Slovakia’s right-wing nationalist minister Martina Šimkovičová is waging an ideological war on the country’s independent arts and media sector, targeting cultural institutions, discriminating against LGBTQIA+ organizations. Though fearing for their safety, cultural workers are fighting back via collective action, supporting those on strike.
Articles
Afraid of falling behind, businesses are rushing to implement AI – even if their industries might not be ready for it. In this Standard Time episode, we explore generative AI’s impact on media and journalism, and ask whether its making us smarter or dumber.
Literature can’t save the world, but it does provide insight into the behaviour that drives cultural trends. And given the anthropocenic tendency towards self-destruction, we need all the help we can get with cultivating solidarity, combating injustice and resisting censorship.
The Russian State Duma is considering further restrictions on library books by ‘foreign agents’. Fearing potential liability for promoting Western propaganda or ‘extremist literature’, librarians have started to play it safe.
Recommended topics
Europe is facing not only Orbán’s autocratic turn but also that of his ‘apprentice’: Slovakia’s prime minister, Fico, has taken an advanced course in attacking his country’s judiciary, media and cultural institutions. His first goal: to get away with it, say beleaguered intellectuals, theatre directors, political scientists and investigative journalists from Bratislava.
Injustice is the universally understood common denominator that connects soldiers and liberals in Ukraine. With the war effort accelerating to the use of long-range missiles on Russian territory, a personal account of swapping aid provision for firearms explains the decision to fight, proving how contemplation never ceases.
Viewing authoritarianism as a political trend overlooks the damage it can cause. The devastation ‘illiberal democracies’ are inflicting on cultural and media sectors show just how difficult it is to recreate something once it has been taken apart. Eurozine partners discuss ways to sustain journalism at the 32nd European Meeting of Cultural Journals.
“Come Together” is founded on the principles of partnership and peer-to-peer learning among individuals within community media organizations situated in six different countries. Instead of generating entirely new knowledge, the initiative aims to unearth and leverage the existing wisdom residing within these organizations to foster innovative approaches.
Eurozine review
Breaking at the seams
L'Espill 74 (2024)
Spain’s communities, though autonomous, struggle with national cultural and economic hierarchy: Valencia calls for regional unity via federalism; Catalan tackles ‘ethnotypes’; and Basque defends its bid for reform.
Layers of dispossession
Soundings 87 (2024)
On the geography of Israeli settler colonialism; queer perspectives on the war in Ukraine; the experiences of Afghan ‘returnees’; and the familiar pattern of UK Labourism.
Neganthropology
Czas Kultury 2/2024
The politics and psychology of locality: on reviving local communities as high-tech expands and diversifies; forming networks against entropy; the Tortoise Strategy for caring; and rewriting life scripts.
Focal points
The European Parliament elections on 9 June are a referendum on EU policy since 2019. Will voters give Europe the green light for further progress, or pull the brakes? A new Eurozine series measures the political atmosphere in the EU and its neighbourhoods at this crucial moment.
Food and water systems under pressure: as the end of abundance becomes an everyday experience in Europe, we are thinking more closely about how our food reaches the table.
Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. With the Maidan becoming history, the focal point ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ explores the new challenges facing the young democracy, its place in Europe, and the lessons it might offer for the future of the European project.
Some observers, recalling the disasters of the 1920s and 30s, are suggesting that an anti-democratic counterrevolution on a global scale has begun. But is the writing really on the wall? Or does declinism prevent us from recognizing moments of democratic renewal?
Eurozine Network
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.