www.toxic-clothing.ro
Brand description
TOXIC-clothing is a clothes' brand for the young people, which, together with
the aesthetic look updated for the present tendencies in fashion, has also
a conceptual content for the prints used. As the slogan of the brand said:
" Fashion is not an image it's an attitude".
The prints are no longer a mere ornamental element, but they transmit different
messages, social events or they present the life in its various milieus: gun
culture, suburbia, delinquent-gangs, etc.
The way in which this thing is produced is not a redundant one like "No
war".
The used language is a universal one, found all around the world, and belonging
to the net, MTV, computer-games.
Toxic is not a mass brand, it only produces small series, carefully chosen.
Everywhere in the world, the idea of uniform disappeared, everybody wishing
to become individual even through clothing.
Henceforth the interest raised by Toxic in the middle of young people from
different areas: Germany, Austria, Indonesia, Romania, etc.
What can be truer than seeing your art wore by people coming from different
milieus without the understanding difficulty sometimes typical for the "art
products".
In the opinion of this brand's producers, art must get out of the specific
circle of consumers, always the same.
There are also out of fashion the unending discussions on the subject of how
a commercial art can still be art.
For more details concerning TOXIC-clothing, visit
www.toxic-clothig.ro
Cosmin Gradinaru
Art-director TOXIC-clothing
www.kulturkontakt.or.at
Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, the region that KulturKontakt has
been working with for more than 12 years, is larger than I thought. In the
two years that I have been working for KulturKontakt Austria the image of
the "east" has changed for me, above all it has become more sophisticated.
The region which, full of curiosity, I travelled around in the period after
1989 has, with all the meetings, experiences and co-operative projects with
individual characters, taken on a shape of its own since then. And: seen like
that there is no such thing as CEE. "Central, Eastern and South Eastern
Europe" is a geographical term which inevitably can not do justice to
the complexity of this region.
With the Big Bang of the next few years, the extension of the European Union,
we should not lose sight of the fact that the countries of Eastern and South
Eastern Europe are already European countries, and not that they are going
to become European. We are simultaneously linked and divided by a common history,
which, for the most part, we do not even know.
My encounters with artists from Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia, the
Czech Republic, Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia-Montenegro and Albania have
taught me to look and to listen more carefully. From what I see and hear east
and west are very imprecise co-ordinates. In art - at least so it seems -
they will have to lose their relevance.
Christine Bruck.
www.ecumest.ro
Founded in 1998, the Cultural Association Ecumest aims at launching initiatives
that help the developing and the professionalizing of the cultural sector
and the improving of the frame within which this sector functions in Romania
and in the East-European countries. Ecumest has a variety of activities in
progress, in the field of cultural politics, of promoting artists' and cultural
mediators' mobility, and also in supporting the cultural press in the entire
region. These activities of mediation and accompaniment (by providing information
and expertise, by mediating partnerships, by providing services or direct
support) are addressed to the creative sector (and particularly to the young
artists), to those deciding on a political level, to the cultural administrators
and mediators. Moreover, they are made on the basis of a large partnership
with individuals and public cultural organizations in Romania and in the entire
Europe.
For the moment, we are preparing a series of projects, among which we can
mention the inauguration, in this autumn, within the ARCult programme, of
a new online data basis concerning the legislation affecting the cultural
field in Romania (a project achieved with the support of the Concept Foundation);
the support accorded to 10 projects in the field of cultural politics in all
the East-European region, within the large programme "Policies for Culture",
a programme in collaboration with the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam
(and that proposes different activities of informing, consultancy, training,
research, analysis projects and development of the cultural politics South-Eastern
Europe); close cooperation with the Art University in Belgrade and the French
Institute in Bucharest for the launching and coordinating the regional MA
programme in management and cultural politics in the Balkans - an MA in Belgrade,
open also for Romanian students, who are supported through some scholarships.
Within the informal platform Press Stress Group (that brings together the
magazines Dilema, LA&I, Observator Cultural and 22) and with the support
of Pro Helvetia Foundation, there is also another project in progress: a pilot
project for subscriptions to the cultural magazines, addressed to the leaders
of opinion from the province, who do not have access to these magazines; within
the same platform, in cooperation with the Goethe Institute and with the support
of the Pact for Stability, a regional symposium will be organized in December,
on the topic of the cultural magazines and their role as platforms of communication
and debate in the South-East European countries.
More information you can find at www.ecumest.ro
Oana Radu
Programs Director - Ecumest
