A European network meets the need of being based on a conceptual plan. It was the goal of the third great meeting of the network, held in Linz in July 1999. It was the director of the OK Centrum, Martin Sturm, who set the bases. The main discussion concerned the very concept of margins. Is it a question of joining together centres that are marginal through their geographical position, centres addressing a certain social marginality, or of marginality as intellectual positioning and choice of work?

levelling versus differentiation

Martin Sturm posed this alternative from the start, based on the concept of a "Europe of Regions" and on a point of view particularly well marked in the countries whose regional capacity is already strongly differentiated from central capacity: "The Regions, far from national metropolises threatened with loss of significance, are treated with incertitude as cultural centres. The periphery offers, in spite of its incoherence, many starting points for artistic and scientific creation.

Symposium Edge of Europe. O.K. Centrum Linz

It becomes interesting where it comes into contact with the world. It is there that oppositions are born, transforming peripheral zones into fields of confrontation, oppositions between internationalisation and search for identity, obstinate insulation and modernisation without limits, religious and genetic fundamentalism, folk tradition and implementation… However, these oppositions are only apparent: they are not mutually excluded but rather conditioned among themselves".

Moreover, he insists on the diversity of this concept and on the constant phenomenon of recovery or absorption: "Whoever considers the periphery only in its geographical extent is limited! Peripheries always have a historical, social, economic and artistic dimension, for metropolises do not develop their creative and cultural force due to their economic size or richness. Their force lies in the permanent absorption of the best resources of the periphery. From the obligatory daily confrontation with the other arise fresh impulses. The centralised control organisations that follow their own laws and mechanisms of filtering permanently sandpaper all angles and differences in order to produce a mixture that satisfies the national self-portrait."

effects of networking

Martin Sturm concludes about the evolutionary characteristics of the bonds that can be created among peripheries: "If the emancipation of regions from centres goes hand in hand with a setting in network of the peripheral zones with certain similar aspects, the diversity of cultural backgrounds can yield new potentials. A transverse organisation enables the differentiation of qualities specific to each area and the comparison to others, appeared under similar conditions.

Art and landscape centre of Vassivière en Limousin, France.
Aldo Rossi and Xavier Fabre, architects. Photo Jacques Hoepffner

This is because peripheral zones have, in addition to their provincial narrow character always deplored by metropolises, a larger opening to certain external influences. Peripheries always serve as crossroads and bonds. As the pressure of assimilation is lighter, they can preserve an identity which is rawer, but also more mobile and more flexible. It is only in one diversified structure that does not seek to level this variety that new associations and different combinations can be born."

These theoretical foundations, put in perspective during the discussions of the symposium, made it possible to restart the network on new widened bases while proposing as the next topic "Islands and Endgrounds (Finistères), or the circulation of works and artists to the margins of Europe."

C'Hybert rallye, 3 and 4 November 2001.
Contemporary Art Centre of Vassivière en Limousin.
View of the car of Frédéric Vaisen. Photo Pierre Leguillon

The meeting of the network took place in 2000, with CREDAC in Ivry in the Parisian suburbs and in Vassivière en Limousin, within the framework of the Campaign "Europe, a common heritage". It gathered more than forty art centres by privileging six Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Ukraine.

Beyond discoveries that constituted the presentations of the work of certain centres really located at the periphery of a widening Europe, the network of the "Arts Centres of Europe" perfectly affirmed its place within a framework of European identity. Cross exhibitions and reception of artists in residence are now the heart of its evolution.