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Abstract
Focusing on the period between 1994 and 2006, this study of the Soros Foundation and its spin-offs employs a mixed-method approach to explore the structure of the visual arts scene in Croatia and the role of Soros Foundation organisations within it. Based on a quantitative analysis of network visualisations and a qualitative structural analysis of narrative interviews, which are theoretically framed around the notions of network and complexity, the article moves the research agenda away from assumptions about what Soros Foundation organisations were supposed to be, to a more embedded understanding of what they actually were in a specific space-time. The analysis foregrounds varying strategies and trajectories of Soros Foundation’s Croatia-based organisations. It demonstrates that they served mostly to maintain continuity with the socialist period during the 1990s, while real structural change, at least partially due to the Foundation’s influence, happened only after 1999 with the emergence of the independent cultural scene.
This article has been produced within the framework of the project ‘New Public Culture and Spaces of Sociability’, funded by the European Social Fund Operational Programme Efficient Human Resources. The project coordinator is the Clubture network. Research within the project included archival work in the Croatian State Archives and the development of the dataset on collaborative institutional networks in the period between 1994 and 2006. We are grateful to Paul Stubbs for comments on an early draft of the article, to the anonymous reviewer for insightful suggestions, and to Donato Ricci for the final design of the visualizations.
Notes
1 For further information on the SCCA-Budapest, and the formation of the SCCA network, refer to: Nina Czegledy and Andrea Szekeres, ‘Agents of Change. The Contemporary Art Centres of the Soros Foundation and C3’, Third Text 98, vol 23, issue 3, May 2009, special issue, Sean Cubitt, José-Carlos Mariátegui and Gunalan Nadarajan, eds, ‘Social Formations of Global Media Art, pp 217−228. pp 251–259; Kristóf Nagy, ‘From Fringe Interest to Hegemony: The Emergence of the Soros Network in Eastern Europe’, in Beáta Hock and Anu Allas, eds, Globalising East European Art Histories: Past and Present, Routledge, London and New York, 2018, pp 53–63.
2 Each office had three to four employees and a board composed of esteemed, mostly local, curators, art critics and art historians. The SCCA was meant to serve as a cultural centre of the local Open Society Foundation, and was to be adjoined – in cases in which this was possible – to an existing modern or contemporary art institution. Its activities were centred on grant-giving, documentation, annual exhibitions, and networks and exchange. See SCCA Procedures Manual, https://monoskop.org/images/d/db/SCCA_Procedures_Manual_1994.pdf, accessed 9 November 2023.
3 Željka Tonković and Sanja Sekelj, ‘Annual Exhibitions of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art Zagreb as a Place of Networking’, Život umjetnosti 99, December 2016, pp 78–93; Amila Puzić, ‘Izložba kao socijalna intervencija – godišnje izložbe SCCA-Sarajevo: Meeting-Point (1997), Beyond the Mirror (1998), Under Construction (1999)’ (Exhibition as Social Intervention: Annual SCCA-Sarajevo Exhibitions: Meeting-Point (1997), Beyond the Mirror (1998), Under Construction (1999))’, Peristil, vol 59, no 1, 2016, pp 137–145; Izabel Galliera, Socially Engaged Art After Socialism: Art and Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe, IB Tauris, London and New York, 2017, pp 81–111; Octavian Esanu, ‘CarbonART 96 and The 6th Kilometer, SCCA Chişinău 1996’, in Octavian Esanu, ed, Contemporary Art and Capitalist Modernization: A Transregional Perspective, Routledge, London and New York, 2021, pp 184–205; Amila Puzić, ‘Meeting Point, SCCA Sarajevo, 1997’, in Octavian Esanu, ed, Contemporary Art and Capitalist Modernization, op cit, pp 206–221
4 Miško Šuvaković, ‘The Ideology of Exhibition: On the Ideologies of Manifesta’, PlatformaSCCA 3, January 2002, http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma3/suvakoviceng.htm, accessed 6 November 2023; Georg Schöllhammer, ‘Art in the Era of Globalization. Some Remarks on the Period of Soros-Realisms’, Art-e-Fact 4, 2005, http://web.archive.org/web/20070613072100/artefact.mi2.hr/_a04/lang_en/theory_schollhammer_en.htm, accessed 6 November 2023; Mária Hlavajová, ‘Towards the Normal: Negotiating the “Former East”’, in Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic, eds, The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp 153–165; Anthony Gardner, ‘Politically Unbecoming: Critiques of ‘Democracy’ and Postsocialist Art From Europe’, doctoral dissertation, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2008, pp 163–171
5 Paul Stubbs, ‘Flex Actors and Philanthropy in (Post-)Conflict Arenas: Soros’ Open Society Foundations in the Post-Yugoslav Space’, Croatian Political Science Review, vol 50, no 5, 2013, pp 114–138; Hlavajová, ‘Towards the Normal’, op cit; Octavian Esanu, ‘What Was Contemporary Art?’, ARTMargins, vol 1, no 1, May 2012, pp 5–28
6 For more on emergence as the key characteristic of complex systems see John H Holland, Complexity: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, pp 49–58.
7 The term ‘agency’ is used according to Mustafa Emirbayer and John Goodwin: ‘Human agency… entails the capacity of socially embedded actors to appropriate, reproduce, and, potentially, to innovate upon received cultural categories and conditions of actions in accordance with their personal and collective ideals, interests, and commitments.’ See Mustafa Emirbayer and John Goodwin, ‘Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency’, American Journal of Sociology, vol 99, no 6, May 1994, pp 1442–1443.
8 Ibid, p 1440. Understood in this way, the specific space-time in question could be called a ‘conjuncture’. See Stubbs, ‘Flex Actors and Philanthropy in (Post-)Conflict Arenas’, op cit, p 116.
9 Emirbayer and Goodwin, ‘Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency’, op cit, p 1442
10 A more recent development of network theory, as exemplified in the work of Jan Fuhse, Ann Mische, Nick Crossley, Elisa Bellotti and others, departs from the more formalist approach of network analysis in favour of the idea that social relations are shaped and reshaped by subjective dispositions of social actors and their interpretations of reality. In this regard, mixed-method approaches that combine quantitative and qualitative methods are important as they enable deeper understanding of the relational nature of the social world. Mixed-methods strategies are especially valuable in the research of ‘cultural structures’, as is the case in our study of the Soros network.
11 By way of using both quantitative and qualitative methods, this research falls within the fields of digital humanities and digital art history, which rely on ‘analytic techniques enabled by computational technology’. Johnna Drucker, ‘Is There a “Digital” Art History?’, Visual Resources, vol 29, nos 1–2, March 2013, p 7. See also Kathryn Brown, ed, The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, Routledge, London and New York, 2020.
12 Arkzin (1991–1998) started out as a fanzine of the Anti-War Campaign in Croatia, but eventually turned into a hybrid magazine for culture, politics, and new media; Kontura (1991–) is focused almost exclusively on the visual arts and is connected to a homonymous commercial gallery and auction house; Vijenac (1993–) is a bi-monthly published by Matica hrvatska, one of the oldest cultural institutions in Croatia, founded in the nineteenth century as part of the national revival movement; Zarez (1999–2006) was a bi-monthly more connected with the independent cultural scene, which presented a more critical stance toward contemporary cultural phenomena. Both Vijenac and Zarez followed contemporary art events in a number of different artistic fields, from visual arts to theatre, dance, literature and music. For more information on these periodicals refer to Sanja Sekelj, ‘Digitalna povijest umjetnosti i umjetničke mreže u Hrvatskoj 1990-ih i 2000-ih, doktorska disertacija (Digital Art History and Artists’ Networks in Croatia of the 1990s and 2000s, doctoral dissertation)’, University of Zadar, Zadar, 2021, pp 79–115.
13 For a thorough analysis of these periodicals as cohesive social circles, refer to Sekelj, ‘Digital Art History’, 2021.
14 Unlike two-mode networks, which consist of two sets of actors (eg, people and events), unimodal (or one-mode) networks include only one type of actor. For more see Christina Prell, Social Network Analysis: History, Theory & Methodology, Sage, London, 2012.
15 The data was structured in the CAN_IS database, developed at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, while the visualisations were made with the help of the open-source platform Gephi. All of the visualisations were made by the corresponding author of the article. See: ARTNET, https://www.art-net-ipu.org/#:~:text=artnet%20is%20a%20research%20project,modern%20and%20contemporary%20artist%20networks. The data that support the findings of this research, and the network visualisations with all of the node labels, that are presented in this article are openly available in the PODEST Repository: https://podest.ipu.hr/islandora/object/ipu:220, reference urn:nbn:hr:254:923971.
16 The interviews were conducted within the ARTNET project between 2015 and 2017, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (ARTNET, HRZZ 6270, Institute of Art History, 2014–2018). A number of team members participated in this part of the research: Sanja Horvatinčić, Ivana Meštrov, Dalibor Prančević, Sanja Sekelj and Željka Tonković.
17 Participation in the study was voluntary and all participants were guaranteed anonymity and data confidentiality. The interviews were transcribed and archived in the documentation department of the Institute of Art History in Zagreb.
18 See Andreas Herz, Luisa Peters and Inga Truschkat, ‘How to Do Qualitative Structural Analysis: The Qualitative Interpretation of Network Maps and Narrative Interviews’, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, vol 16, no 1, January 2015
19 Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, London and New Delhi, 2006
20 Croatian State Archives, Open Society Institute – Croatia, Fund no. HR-HDA-1931, 1–5
21 CDA had a similar role in performing arts as SCCA had in the visual arts, in the sense that it was a grant-giving institution. The difference was that its establishment was initiated locally, hence it was not part of a bigger network of similar institutions. Its role in the visual arts structure was minimal during the 1990s, however it is included in the analysis since it was part of the independent cultural scene at the turn of the millennium.
22 OSI-Croatia still financed some cultural projects in the very beginning of the 2000s, but it changed direction and completely backed out of the culture sector in 2004. One of the reasons for the gradual withdrawal was the change in government in 2000, which was more open to contemporary art practices. From that point onwards, OSI-Croatia saw itself more as a partner to the government that would help change existing cultural policies, than as a lifeline to ‘inappropriate’ practices. The conclusion is based on OSI-Croatia’s strategies from the beginning of the 2000s. See Croatian State Archives, Open Society Institute – Croatia, Fund no. HR-HDA-1931-3.
23 Institute of Contemporary Art–SCCA, http://www.institute.hr/en/homepage/; Centre for Dramatic Art, https://cdu.home.blog/; Multimedia Institute, https://mi2.hr/en/
24 Emirbayer and Goodwin, ‘Network Analysis, Culture and the Problem of Agency’, op cit, p 1425
25 Ljiljana Kolešnik, ‘Decade of Freedom, Hope and Lost Illusions. Yugoslav Society in the 1960s as a Framework for New Tendencies’, Radovi Instituta za povijest umjetnosti 34, 2010, pp 211–224. For further information on contemporary art practices in Zagreb during socialism see, for example, Armin Medosch, ‘Cutting the Networks in Former Yugoslavia: From New Tendencies to the New Art Practice’, Third Text 153, vol 32, issue 4, July 2018, special issue, Guest Editor, Reuben Fowkes, ‘Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism’, pp 546–561; Ivana Bago, ‘The City as a Space of Plastic Happening: From Grand Proposals to Exceptional Gestures in the Art of the 1970s in Zagreb’, Journal of Urban History, vol 44, no 1, 2018, pp 26–53; Ivana Bago, ‘Dematerialization and Politicisation of the Exhibition: Curation as Institutional Critique in Yugoslavia during the 1960s and 1970s’, Museum and Curatorial Studies Review, vol 2, no 1, spring 2014, pp 7–37. It is worth mentioning in this context that practices in art documentation were also established during socialism: apart from the Gallery (today Museum) of Contemporary Art, Zagreb had a specialised institution for collecting documentation on artists and exhibitions (the Archive of Fine Arts of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts), as well as a developed museum network supported by the Museum Documentation Centre.
26 Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe, Anna Brzyski, trans, Reaktion Books, London, 2012, p 175
27 See footnote 29 in Tonković and Sekelj, ‘Annual Exhibitions of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art Zagreb as a Place of Networking’, op cit, p 92. For a short description of changes in the culture sector from the late 1980s to the early 2000s see, for example, Tomislav Medak, ‘Culture as a Common Good’, in Ivana Pejić and Matija Mrakovčić, eds, Culture as a Factor in Democratisation: Practices, Collaborations and Models of Work on the Independent Cultural Scene, Kurziv, Zagreb, 2021, pp 42–59.
28 The giant component is a connected component of a network, containing a significant proportion of all of the nodes.
29 The percentage of institutions based in Croatia amounted to around 53 per cent in the 1990s, and around 45 per cent in the 2000s.
30 Institutions in neighbouring countries such as Slovenia, in the USA or Western European countries, such as Germany.
31 The average path length corresponds to the average number of intermediaries needed to connect two nodes in the network. The clustering coefficient can be defined as a measure of local density, or the extent to which the nearest neighbours of a node were connected with one another. As proposed by Watts and Strogatz in 1998, small world networks are those with a high clustering coefficient and a small average shortest path length. In other words, small world networks are simultaneously characterised by dense social circles and relations that span across the network. This type of network structure appears frequently in different contexts, and is typical of collaborative networks in the artistic field. See Brian Uzzi, Luis AN Amaral, Felix Reed-Tsochas, ‘Small-world Networks and Management Science Research: A Review’, European Management Review 4, 2007, pp 77–91; Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro, ‘Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem’, American Journal of Sociology, vol 111, no 2, 2005, pp 447–504. See also Albert-László Barabási, Linked: The New Science of Networks, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002.
32 The social circles within the giant components in both time periods were determined with the help of the Girwan-Newman method – a procedure that relies on betweenness centrality to detect different communities in the overall network structure. Betweenness centrality is used to detect nodes that act as gatekeepers or bridges in network structure, ie that potentially control information flow or connect communities that otherwise would not have any or many connections. Nodes with the highest betweenness act as community boundaries when applying the Girwan-Newman method. See Stephen P Borgatti, Martin G Everett and Jeffrey C Johnson, Analyzing Social Networks, Sage, London, 2013, pp 233–239.
33 It is important to note that naming a cluster based on spatial proximity does not signify that all of the nodes within a community have the same location, but that the community encompasses such a number of nodes that the spatial determination becomes one of its most obvious features.
34 Apart from a balanced division of power, they also allowed for the emergence of other influential actors within the cluster, before and after 1999 (such as the Matica hrvatska Gallery or the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery).
35 For more information on the independent cultural scene, its development, main actors, and specific organisational mechanisms, refer to: Željka Tonković and Sanja Sekelj, ‘Duality of Culture and Structure: A Network Perspective on the Independent Cultural Scene in Zagreb and the Formation of the WHW Curatorial Collective’, in Ljiljana Kolešnik, Sanja Horvatinčić, eds, Modern and Contemporary Artists’ Networks: An Inquiry into Digital History of Art and Architecture, Institute of Art History, Zagreb, 2018, pp 166–213; Sepp Eckenhaussen, Scenes of Independence: Cultural Ruptures in Zagreb (1991–2019), Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2019; Željka Tonković, ‘Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: The Independent Cultural Scene From Its Actors Perspective’, in Ivana Pejić and Matija Mrakovčić, eds, Culture as a Factor in Democratisation: Practices, Collaborations and Models of Work on the Independent Cultural Scene, Kurziv, Zagreb, pp 110–129; Dea Vidović, ‘Tactical Practices in Approaching Local Cultural Policies in Zagreb’, Život umjetnosti 86, June 2010, pp 22–33; Marko Golub, ‘A Story Told in Reverse: Patterns in the Urban Scene of Zagreb’, Život umjetnosti 73, December 2004, pp 30–39.
36 For more information on changes in the culture sector around the new millennium refer to: Medak, ‘Culture as a Common Good’, op cit; Tonković and Sekelj, ‘Duality of Structure and Culture’, op cit; Eckenhaussen, Scenes of Independence, op cit, pp 95–98.
37 It is interesting to note that this cluster also includes collaborative ties with institutions based in Serbia, whereas they were not present at all in the previous period.
38 For more information on the annual exhibitions of SCCA-Zagreb, refer to Tonković and Sekelj, ‘Annual Exhibitions of the Soros Centre for Contemporary Art Zagreb as a Place of Networking’, op cit.
39 For example, the weighted degree of SCCA-Zagreb is 13, while for the MCA it equals 51. The weighted degree signifies the number of established relations, which takes into account the edge weight, the value of which depends on the number of collaborations between two institutions.
40 Dunja Blažević, the director of SCCA-Sarajevo, was a frequent guest in Zagreb, where she had established a number of close personal and professional relationships since the 1970s. The SCCA-Zagreb supported the establishment of the Sarajevo branch in 1996, and the two institutions also ventured toward joint organisation of programmes at the end of the 1990s, such as the curatorial workshop for young art historians, entitled ‘Museums and Galleries of Contemporary Art After the War’ in 1999. Lectures held within the workshop in Dubrovnik by art historians and curators, such as Martha Wilson, Dunja Blažević or Konstantin Akinsha, are available online: Institute of Contemporary Art-SCCA, http://www.institute.hr/video-dokumentacija-90ih/.
41 Interview 1 (curator, SCCA); Interview 4 (curator, SCCA); Interview 6 (curator, SCCA); Interview 7 (curator, SCCA)
42 Interview 1 (curator, SCCA)
43 Interview 6 (curator, SCCA)
44 Interview 7 (curator, SCCA)
45 Interview 4 (curator, SCCA)
46 Interview 16 (curator, independent scene)
47 Apart from prescribed activities, SCCA-Zagreb put a special emphasis on publishing by initiating the Visual Arts Library programme in 1997. See the SCCA annual report in Croatian State Archives, Open Society Institute – Croatia, Fund no. HR-HDA-1931-2.
48 Interview 2 (artist, curator)
49 For a complete list of grants, refer to OSI-Croatia’s annual reports: Croatian State Archives, Open Society Institute – Croatia, Fund no. HR-HDA-1931-2 and HR-HDA-1931-3.
50 Interview 1 (curator, SCCA)
51 Ibid
52 A handful of cultural institutions with longer traditions profited from OSI-Croatia’s support mainly in the very beginning of the 1990s, before the foundation and full operation of SCCA-Zagreb’s activities.
53 Interview 2 (artist, curator)
54 Interview 16 (curator, independent scene). It is important to emphasise that the grants provided by Soros were not large, but that they were available pretty early in the decade, whereas state funding was limited and mostly intended for cultural projects legitimising the aforementioned ‘centuries old’ national identity.
55 Interview 17 (designer, independent scene)
56 Interview 5 (curator, public institution)
57 Interview 4 (curator, SCCA)
58 Homophily is one of the most important network mechanisms, which explains the higher probability of tie formation between actors with similar characteristics (eg shared social background, values or interests). This principle has been confirmed in numerous empirical studies and social contexts, including networks in the art field. See Nikita Basov, ‘The Ambivalence of Cultural Homophily: Field Positions, Semantic Similarities, and Social Network Ties in Creative Collectives’, Poetics 78, February 2020, 101353.
59 Transitivity refers to the tendency to form ties with one’s relations’ relations, which in turn results in dense clusters in the network. Following this rule, we may expect that if A is connected to B and B is connected to C, there is a great probability that A and C would form a relationship. This is a common characteristic of social networks, unlike randomly generated networks. See Borgatti, Everett and Johnson, Analyzing Social Networks, op cit, pp 155–159.
60 Interview 12 (theoretician, mi2)
61 Interview 18 (curator, independent scene)
62 The Clubture network still exists, while the Cultural Kapital network was of a more temporary nature. It did, however, establish enduring ties on the independent cultural scene. See: Clubture, https://www.clubture.org/. For more information on both networks refer to: Emina Višnić, ed, A Bottom-up Approach to Cultural Policy Making: Independent Culture and New Collaborative Practices in Croatia, Policies for Culture, Amsterdam, Bucharest and Zagreb, 2008; Katarina Pavić, ‘Clubture as a Process of Exchange’, in Ivana Pejić and Matija Mrakovčić, eds, Culture as a Factor in Democratisation: Practices, Collaborations and Models of Work on the Independent Cultural Scene, Kurziv, Zagreb, 2021, pp 72–90; Tonković and Sekelj, ‘Duality of Structure and Culture’, op cit, pp 173–175.
63 Interview 20 (artist, CDA)
64 Interview 12 (theoretician, mi2)
65 Ibid
66 Because of the war, the museum collections were stored in depots in the beginning of the 1990s, and remained inaccessible throughout the decade.
67 As recalled by the scene’s actors, it is important to note that the Soros Foundation was not the only one financing and facilitating international exchanges. However, access to support from the Soros Foundation was easier and its presence was more strongly felt because of the existence of national offices.
68 Bourdieu, ‘The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed’, in Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, Randal Johnson, ed, Columbia University Press, New York, 1993, p 30
69 This primarily concerns intertwining the network perspective with questions relating to the institutionalisation of contemporary art in Eastern Europe, changing conditions of cultural production after the collapse of socialism, the processes of rewriting art histories after 1989, and their relation to the international market. For more on these topics, as they relate to the Soros network, see footnotes 5 and 6.