RESISTANCE NOW: FREE CULTURE
RESISTANCE NOW stands for political work and artistic positions, for protests and discussions.
RESISTANCE NOW TOGETHER has its origins in the eponymous initiative of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna, questioning the role of art in a time of socio-political upheaval. Starting in August 2024, the Vienna Festival reacted to the new nationalism with the international RESISTANCE NOW! Tour of dialogue and networking, artistic actions and political work to defend democracy, diversity and artistic freedom. As Milo Rau explained in The Guardian, the destruction of cultural diversity is almost complete in Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia. It is about dismantling diverse societies, about shattering a civil society that has long since ceased being ‘national’. ‘What should we do?’, he asked.
An active international movement then grew out of the petition against the dismissal of Matej Drlička as Director General of the Slovak National Theatre in mid-August 2024. 13 RESISTANCE NOW events — from New York to Taipei, from Stockholm to Belgrade and Amsterdam to Prague — in 11 countries followed in 2024 alone. The aim was to promote international networking and solidarity. The response and attention was enormous: Media reports in 32 countries across the world, more than 300 published articles.
In parallel, the European Theatre Convention (ETC), the largest network of publicly-funded theatres in Europe, organised events at the Festival d’Avignon in France and statements by its 70+ member theatres on the importance of protecting artistic freedom. By November 2024, the initiatives joined forces and significantly expanded: Together with Matej Drlička and with the Prospero and Opera Europa networks, an appeal to the European Parliament to protect artistic freedom was created. ‘RESISTANCE NOW: FREE CULTURE’, was published and had been joined by over two hundred cultural institutions from all across Europe. Media reports about the Europe-wide appeal reached a hundred million readers in over fifty countries, and dialogue was established at the highest levels with European policymakers.
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