The community based upon political culture of critical acting and confrontation, is a community of freedom, of brave voyage towards new horizons of the society, with sails propelled by winds of creative artistic confrontation and political imagination.” (Alain Badiou)
CRIC – festival of critical culture is the promotion of the artistic and cultural practices as societal relevant tools that will contribute to emancipation and democratization of the socio-cultural context. It aims to catalyze their affirmation, critical capacities and applicability in order to critically mobilize societal processes. The thematic program of CRIC is created with the goal to stimulate critical debate in the public sphere, a crucial component in the promotion of the socio-cultural capital being a core deeply ingrained within the most relevant political and societal themes: human rights, the right to culture, identity issues, violence in the public sphere through the political and economical apparatus, as well as strengthening of communities through cultural and artistic practices.
Therefore, CRIC is initiated in order to stand in defense of the right to critical culture, the one that continuously shifts borders of the emancipatory policies in the socio-cultural space. It is a platform that will explore and study the possibilities of permeation in the realms of the aesthetic and the political, the interplay of artistic practices and their impact on the wider democratization of society, the interaction between civil communities, media and shapes of resistance. CRIC- the acronym for critique, reaction, idea, confrontation (also a simultaneous Macedonian noun meaning “scream”), aims to oppose the “culture of silence”, promoting critical dialogue, new forms of presentation and application of knowledge, of contemporary memory and political history, thus opening up new possibilities for perpetual societal transformations.
The program of the festival addresses questions pertaining to the critical and developmental research of specific societal and political categories through the lens of cultural and artistic creation. It ponders upon the ways of existence of culture and of artistic production in the realm of the political, attempting to delineate the intricate network of philosophical, political and historical connections within socio-cultural practices. It delves in the common issues, influences and connections of art, politics and society. Through such content, CRIC strives to contribute and stimulate the critical reflection of the contemporary cultural and artistic practices and the socio-cultural movements, highlighting the need for a wider development of social and critical culture. It will utilize critical tools and methodologies of art and culture in order to pinpoint the responsibilities of cultural workers, artists and the wider community in relation to societal and political developmental processes and shifts. In addition, its program will explore how contemporary art and culture can (de) construct nationalistic myths, identities and frames of the otherness, dealing with traumatic points of society and immediate political themes.
Through CRIC, we are highlighting the need for continuous exploration of the possibilities of interference between the aesthetic and the political, between the artistic practices and their influence on the processes of democratization of society, as well as the civil formal and informal communities and their need for inclusivity in societal processes.
In addition, its program will explore how contemporary art and culture can (de) construct nationalistic myths, identities and frames of the otherness, dealing with traumatic points of society and immediate political themes. Participants of KRIK: Branislav Dimitrijević, Renata Salecl, Svetlana Slapšak, Branimir Jovanović, Petar Milat, Sonya Schönberger, Michelle Teran, Hristina Ivanoska, Gjorgje Jovanovik, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, Ante Jerić, Branka Ćurčić, Ana Vujanović, Nikola Gelevski, Leonardo Kovačević, Slavčo Dimitrov, Artan Sadiku, Petar Gošev, Miljenka Buljevic,