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