regular basis that allow permanent learning as a method of work and production, and sharing responsibilities and resources among ourselves. Unfortunately, these processes remained only in the civil sector and independent culture. Our public institutions were never transformed. In the current political crisis, these public cultural institutions are just ambitions. Today, we can share this experience with our international colleagues and advocate for the creation of international network of time space situations that allow people to come together, to be safe there, to be treated with care, and given time. >> [laughter] >> This requires much more solidarity and a willingness to relinquish certain comforts and privileges. Being together is transformative, but it requires time and commitment. It's not a project. Slowing down and embracing practices of degrowth can help us shift focus from production and competition toward building relationships and being attentive to processes. I want to share one example that comes from Belgrade. Uh an example of through this current political crisis, in December uh last year, we organized with absolutely no resources and with the international solidarity uh a guerrilla edition of the famous BITEF Theater Festival. Some of you probably know BITEF as one of the oldest uh theater festivals in Eastern Europe. It was censored. It was censored because it invited the curators invited Milena the Swiss theater director and because the programmers programmed four the new performances of four young theater makers and dance makers from Serbia. All these four new projects and Serbian artists were dealing with the current crisis and with the state systemic violence against people. Because of this and because of the censorship the artistic team decided to resign and instead in conversation with artists, colleagues, and independent scene and independent venues in only two or three weeks we created a so-called Naked Theater Independent Theater, Nezavisni Teatar. A guerrilla edition of the festival that was an amazing event that gathered a lot of international guests that gathered much more audience than usually, that gathered a lot of media coverage, and it was all done in a solidary way where where everyone when everyone was doing what what they could. We created space for artists and for audiences. Uh, and our international invited artists were solidary enough to come and to present their work for free. Uh, other artistic programs and it made uh, it was a proof that art and culture be censored and oppressed. So, after all, can we imagine our institutions across Europe and beyond stepping outside their buildings? People who work there, can they go out of their institutions? Can they enter the streets and share knowledge with fellow citizens? Can these encounters become part of artistic research, rooted in conversations with neighbors, workers, diverse communities? And can these same people be invited back into institutions to speak and shape them and create this time and space for imagination? This is, of course, not about turning artists into social workers, a demand often imposed by neoliberal cultural policies. This is about genuine democratization of cultural work and engaging in social exchange and mobility across classes and communities. We need to build new infrastructures based on shared knowledge, consciously directed towards social transformation. Today, artists and cultural activists are in the forefront of progressive movements against war, against authoritarian regimes, for Palestine, for ecological justice, for reproductive rights, and against exploitative urban development. They make visible struggles that the dominant narratives try to suppress. Let's look, for example, at the city of Zadar in Croatia, where a cultural active artistic initiative grew into a political movement advocating for justice and solidarity-based urban policies. Today, this movement governs the city, implementing transparency, social inclusion, and equitable cultural strategies. The real social force, led by cultural workers, artists, and cultural activists. Solidarity and self-organization must become the foundation for our future actions. We cannot wait for funding structures to define our work. We must reclaim the right to decide how we organize, how we produce, and collaborate. Networks grounded in democratic and inclusive decision-making are far more difficult to silence. We can also learn from the Serbian students and their movements. After the tragic collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2014, which killed 16 people and exposed deep corruption, students refused to continue so-called normal life. They blocked their university and built a new network. By living and spending time together, they rediscovered the power of shared time and space. Time and space, this is important. This This is the condition for collective thinking, debate, and meaning through exchange. This is when the collective intelligence appears. In such situations, the complexity of our world can appear in its full depth. In these discussions and gatherings, they slowly analyze and talk about this complex world. What emerged was a powerful collective intelligence capable of shaping a politically articulate and strategically refined Importantly, the role of art students and their ways of thinking, sensing, and organizing was central to this process. What began What began across five university centers quickly expanded beyond academia towards different social groups, classes, professions, and communities. Through collective encounters, gatherings, and marches across cities and remote villages, they won over the media control controlled by the regime, and they reactivated something really essential: the capacity to trust, to care, to help, to stand together. This wave of of solidarity actually surprised everyone, every citizen. It reminded people of how meaningful it is to rely on one another as colleagues, as neighbors, and as fellow citizens. These effective alliances, brought into the public sphere by the students, created a new form of communality grounded in trust, solidarity, and shared desire for systemic change beginning with the transformation of our relations. This is one of the most profound and tangible outcomes of the movement. On this basis, they enlarged their platform by encouraging citizens to self-organize in their neighborhoods and take over a part of the burden of this political and social struggle. They are coming now around 50 self-organized citizens councils across the country. Uh with two main goals, to help and support the student movement, and to educate other citizens and neighbors about their civic roles, to reaffirm their powers, and actively participate in public security. Culture and the arts, right now need real and serious unions. Our working rights are eroding rapidly. Where I come from, they're almost completely dismantled. We need international alliances of artists unions to strengthen our voices and support one another across local struggles. This must go hand in hand with alliances with other workers, workers in education, science, and media. We should learn also from historic examples >> [clears throat] >> of worker unions from the 20th century, and reimagine the efforts done by many of our predecessors in cultural and artistic before and after the Second World War. The student movement in Serbia managed to create also a new platform of unions to unite unions from all fields and industries, and to make them work together for the first time after 36 years. There are unions of artists, cultural workers, that encounter the workers from all other fields. This experience and this encounter are precious. In this moment of deep uncertainty and fragmentation, our task as cultural workers is not only to respond, but to reimagine, to insist on culture as a space of encounter, shared knowledge, and collective responsibility. What is happening in Serbia, Palestine, Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, Lebanon, and in our region of Europe is a part of a broader struggle over democracy, public space, and the struggle for our shared future. We also have to speak as artists and cultural workers about the oppression that is happening to us. Over the past months, cultural workers in Serbia have been exposed to continuous violence, dismissals, threats, blackmail, arrests, media harassment, censorship, and physical attacks. These cases are being documented so that nothing is erased or forgotten. We need your support to make this visible through your networks, your institutions, and your political channels. And if we are to resist the forces that divide, dissolve, and silence us, we must remain connected, organized, and present for one another, rooted in our anti-fascist traditions. Solidarity cannot remain a word. It must become a daily practice. And it can begin immediately by sharing the resources that we have, supporting each other, and sustaining our networks even as their forms evolve. We must insist that art, culture, and education, and research are not secondary sectors, but essential infrastructures of democracy. Ones that must not be overshadowed by narratives of security, control, and militarization. Because if we lose the spaces where we can meet, think, and imagine together, we lose the very possibility of contributing our precious knowledge to shape our own future. Only through sustained alliances and shared struggles, uncompromising practices of solidarity, and collective imagination can we create the conditions for a more just and livable world. Thank you. >> [applause]