Definitions of Europe seem always to default to the European Union. And if you live within the geographical bounds of this narrow definition of Europe, odds are you feel far removed from the democratic decision making process. And legitimately so. But there are a vast amount of Europeans with even less democratic influence, namely those residing in European countries that have not been granted entry to this exclusive and deeply flawed club. Where EU residents face a democracy deficit, the residents of non-EU European countries must live by its dictates, without reaping its benefits.
In many respects, this made the traditionally difficult decision of where to host the roving TRANSEUROPA Festival easy this year. The goal of the festival is to provide space to analyse, deconstruct and hammer out alternative proposals to the European status quo. We, the festival organisers, believe that in order to find and elevate real political and cultural alternatives, we must seek them out and create them outside of the traditional hubs of Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London.
TRANSEUROPA has always been ambitious. It doesn’t merely want to challenge our politics and policies, but it wants to challenge how we approach them and who is involved in constructing society on its myriad levels: political, cultural, social. The festival challenges all of us who are involved in it to bring artistic practices and approaches to political thinking. And it is to imagine what a transnational civil society could conceivably accomplish.
