CRIC 2026 unfolds from April through late autumn as a space for sustained reflection, encounter, and experimentation around this year’s theme, “Care: The Challenge of Being Together Again”. At a time when societies across the world, and Europe are marked by deepening disconnection, violence, exhaustion, and fragmentation, the question of how we come together – with care, with responsibility, and with a sustained attentiveness to one another- feels both urgent and deeply personal.
In this context, CRIC approaches care not as a private or sentimental notion, but as a collective and political practice. Care becomes a method of engagement, a set of individual, civil and collective practices that emerge precisely where institutions fail: a way of rebuilding trust, reactivating solidarity, and reimagining the conditions for democratic life. Rather than offering fixed answers, the festival opens a space to think through care not only as maintenance, but also resistance; not only as support, but also a way of reclaiming agency – something that unfolds in the tension between vulnerability and responsibility, between necessity and possibility.
The program begins with two lectures that set the conceptual and experiential ground for the festival: Curating – Work and Joy of Care by Franziska Werner and Caring for Civility by Carena Schlewitt-Smith. Together, these contributions frame care as both a curatorial and a societal practice. While Werner reflects on curating as a way of working with relations, conditions, and shared spaces, Schlewitt-Smith expands the discussion toward the broader social and political dimensions of care.
The program continues in May with the program Critical Reading Through Movies, developed in collaboration with the Human Rights Festival from Zagreb and curated by Petar Milat. Bringing together a selection of documentary works, the film program traces the emotional and political landscapes of empathy, solidarity, and shared responsibility, expanding the festival’s exploration of care into cinematic form.
At the heart of this year’s edition, in late June, is a series of public presentations dedicated to three influential books that directly shape the festival’s thematic horizon. “Pirate Care” will be presented by its authors,Tomislav Medak, Valeria Graziano, and Marcell Mars, opening questions around collective infrastructures of care and resistance. This will be followed by “This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom”, presented by its author, Martin Hägglund, who will discuss the notions of responsibility, temporarity, freedom and the everyday ethics of living together, as well as the meaning and the critical reading of the democratic socialism. The program culminates with the presentation by Alisa Zhulina inspired by her book about theater and political philosophy “Theater of Capital: Modern Drama and Economic Life”, extending the discussion toward the entanglements of economy, performance, and social life.
The festival continues into September and October with its artistic program, further expanding these questions through exhibitions, performances, and site-specific interventions, with more details to be announced.
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CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture is supported within the framework of the project “Culture for Development” of the Government of Switzerland, which is implemented by the Hartefact Foundation. The content/opinions expressed can never be interpreted as the views of the Government of Switzerland and the Hartefact Foundation.
CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture is supported by the Goethe-Institut Skopje, Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of North Macedonia, ProPeace,Skopje and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Skopje.
@HeartefactFund @SwissEmbassySkopje @GoetheInstitutSkopje @Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Skopje @ProPeace North Macedonia
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Program for 01.04.26
19:00 Opening of the festival
19:10 Caring for Civility | Carena Schlewitt – Baecker
The concept and practice of care have gained enormous significance in recent years in many areas of life and work, including the arts. The escalation of conflicts and crises—both locally and globally—often accompanied by violence, polarization, and disparagement, inevitably fosters awareness and need for responding with forms of care as a form of protest.
My concept of care encompasses a whole range of characteristics and manifestations that extend beyond individual care—reaching into society through the arts. First and foremost, it is about attention—a different kind of attention than the kind that trains us to process images within seconds or to focus on quantitative measures of success.
In our work we seek attention that forges connections, fosters and makes visible processes, engages with diverse realities and can generate resilience. All these points are part of the artistic program and part of our institutional and financial efforts. As long as we can sustain these processes, we can say that care remains a central concern of our work.
The lecture addresses aesthetics of care, artistic practices of care, modes of collaboration and working processes, as well as audience care and environmental care. In this context, the HELLERAU institution and its social, political, and financial conditions also play a direct role in our processes of care and attention.
19:50 Curating – Work and Joy of Care | Franziska Werner
The term curating has always been closely linked, in its very origin, to the idea of care.The Latin verb curare means to care for, to look after, to maintain – but also to supervise. And in fact, all of these meanings play a role in my work as curator, dramaturge and artistic director.
In my long-standing curatorial practice – currently as Artistic Director of the Impulse Festival for performance, theatre and dance in North Rhine-Westphalia, previously as director of the Sophiensæle, an independent production house, in Berlin, as well as through various freelance curatorial projects – curating has increasingly become, for me, less about selecting works and artists and more about shaping relations. Working with conditions. With people. With time. With spaces. In this talk, I will take you on a personal journey through key aspects of this practice: through caring, through enabling, through collectively negotiating spaces for art, artists, and audiences.
I will share insights into my current work with the Impulse Festival –as a site where many of these questions become tangible: in programming, in production conditions, in encounters.
Care, in this context, is not only a topic. It is a mode of working. And also quite often a challenge.
Because care does not only mean support, but also responsibility.
Not only connection, but also conflict.
A number of terms will accompany me –as prompts, as conceptual tools, as open fragments: Spaces. Temporalities. Access. Hospitality. Resources. Self-exploitation. Exploitation. Mediation. Relations. Networks. Collectivity. Support. Pressure. Solidarity. Empathy. Capacities. Pleasure. Enthusiasm. Endurance. Exhaustion. Self-care. Inspiration. … to be continued …
Споделено на: May 28, 2026 во 12:57 am