Evens Foundation Annual Report 2019

Page 1

Annual Report 2019 Living Together Harmoniously in Europe


Contents Our Mission 3 What we Do 3 About The Evens Foundation 3 Chairwoman’s Message 4 Common Purpose through Differences 6 Assemblies: Modern Rituals 6 Learning Communities for Peace 7 Sharing European Histories 8 The Aesthetic Experience 9 Evens Lecture & Debate Series 11 Urban (Dis)Connections 12 Inside Polarization – Conflict Matters Workshops 12 Norms and Values within the European Reality 13 (Re)Thinking Values in Europe 13 Cultural Institutions as Places of Resistance 13 Models of Ethical Journalism and Development of Critical Media 14 Journalistic Voices Diversified 16 Hate Speech 16 Media Meets Literacy – Small-Scale Events 17 Difference Day 18 Art And Critical Education 18 Image & Memory: Writer’s Series 19 Embracing Controversy Europe 19 Fact-Checking Integrated 20 Evens Prizes 21 Evens Education Prize 2020 21 Evens Journalism Prize on Culture 2019 22 Evens Arts Prize 2019 23

Click for previous page

2 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

Click for next page


Our Mission The Evens Foundation aims to contribute to rethinking and building a European reality committed to the values of diversity, freedom, responsibility and solidarity.

What we Do The expression Living together harmoniously in Europe embodies the founders’ vision and stands at the core of our work. The Evens Foundation looks for tangible ways to engage with this key concern from philosophical, social, cultural and educational perspectives. The foundation identifies and supports innovative ideas, and awards achievements through its prizes and calls. It also fosters experimental projects that bridge the gap between research and practice, and facilitates knowledge exchange through signature lectures, seminars, debates and publications. Collaborations with an ever-expanding network of citizens, practitioners, researchers, NGOs, and academic and cultural institutions connect different communities and perspectives across the continent and beyond. As an operative foundation, the Evens Foundation initiates and runs projects together with its partners. Since the foundation’s outset, risks have been taken by stimulating experimentation – whether by designing own projects or supporting independent pioneering ideas. The foundation mainly focuses on developing pilot projects testing scientific hypotheses, innovative pedagogies or artistic processes.

About The Evens Foundation The Evens Foundation is a public-benefit foundation started as a family endeavour in 1990. Its founders, Irène Evens-Radzyminska and Georges Evens, established it because of their commitment to the European project. Born in Poland, they witnessed the troubled history of the Second World War that tore the continent apart. Forced to leave their country of birth, they found a new home in Belgium. Corinne Evens, daughter of the founders, is the Honorary President of the foundation. Monique Canto-Sperber is the Chairwoman of the Executive Committee of the foundation.

3 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019


Chairwoman’s Message The year 2019 was marked by numerous climate strikes, the aspirations of the ‘Gilets Jaunes’, the Brexit saga, the humanitarian refugee crisis and, of course, by the European Parliamentary elections. A total of 751 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) represent more than 512 million people from (at that time) 28 member states. Turnout across the EU was the highest in 20 years, showing that the European project remains highly relevant for various, sometimes very differing and much debated, reasons.

Monique Canto-Sperber Chairwoman, Executive Committee

A wide range of both formal and informal initiatives were taken prior to the elections to raise awareness about the possibilities – and the risks – in reshaping Europe’s political appearance, functioning and policy focus. Many initiatives gave voice to the preoccupations of European residents or tried to bridge radically differing opinions. The Evens Foundation supported several of them, as we aim to contribute to critically assessing what is needed to nurture a contemporary and sustainable form of ‘Europeanness’, in line with the ambitions of our founders. Last year, we also tried to look at actual challenges in all their complexity through the design and launch of several new projects, embedded in two main initiatives: (1) Common purpose through differences and (2) Norms and values within the European reality. The European Challenges debate series, at the crossroads of disciplines, concerns and viewpoints, aims at stimulating and enriching public debate on topical or long-standing controversial issues Europe has to face. The first debate at Centre Pompidou in April questioned the idea of a ‘cultural Europe’. At the time of Brexit, in the face of the rise of populism and on the eve of the European elections, the discussion addressed the deep crisis in Europe, calling into

4 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

question its history, trajectory and identity. In November, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the second debate re-examined the consequences of German reunification and tried to enhance understanding of the troubled relationship between two Europes. The Evens Foundation launched a research and experimentation project dedicated to public assemblies as forms of collective action – a matter that is especially topical in these complex times. Be they alternatives to traditional policymaking, or complements to our ageing representative institutions, these forms of participative policymaking need to be critically examined. Our project aims to bring together the knowledge from a variety of fields such as social science, activism, art and design around a common question: how can we form political communities? The project builds bridges between academia, civil society and politics, and includes three phases: research, experimentation and public events. With the Sharing European Histories initiative, the Evens Foundation together with EuroClio aimed to support and disseminate innovative projects and pioneering teaching strategies that help (young) people to understand the complexity and multiplicity of European history. We officially launched the project at the EuroClio conference in Gdansk in April 2019, where we presented the selected projects and the teaching strategies – which were further developed during the year. The Evens Foundation also launched a research and experimentation project to explore the conditions that enable a transformative aesthetic experience. It spans ancient, modern and contemporary creation, from the visual arts to music and sound. Our aim is to look closely at the assumption, popular in the field of philanthropy, that


an aesthetic experience and arts education contribute to social and cultural inclusion. For these experimentations, we established partnerships with two major cultural institutions, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and a collaboration with Theatrum Mundi. Free and responsible media are fundamental for democracy and the values it promotes. In order to propose adequate tools and practices for ethical journalism, we established a research project on the conditions and challenges of contemporary journalism in Central and Eastern Europe. The research of the Evens Foundation in collaboration with the Ethical Journalism Network in Central and Eastern Europe has resulted in several policy reports. Media professionals from these countries get the opportunity to connect and exchange skills and expertise with their colleagues in other countries on ethical journalism. The Evens Journalism Prizes aim to reward journalists whose work contributes highly to making Europe more comprehensible and accessible to a broad audience in three categories: Culture, Geopolitics and Education. The Evens Journalism Prize on Culture 2019 was awarded to the online platform Cartoon Movement for the development of a distinctive and remarkable journalistic format with high potential for far-reaching impact in an era when global collaborations are producing the most ground-breaking outcomes. Graphic journalist Takoua Ben Mohamed received the Encouragement Prize. The award ceremony with Tjeerd Royaards (editor-in-chief at Cartoon Movement) and Takoua Ben Mohamed was held in May 2019 at BOZAR–Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels on the occasion of the Difference Day Opening Gala.

The Evens Art Prize is a biennial award established by the Evens Foundation to support artistic initiatives that engage with contemporary realities in Europe and envision perspectives for shaping our common world. Choreographer and artist Eszter Salamon was the recipient of the Evens Arts Prize 2019, which acknowledged her ambitious and uncompromising work exploring contemporary issues. The jury particularly valued the strong European resonance of her work and the way it articulates individual and collective experiences. The award ceremony and a conversation with Eszter Salamon took place in April at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. French composer Éliane Radigue received the jury’s Special Mention, recognizing and awarding her unique path, deeply shaped by a constant interest and curiosity in the world. The European elections have shown that we live in times of fragmentation, with a splintered and polarized electoral base across Europe. However, they also revealed a new, if disruptive, re-engagement by citizens in politics. With Europe in flux, more than ever the Evens Foundation will not cease to promote, support and initiate harmonious living together in these complex times. The Evens Foundation aims to rethink and experiment with ways of living together in complicated times. Our projects build upon the diversity of human histories, cultures and experiences, considering the recognition of these differences as a precondition to shape a common world. For almost thirty years, we have been active in key fields of intervention such as democracy, education, media, arts and science. For our strategic plan 2018-2020, we designed two leading initiatives: Common Purpose Through Differences,

5 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

and Norms and Values Within the European Reality. These concerns unfold several thematic axes, exposing the challenges that Europe faces today. Our projects explore different forms of togetherness and belonging, call for new solidarities and aspire to create a neutral space where the plurality of voices and discordant viewpoints can intersect. We seek to critically investigate values, social constructs and narratives in order to enable collective reflection within the wider society.


Common Purpose through Differences Assemblies: Modern Rituals How do we assemble, negotiate, debate or deliberate, and sometimes come to a political compromise between people with widely divergent views? How can our differences – some of them irreconcilable – allow for discussion and engender solutions for collectively faced challenges? The Evens Foundation has launched a research and experimentation project, Assemblies: Modern Rituals, dedicated to heterogeneous assemblies and the conditions for the emergence of collective intelligence. This three-yearlong inquiry brings together researchers and practitioners from a variety of fields to examine what exactly ­happens when we assemble by delving inside the ‘black box’ of collective ­deliberation. More specifically, the project focuses on the necessary conditions for inclusive deliberations, the epistemic benefits of diversity and its influence on the quality of deliberation and transformation of opinions, the civic effects of assemblies, the role of emotions and ­affects, and the place of dissensus in deliberation processes. Finally, the project seeks to understand the relation between the spaces and forms of assemblies and the knowledge and relations they produce. In other words, how does the way people gather shape their thinking and actions in turn? In times of increasing social polarisation and distrust in traditional political institutions, the Evens Foundation wants

to contribute to the burgeoning public debate on ways of opening up and reviving democratic processes and forms of civil dialogue. The project is designed in collaboration with a scientific council comprising David Farrell (University College Dublin, lead researcher of the Irish Citizen Assemblies), Helene Landemore (Yale University), Yves Sintomer (Université Paris 8) and Richard Sennett (LSE).

6 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019


Learning Communities for Peace Learning Communities for Peace, initiated by the Evens Foundation as part of Building Coalitions: Schools and Communities, was conceived as a European project involving different partners working alongside each other in different realities sharing the same overall goal: improving relationships and bolstering togetherness within school communities in a participatory way. To achieve the overall project goal, we sought to shift the trend away from thinking in terms of universal, pan-European solutions, and acknowledge the uniqueness of each and every school context. Instead of offering universal solutions, we chose to support an open-ended process with five primary schools in Croatia, Greece, Sweden and the UK leading the way, in close collaboration with the partners and building on the wisdom present in the (school) community. This also implied that the overall goal was redefined locally to correspond to the lived reality in each setting. The project was launched in November 2016, with the first partners’ meeting in Sweden, and lasted until 31 August 2019. In 2019, the partners mainly concentrated on sharing their reflections and experiences, and developing tools and gathering resources that could be of use to teachers and other community actors seeking to develop their own Learning Community for Peace (LCP). Several dissemination events were organized in the different countries and the website was transformed into a toolkit and archive of the project.

On 26 August 2019, the Evens Foundation hosted School Communities in Action, a European seminar dedicated to bottom-up strategies for community involvement in schools, at the BOZAR centre in Brussels. The seminar was conceived as a peer-learning platform, enabling discussion of a selection of practices from Europe and beyond experimenting with different strategies to strengthen or engage with (school) communities. One of the central questions of our project was whether schools and the communities surrounding them can engage in the kind of sustained dialogue, integration and peacebuilding that is so urgently needed, and, if so, how they can do so. In revisiting this question last year, we had to admit that we were somewhat overambitious when conceptualizing the LCP project. Soon after the start of the project we realized that, to be true to the main principles of the project – uniqueness, ownership, participation – the project partners should not tell the schools who to work with. Nor should we define for them what it meant to be a Learning Community for Peace. Realizing this early on helped the operational partners to redefine and reinvent their role during the process. We noticed also that this made the relationships between the pilot schools and the operational partners more egalitarian. We were in this together: reflecting, planning, acting and observing. In the end, this process of searching turned out to be the major strength of the LCP approach.

7 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019


Sharing European Histories With the Sharing European Histories initiative, the Evens Foundation and EUROCLIO are seeking to support and disseminate innovative projects and pioneering teaching strategies that help young people (and by extension the general public) to understand the complexity and multiplicity of European history, and recognize how history can engage everyone in understanding Europe and their part within it. We believe that opening up a space to engage with the dissonant and often conflictual nature of European history is the first step in discovering common positions or overcoming divisions while acknowledging differences. In response to the call for applications we launched in 2018, we received a wide range of ideas and project proposals from all over Europe. In early 2019, in close consultation with an international expert group, we selected and invited five individual contributors and two projects to further develop their ideas and projects.

The Hague meeting

We officially launched Sharing European Histories at the EuroClio conference in Gdansk in April 2019 where we presented the selected projects and the teaching strategies. The kick-off meeting of the project that we organized during the conference brought together the selected individual contributors and the partner organizations. After the event, the individual contributors – Gentian Dedja (Albania), Juan Carlos Ocaùa (Spain), Elisabete Pereira

8 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

(Portugal), Helen Snelson (UK) and Joanna Wojdon (Poland) – started rewriting the teaching strategies they proposed, making them accessible and user-friendly for history educators across Europe. In this process they were supported by two trainers. In August 2019, a second meeting for the individual contributors was organized. During the meeting all contributors had the opportunity to share their strategies with their peers and receive suggestions for future development. We also agreed on a plan of action for completing the strategies. The two projects that were selected for a grant were launched in autumn 2019. The Croatian History Teachers Association started working with local history hubs as an innovative model for students and teachers to learn about the imperial legacies in and diversity of the region through exploring local heritage. The EUscreen Foundation and the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity focus on the promotion of critical historical thinking among young people by developing and testing three new interactive learning activities based largely on audiovisual archival content (from the EUscreen collection in their project (Re)Viewing European Stories). These activities will focus on changing borders and migrating individuals as a result of regional, national or international conflicts in Europe.


The Aesthetic Experience The Evens Foundation has launched a research and experimentation project to explore the conditions that enable a transformative aesthetic experience. It spans ancient, modern and contemporary creation, from the visual arts to music and sound. Our aim is to look closely at the assumption, popular in the field of philanthropy, that an aesthetic experience and arts education contribute to social and cultural inclusion. The following questions helped us refine the project focus. How does an encounter with an artwork – an individual experience in itself – create the possibility of relating and attuning to others? How can our rich and complex cultural heritages provide the foundations for sharing in our increasingly diverse societies? How can the critical examination of a difficult past lead not to separation and disconnection, but to possibilities of thinking together? Finally, do gallery education and mediation practices fully consider the cognitive and empathic potential of the aesthetic experience? The foundation has been committed to working with heterogeneous groups for many years, and we have found that many cultural institutions question their mediation practices based on segmenting and categorizing their audiences. This project, ultimately, seeks to create a common space for different publics to come together and share their symbolic worlds. We have established partnerships with two major cultural institutions, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and a collaboration with Theatrum Mundi, a research centre founded by sociologist Richard Sennett. Three experimental

projects, each with a specific focus and several overarching concerns, have been designed that could generate responses to our common questions.

Museum in Dialoog / Musée en Dialogue Museum in Dialogue is a joint initiative of the Evens Foundation and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, realized in partnership with FMDO vzw, to explore how art – and in particular the collection of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium – can be a factor for social cohesion in a highly (‘super’) diverse society and what this means for the more conventional art historical interpretation of the artworks. More specifically, a small group of people from different social and cultural backgrounds – who may be regular or first-time visitors to the museum – will be invited to form a learning community that will address the key questions. The learning

9 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

community will be the central node of the project, working in close collaboration with the education team of the museum. Through a series of working sessions, accompanied by an external facilitator, the group will try to understand if and how, through both sensitive and critical inquiry, a museum and the masterpieces it houses can serve as a productive space for questioning, thinking together and belonging; in short: a space for encounter and dialogue. The aesthetic experience forms the starting point of the process. The end result was deliberately left undefined to give the group the necessary space to propose and implement their own ideas. The process will be documented so that we can reflect on and share our learnings with other institutions and colleagues.


La Tablée

Voi[e,x,s] Research Fellowship

Launched in partnership with the Centre Pompidou, the project experiments with inclusive mediation practices by creating a device – a set of modular and mobile tables designed by architect Didier Faustino and hosted by a mixed team of museum educators and volunteers.

At the core of this project is the creation of a major new sound artwork, a collaboration between professional musicians and a group of residents (permanent and transient) of the Parisian La Chapelle neighbourhood. In partnership with the Theatrum Mundi, we have initiated and commissioned a study to explore how this shared aesthetic experience could emerge and enrich forms of togetherness.

La Tablée is an invitation to sit and slow down, engage in a creative activity, recount an aesthetic experience, learn about art or someone else’s experience of it, and question our ways of seeing. It creates a unique space where different audiences can share wider conversations and experience deeper engagement with artworks and, more importantly, with each other. The recruitment and training of volunteers is an essential part of the project. It opens up the possibility of joining the museum and partaking in its mission of studying and transmitting heritage, and ultimately of helping to transform it into a space of shared ownership.

One of the key objectives of this research is the development of a critical handbook aimed at a broad audience of practitioners, public authorities and citizens, showing how performance-making affects people’s relationship with each other and their environment. In October 2019, a public performance of this work in progress took place during the Nuit Blanche in Paris. A first report of the experience was presented at the conference ‘Crafting a Sonic Urbanism. The Political Voice’ at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in December 2019.

10 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

A short film that documents the process is online https://vimeo.com/384798801.


Evens Lecture & Debate Series European Challenges: Debates The European Challenges series, at the crossroads of disciplines, concerns and viewpoints, aims at stimulating and enriching public debate on topical or long-standing controversial issues that Europe faces. Organized at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, these regular debates revive the tradition of the public agora.

European University in Budapest, and Ivan Krastev, Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. In 2019, the foundation aimed at promoting further debate on important societal issues that are dear to the foundation and important for the public. Unfortunately, due mainly to logistical reasons, the lectures had to be rethought and moved to the following year.

Europe: what can culture do? Our first debate of the year, on 17 April 2019, questioned the idea of a ‘cultural Europe’. At the time of Brexit, in the face of the rise of populism and on the eve of the European elections, the discussion addressed the deep crisis Europe is going through, which calls into question its history, trajectory and identity. Associated with illusion, disappointment or construction still to come, does this notion of a cultural Europe have real meaning?

It is our priority to soon welcome Ann Pettifor, Director of PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics) and Prof. Arjun Appadurai, Professor of Anthropology and Globalisation at the Hertie School in Berlin, and Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.

Speakers included critically acclaimed French political thinker Jean-Claude Milner, in dialogue with historian Emmanuelle Loyer, artist Natacha Nisic and writer Emmanuel Ruben. The debate was moderated by Jean-Marie Durand, journalist at Les Inrockuptibles.

The panel included historian Sonia Combe, philosopher Francesco Masci, writer Geraldine Schwartz, artist Marie Reinert and political scientist Jacques Rupnik. The debate was moderated by the Centre Pompidou’s Jean-Max Colard.

Berlin: between two Europes? On 14 November 2019, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this debate reexamined the consequences of German reunification and tried to improve understanding of the troubled relationship between two Europes. It focused on the current situation of the German capital situated at the crossroads of two Europes, with very different conceptions and expectations – a conflict that has been intensified by the rise of the far-right in the last regional elections.

The Evens Lecture series is a new initiative of the Foundation, strengthening our active contribution to the quality of public debate on pressing issues of our times. In Brussels we work in collaboration with BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts. There we invite renowned speakers from different fields to reflect on the broad theme ‘Common purpose through differences’ in a keynote lecture.

European Challenges: Lectures

In 2018, we welcomed two prestigious keynote speakers: Michael Ignatieff, Rector and President of the Central

11 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019


Urban (Dis)Connections

Inside Polarization – Conflict Matters Workshops

© G Garitan

Our cities are testing grounds that experiment on a daily basis with forms of togetherness and separation. More than rural areas, cities are confronted with a high degree of diversity and constantly changing populations. To understand how Europeans conceive their belonging to Europe, we considered it would be fruitful to look closer at connections and disconnections in cities. To better understand cities as places of ‘living together and apart’, we concluded a partnership with the Pascal Lamy Chair of the Université Catholique de Louvain to analyze contemporary mobilizations of (past) cosmopolitanism in small and medium-sized Danubian port cities: Hainburgan-der-Donau (Austria) and Vidin (Bulgaria). The goal of the Chair is to connect researchers from all over Europe with an interest in the experiences and representations of Europeans in all their diversity. More concretely, the foundation will support several phases of anthropological field research to compare living together and apart in those two towns, meetings of the researchers involved, and an initiative to present the results to a wider audience and discuss the main questions. The field research is scheduled to take place in May (Hainburg-an-der-Donau) and October 2020 (Vidin).

© FSPAC

In the wake of our Conflict Matters Conferences, we established the Conflict Matters Workshops led by a single organization or trainer around a certain issue or theme. This initiative met a clear need among practitioners and educators to create more time and a more focused environment to learn from each other. For the second series of Conflict Matters Workshops, we invited Bart Brandsma of Inside Polarisation to outline the dynamics of polarization and to explain how to create a strategy of depolarization. We organized three workshops in this series, the first one in 2018. In 2019, the second workshop took place in Barcelona, Spain from 20-22 March in collaboration with the Escola de Cultura de Pau. The third was organized in Cluj, Romania from 12-14 June 2019, together with the Center for International Studies (CSI) and the Conflict Studies Center (CSC) at the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences (FSPAC) at Babeș-Bolyai University.

12 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

© Hanna Zielinska On the eve of each training workshop, Bart Brandsma gave a lecture so as to share his vision with a broader audience. In each case, the group of participants was carefully selected in order to ensure a good mix of profiles and experiences. The foundation also reserved a few spots for participants from other European countries with an interest in the topic. This proved to be a successful combination: it allowed the international participants to learn from a specific context and the local group to step back and look at their situation from another perspective.


Norms and Values within the European Reality

Cultural Institutions as Places of Resistance

(Re)Thinking Values in Europe In the context of rethinking formats of exchange on important sociopolitical themes, the Evens Foundation partnered with Germany’s leading news website Zeit Online for the dialogue project Europe Talks. The project was conceived by Zeit Online together with 15 media organizations from all over Europe in the run-up to the European elections in May 2019. The aim was to spark one-on-one discussions between people who live in different European countries and hold opposing political opinions. Š Kim Duchateau

The Evens Foundation wishes to bring together think tanks in a series of seminars around the key values that underlie the European reality. By organizing challenging debates, the foundation aims at stimulating reflection on the meaning of the core European values today. In May 2019, a first pilot consultation took place in BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, in collaboration with the museum and the Association of European Journalists Belgium. Seven think tanks and about 30 students aged 18-26 met to discuss environmental issues. The foundation then proceeded to devise a series of think-tank meetings and develop new consultation formats between organizations and audience, planning its first session, on social and economic freedom in Europe, in 2020.

On 11 May, Europe Talks brought together thousands of Europeans who met either online via video calls or in person. More than 17,000 participants signed up. For the first time, thousands of Europeans talked about the same political issues at exactly the same time. To celebrate the launch of the event, the Europe Talks Conference at BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels convened media partners, supporters and participants in one place. Prominent European voices (Jeremy Cliffe, Samantha Cristoforetti, Philippe Van Parijs, Yasmine Ourhrane) took the stage to share their passionate views on Europe and to celebrate what makes Europe unique. The Evens Foundation, together with other partners such as the European Cultural Foundation and Allianz Kulturstiftung, participates and supports the continuation of the project in 2020. The project Europe Talks was the recipient of the prestigious Jean Monnet Prize for European Integration in 2019.

13 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

Š Martha Rosler The objective of this project is to research, map and understand which actors are playing or could play an active role in counterbalancing cultural dominance and offering a democratic vision for institutional activities. We aim to engage with polyvocal activities and promote a neutral proposal (as defined below) from and for institutions, artists and students. Concurrently, the programme would encourage the creation of an unbiased environment and a tool to resist and shift the narrative as determined by a dominant discourse, offering a plurality of counter-narratives in return. In particular, this project would help to foster a comprehensive cultural proposal that guarantees a form of participation based on the agency of everyone involved, ensuring inclusiveness in terms of demography, geography, religion and gender. We thus wish to create a new possibility to engage with heritage horizontally, encouraging the concretion of a new and alternative cultural paradigm. The working group, which includes professionals and academics covering the full spectrum of cultural production and research, represents the backbone of the project. It has been involved in the research phase and in the early design of the project, which will be developed in 2020. The project outcome will ideally include European meetings, a symposium in collaboration with BOZAR (autumn 2020), a workshop and a publication.


Models of Ethical Journalism and Development of Critical Media Building Trust in Journalism Free and responsible media are fundamental to democracy and the values it carries. In order to propose adequate tools and practices for ethical journalism, it is necessary to have a clear view of the needs and challenges that journalists face. Having identified a knowledge gap concerning ethical journalistic standards in Central and Eastern Europe, the Evens Foundation partnered with the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN) to launch the Building Trust in Journalism project. Its purpose is to explore the condition and needs of the media community in Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria. We aim to raise awareness of the importance of ethical professional journalism in building trust in the media and facilitate the crucial role they can play in fostering democracies. Our project started with pilot actions in Poland (2019) and will be continued in Bulgaria and Slovakia (2020). We began with a research phase in order to develop an empirically led needs assessment, conducting study visits, meetings and interviews with media stakeholders. We engaged with representatives from traditional media outlets – print, TV, radio – as well as online and start-up owners. We were also interested in the academic perspective, and in NGOs dedicated to media development and media freedom. We aimed to reach the widest possible group: mainstream and niche, national and local, traditional and new media. We had a chance to hear the voices of the opinion leaders and of those who work far from the front line, voices coming from different, sometimes very polarized, sides of the public discourse. This approach allowed us to understand the full spectrum and complexity of the media situation in Poland and identify core issues regarding professional ethics in journalism.

© David Sypniewski

Following the research phase, the policy report on the media landscape in Poland by Aida Kaisy and Chris Elliott from EJN was completed. Its initial conclusions were presented and discussed during a two-day event in Warsaw in September 2019. Representatives of the Polish media community attended a series of panel debates, and we also offered them a workshop on ‘Reporting Elections Ethically’, delivered by the award-winning broadcast journalist Jacky Rowland and the authors of the report. This event initiated a debate on shared experiences, in particular with regard to trust and accountability. It proved to be a rare opportunity for cooperation and solidarity within a very diverse media community. Soon after this, in December, our project concerns were also a part of the debate organized by EJN in Oslo, by invitation from the Fritt Ord Foundation. This resulted in joining forces

14 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

and gathering all the research work of EJN under the common umbrella of ‘Building Trust in Journalism in CEE’ – with policy reports from Hungary and Czechia added to the series. Our initiative has been well received by the media community and organizations. Among others, it has drawn the attention of Free Press Unlimited (Amsterdam-based NGO with media projects in more than forty countries), which invited us to collaborate, thus enabling broader dissemination of our work in 2020. Once we have the five policy reports completed, we aim to respond to the needs we gathered and organize together with our project partners an international event offering a series of training sessions to provide journalists from CEE countries with professional tools, support and exchange opportunities.


Becoming Ethical Journalists The Evens Foundation and the Center for Citizenship Education (Poland) launched a new educational project on media literacy by initiating local coalitions of schools and media outlets. We believe that media literacy is an important condition for active citizenship in today’s information-based society. Therefore we aimed to strengthen critical thinking skills and increase ethical standards in journalism through the collaboration of all actors in public debate. The project also sought to respond to a growing problem of media quality, on the one hand, and the need for media education in schools on the other. We focused on these aspects of journalistic work that involve civic education and co-creation of the community by providing valuable and relevant information. We challenged the global issue of disinformation on a community level first, starting in Poland. There we invited teachers, students and journalists to join efforts in producing an original journalistic work covering locally important topics.

Throughout the programme, teachers became familiar with methods of deconstructing media coverage via the blended learning course. The core of the training is based on the European edition of the ‘Mind over Media. Analysing contemporary propaganda’ programme founded by Renee Hobbs PhD, and the Polish curriculum developed within it. The course was accompanied by two workshops, and the teachers also got individual mentoring support.

Journalists participated in workshops with well-known editors, and engaged in social projects with schools, strengthening their position in the local community. In spring 2020, the results of these joint efforts will be presented during a final event.

Under the teachers’ supervision, students cooperated with local media to create a column in a local newspaper in one of three categories: MEGA locals, Unknown places/Unheard stories, and Youth speak!. Alongside they learned to analyze media messages by conducting a one-week desk research, interviewing a journalist and taking part in the expert webinar. Kick-off meeting in Warsaw

The project consisted of two parallel paths: teachers took part in the blended learning course, while the local coalition (school team guided by a teacher and media partner) ran a common project. The kick-off meeting of the project in October 2019 in Warsaw gathered teachers and journalists – project participants – from all over Poland. Together with invited guests – media experts and practitioners – we discussed, debated and took part in workshops to prepare for the upcoming months of common work.

© Kamila Szuba

15 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

© Kamila Szuba


Journalistic Voices Diversified The Evens Foundation is keen to take new initiatives to diversify journalism and the media; more specifically, to help to diversify journalistic voices in a broad sense, covering the (geographical or cultural) origins of those voices, the content of media channels, and operational aspects such as forms of distribution. The aim of this project, which is to be considered a pilot at this stage, is to support refugee and exiled journalists to restart, progress or re-address their careers in Europe. Displaced journalists frequently arrive in Europe with a remarkable range of skills (gathered while defining a professional career in their home country) but experience a general lack of work possibilities, exclusion from employment circuits, cultural barriers and an overall lack of agency.

The Evens Foundation aspires to create a work environment that offers project participants the possibility to pursue their professional path in Europe – more specifically in Belgium – through work placement (although temporary), training and mentoring. A specific focus will be put on narrative practices and immersive-style storytelling as we believe that this would prove particularly meaningful, thorough and compelling for this project and in this context. After the initial mapping and research phase, at the end of 2019 the foundation identified in the Narrative Journalism Foundation (Stichting Verhalende Journalistiek) an ideal content partner. It plans to jointly establish a fruitful partnership with a media organization in the beginning of 2020 and launch the project by summer 2020.

Hate Speech This project is part of a broader enterprise which aims to propose different ways to monitor freedom of speech, based on empirical research. It explores the psychological basis of common assumptions regarding freedom of speech. In particular, it aims to investigate the emotions triggered by derogatory or subordinating speech, and challenge the view that they can be reduced to humiliation, self-depreciation and anger. The goal of the project is therefore to investigate experimentally the nature of the emotions felt by victims of hate speech.

emotional reactions to scenarios in which an individual is the target of hate speech. Such a method will enable us to control a number of interesting variables, such as the offensiveness of the slur, the relationship between the speaker and the addressee, and even the relationship between the third party (the participant) and the speaker and addressee. We will assess the extent to which participants perceive the slur as hate speech, the degree of offensiveness attached to the slur, and their desire to punish and/or reward the speaker or the addressee.

We will conduct a series of online survey-based experiments in France, where we will look at third parties’ perceptions and

In sum, our enquiry will allow us to go beyond the theoretical investigations in philosophy and linguistics by adopting a

16 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

more empirical approach to slurs and derogatory terms, and in particular, by looking at the affective component of slurs. This will be done through online surveys and, in a second stage, through live experimentations with a group of participants.

© Brian Stauffer


Media Meets Literacy – Small-Scale Events (In)Separable. Difficult Subjects in Polish-Jewish Relations This project is a direct response to a series of recent events threatening Polish-Jewish relations and challenging a process of reconciliation. There are indications that the Polish public lacks basic knowledge, but is also led by misconceptions and anti-Semitic prejudices that determine the way Jews and the Holocaust are perceived. It is a global issue, but it is particularly acute in Poland due to our common history. The Evens Foundation partnered with the Galicia Jewish Museum (Cracow, Poland) in the ‘(In)Separable. Difficult subjects in Polish-Jewish relations’ project, addressing and aiming to overcome key stereotypes and misunderstandings related to Polish-Jewish relations. We invited the audience to a series of seven panel debates held from March to November 2019 in the Galicia Jewish Museum. The interactive panels, led by Adam Szostkiewicz, author and journalist at Polityka weekly, hosted leading Polish historians, researchers and experts. They explored difficult issues in Polish-Jewish relations and confronted the most striking misconceptions, including by answering questions from the audience. The programme included topics such as: Strategies of Survival: The Fates of Jews in Occupied Poland; Jews and Israel; The Attitudes of Jews from the Diaspora toward Israel; Polish Anti-Semitism. The Sources and Scale of Anti-Semitism in Polish Society; The Catholic Church and the Jews. The whole series attracted a large public of more than 850 people in total.

To amplify the educational dimension of the project, short videos and fact-sheets were produced, summarizing the most important facts and data from each debate, tackling related fake facts and stereotypes. These materials are designed to serve as a practical tool for teachers and will be available to download online.

and Draginja Nadaždin (Amnesty International Poland) were invited to discuss methods that the media could deploy to counteract prejudices and hate speech towards minority groups. The debate was preceded by an interactive experience designed to enable the guests to explore the tensions between media representation and identity.

The final event, #Others: Media and Prejudices, was run under the Evens Foundation Media Meets Literacy label on 28 November 2019 in Warsaw, framing all the issues discussed during the project and analyzing them in a wider European context. Prof. Michał Bilewicz (Center for Research on Prejudice, University of Warsaw), Anna Górnicka (Outriders)

The project received exceptional attention, including in the media, and will be continued in 2020.

© Galicia Jewish Museum

17 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019


Difference Day In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly declared the 3rd of May as World Press Freedom Day to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press, and remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression. In 2015, the Evens Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Erasmushogeschool Brussel, BOZAR & iMinds (now imec) named this special day Difference Day, which is intended to honour individuals and organizations who make a difference by defending and promoting these values. Press freedom is of paramount importance for the Evens Foundation, especially in the European contemporary journalistic context, so much under pressure in recent years. The event consists of a programme aimed at high-school and university students, and a session open to the general public. These sessions, whether plenary or panel discussions, are shaped by the Difference Day key partners. BOZAR also ensures that an artistic component is integrated into the day.

Art and Critical Education In 2019, the theme of ‘Speaking truth to power’ led to thought-provoking discussions on investigative journalism in today’s media landscape as well as the impact of new technologies on the future of journalism. Alan Rusbridger, principal of Lady Margaret Hall and former editor-in-chief at The Guardian, was the keynote speaker. Marcela Turati, freelance investigative journalist covering the Mexican drug war and a founding member of QuintoElemento, was recipient of the Difference Day Honorary Title, while Rudi Vranckx (VRT) and Elena Milashina (Novaya Gazeta) received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa. During the opening gala dinner, the Evens Prize for Journalism on Culture officially honoured its laureates Tjeerd Rojaards (Cartoon Movement) and Takoua Ben Mohamed.

Building on its work in the fields of arts and education, the Evens Foundation has initiated an inquiry to explore pedagogies that use art and artistic strategies to create spaces open to questioning, difference, conflicting views, and thinking together. Ultimately, the project seeks to support the development of innovative models of arts-based learning that enable teachers and students to engage in difficult ethical discussions through aesthetic encounter. To open this inquiry on arts in education, the Evens Foundation invited practitioners from Europe and beyond in November 2018 for three days of challenging and important conversations in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. We used this opportunity to envision next steps: future partnerships or joint experimentation initiatives allowing practitioners to enrich their practice and take it further. For example, we are currently reflecting on a Travelling School project, a concrete idea that emerged during the discussions, as a peer-learning residency project.

© Laagencia

18 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019


Image & Memory: Writer’s Series

Embracing Controversy Europe

This series of literary texts sheds light on images that have shaped our collective imaginary, inaugurating a new collaboration with our long-standing partner LE BAL, the acclaimed French institution dedicated to visual studies.

In 2016, the Foundation launched a pedagogical initiative to support the development of and experimentation with methods and practical tools to discuss complex and divisive issues in school settings, taking into consideration the emotional implications of such issues.

A few years ago, we initiated together Ersilia, a digital platform and a one-of-its-kind tool for analyzing images. Designed by LE BAL, it grew rapidly, developed new pedagogical materials, and received professional recognition from the educational community. To share Ersilia’s remarkable resources with wider audiences, and to enrich it with new perspectives, the Evens Foundation has proposed a new chapter with LE BAL. Every month, a writer submits a short literary text that will appear both on the platform and in a partner media outlet. The text will be dedicated to an image or images of their choice. Contemporary or historical, disturbing, enigmatic or easily seductive, these chosen images will necessarily be part of our collective memory. Sometimes forgotten and newly brought to the surface, these are images that have shaped our perceptions and representations. Combining critical and sensitive approaches, these texts will unfold the – often imperceptible at first sight – historical, political, and cultural significations that the images contain. The analyses will reveal how our collective gaze is constantly being conditioned, be it by cultural habits or technical possibilities, and how ways of seeing persist or change over time. Finally, the writers will engage with the emotional responses that are evoked when looking at images, adding more complexity and new ways of relating to what we see.

We launched three pilot projects in Belgium, France, and Poland for (future) teachers and educators, taking the different contexts into consideration. As a follow-up to this project, we were involved in a European working-group meeting on this topic organized by the Flemish Peace Institute (FPI) in May 2019. For the FPI, one of the aims of the workshop was to gather feedback and input on the ideas and strategies they had developed for educational professionals to deal with controversy and polarization in the classroom and, more specifically, whether the proposed theoretical schemes and pedagogical strategies were relevant in different European contexts. The Evens Foundation helped to identify relevant participants from its network to invite, and helped to prepare the programme. During the meeting, we exchanged more in-depth views about the issue of dealing with controversy and polarization in educational contexts, sharing knowledge while at the same time exploring similarities and differences between European contexts. Based on the discussions and the insights gained during the workshop in May in Brussels, Maarten Van Alstein reworked his text on dealing with controversy and polarization in education and sent it to the participants for review. In December 2019, the inspirational guide, with suggestions for pedagogical practice, was published on the FPI website.

19 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

Following the meeting, the foundation also gave a small grant to S’Emparer de Questions Socialement Vives, a research project of the Université Claude Bernard Lyon in collaboration with the Collège Louis Aragon de Mably in France. This project aims to improve understanding of how critical thinking can be supported through the study of socially acute questions at school. The researchers and teachers will pay particular attention to understanding how working on Socially Acute Questions (SAQs) at school helps students to identify controversial knowledge together and to assess the reliability and quality of the information they receive. They will also evaluate how integrating the history of science in teaching helps students to better perceive the interactions between actors and arguments, as well as the scientific dimensions and elements of context (social, economic and political) that animate social debates. In the framework of this project, new tools and trainings for teachers will also be developed. These will be shared on the French website of the Embracing Controversy project. www.semparerdescontroverses.org/


Fact-checking Integrated EUfactcheck The Evens Foundation supported the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) in their didactic project, EUfactcheck, designed to implement a methodical factchecking curriculum in journalism schools across Europe. We are convinced that free and responsible media are fundamental to democracy and the values it promotes. What we all observe now as a major challenge – both for the media and audiences – is the spate of mis- and disinformation that often leads to deepening social divisions and tensions. Within the foundation’s strategic frame on ethical issues, norms and values in the European reality, we support actions and good practices that contribute to challenging this dangerous trend. Fact-checking approaches are increasing in popularity, but are also becoming contested. External fact-checkers that flag content as potentially dubious can lead communities to mistrust institutions such as traditional media. EUfactcheck offers a sustainable curriculum unit on factchecking of (so far) 20 journalism schools across Europe, with students producing fact checks based on a common methodology for dealing with misinformation. EUfactcheck’s overall goal is to improve the quality of journalism through education and to foster fact-based public debate through the growth of democratic awareness of EU voters and European citizens. By fact-checking European political claims and trying to tackle misinformation, the students and their public gain deeper insight into and interest in democratic processes, both on the national and European levels. For the pedagogical process, a specific methodology has been developed: the EUfactcheck flowchart.

The Evens Foundation joined EJTA to boost the impact of the project. We supported the EUfactcheck Bootcamp – a twoday event organized for more than 30 participants (staff from journalism schools and international students) at Utrecht University College in January 2019. This meeting prepared all staff to start fact-checking with their students, applying the common developed methodology of EUfactcheck. Following the bootcamp, participants kept fact-checking political claims during the run-up to the EU parliamentary elections in 2019 and published them on the EUfactcheck platform. All the knowledge and experiences of the EUfactcheck project are gathered in a manual funded by the Evens Foundation. It is a freely accessible handbook full of practical, didactic guidelines and best practices. It consists of two parts: Part I entails the detailed description of the project’s process: history, management and lessons learned. Part II, ‘How to organise a fact-checking module in the Journalism curriculum’, is focused on the pedagogical approach and methodology used during the project’s first production phase (January-June 2019). The manual offers a unique perspective to journalists coming from different national contexts, but trained in the same methodology. We will continue to support internalizing fact-checking in more journalism schools, with a specific focus on the CEE and Balkan countries. To reach out to a wider audience in those regions, we will organize a Train the Trainer event in February 2020. Our partner and host for this will be the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia.

20 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

© Harrison Rich

General Assembly Conference of the Forum for European Journalism Students: The Biggest Story of our Time – Covering Climate Change in the Media As part of our support for journalists and quality media across Europe, we supported the General Assembly conference of the Forum for European Journalism Students (FEJS). This year it was dedicated to the topic of climate change and how to cover it in the media. The event, in October 2019 in Helsinki (Finland), gathered nearly 40 European journalism students and young professionals from 11 countries. During a two-day conference, participants were offered eight interactive lectures with Q&A sessions, exploring in-depth the complexity and different aspects of the main theme. A multidimensional perspective was possible thanks to the diverse professional backgrounds of the speakers, who represented academia, the NGO sector, and the media practitioners’ community.


Evens Prizes Evens Education Prize 2020 In 2019 we started working on the definition of the new Evens Prize for Education dedicated to the promotion of critical thinking, to be launched in 2020. This new prize, to be awarded biennially, will support inspiring practices, (practiceoriented) research or both, depending on the specific definition of each call. Critical thinking has figured as an educational goal for almost a century, and many high-level educational policy documents declare it to be an essential ability in a democratic culture. However, it is also a concept that has acquired different meanings and is widely debated. We see critical thinking as a social practice that stimulates (young) people to think actively and deeply about an issue in order to see and understand it from different perspectives before reaching a conclusion. Critical thinking creates dialogical and shared learning experiences that are crucial in diverse contexts. Not only does it foster better understanding of one’s own thoughts and openness to new ideas and other viewpoints, it also helps us to understand how interpretation and knowledge are socially constructed, gives voice to people or groups who have been silent or silenced, and allows us to discuss complex issues.

Through our work in the field of conflict transformation, teaching controversies and media literacy, we have identified an acute need for such empowerment through education if we want to begin to address the increasing discords, polarization and disinformation that are challenging our democracies. We believe that it is essential for pluralistic democratic societies that citizens are able to think and work together to build a common world while respecting each other’s differences.

“Education is not the learning of facts, but training the mind to think.” - Albert Einstein

21 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019


Evens Journalism Prize on Culture 2019 The Evens Journalism Prize aims to reward journalists whose work contributes highly to making Europe more comprehensive and accessible to a broad audience.

The Evens Journalism Prize went to the online platform Cartoon Movement. Graphic journalist Takoua Ben Mohamed received the Encouragement Prize.

From 2019, the prize is awarded in three categories: Culture, Geopolitics and Education. With each prize, the Evens Foundation wishes to provide scope for independent and reliable journalism practiced by professionals with established expertise on the subjects taken up by our organization.

The jury reason in awarding the main prize resided in the capability of Cartoon Movement to develop a distinctive and remarkable journalistic format with high potential for far-reaching impact in an era when global collaborations are producing the most ground-breaking outcomes. The cooperation facilitated by this platform allows a broad perspective on multiple pressing issues, besides exceptional reporting quality. Diversity is guaranteed by the multitude of nationalities represented by their contributors, as well as by the variety of approaches and styles.

Through this recognition, we seek to support and honour journalists who both challenge the current media landscape and enrich its practice, while positively contributing to the quality of public debate. The ultimate goal is to emphasize the importance of knowledge and ethical storytelling as a keystone of democracy. For 2019, the Evens Foundation focused on the subject of humour and satire in contemporary journalism. This prize was open to journalists, reporters, cartoonists and organizations that confronted conventional information displays and that seek to establish a new set of standards for news dissemination. We aimed at finding laureates with a provocative voice who could provide the audience with a unique and distinct engagement with truth through humour.

Cartoon Movement supports the creation of new independent voices while stressing the importance of democratic values and ethics in the field of journalism. It promotes the use of humour to highlight the contradictions underlying current social concerns. Furthermore, the adoption of cartoons produces a democratizing effect that makes news display immediate and accessible, irrespective of language boundaries. Thanks to these distinguishing features, Cartoon Movement met the Evens Foundation’s objective to award a laureate who could make Europe more comprehensible to a vast audience.

22 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

The Encouragement prize went to Takoua Ben Mohamed who focuses on the depiction of Muslim women’s everyday lives, successfully voicing a rather disregarded group in conventional media portrayals. Her work is a prime example of how humour can be used to confront stereotypes, promote empathy and raise awareness. She creates canny connections between narrative and tangible social issues, urging the audience to reflect on the absurdity inherent in the mechanisms of discrimination and marginalization. By encouraging her work and fostering her approach, the Evens Foundation wished to embrace new perspectives and to boost diversification in the field of media.


Evens Arts Prize 2019 Jury of The Evens Journalism Prize | Culture 2019 Aida Al-Kaisy - Ethical Journalism Network & SOAS (London), Mieke Bleyen - Independent researcher and editor of Photography Performing Humor (Brussels), Haris Dedović - Association for Media and Civil Society Development & Šatro.info (Sarajevo), Alberto Godioli - University of Groningen (Groningen), Marianna Grigoryan - MediaLab Armenia, Comics Armenia & Daphne Armenia (Yerevan), Nina Mickwitz - University of the Arts London (London) , Isam Uraiqat - Al-Hudood (London). In autumn 2019, the foundation started working on the call for the prizes for 2020, consisting of one prize for geopolitics journalism and one for education journalism. The Evens Journalism Prize for Geopolitics will focus on contemporary dynamics in the European region, its power plays, geographical characteristics and recent history. The Education Prize will focus on education-related issues, including school, higher education and vocational education.

Choreographer and artist Eszter Salamon was awarded the Evens Arts Prize 2019. French composer Éliane Radigue received the Special Mention of the Jury. The Evens Art Prize is a biennial award established by the Evens Foundation to support artistic initiatives that engage with contemporary realities in Europe and envision perspectives for shaping our common world. The laureate was selected by an independent jury, which chose from a list of 45 internationally acclaimed artists, nominated by representatives of major European cultural institutions. The award ceremony and a conversation with Eszter Salamon took place on 12April 2019 at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. A special event dedicated to Éliane Radigue at the Centre Pompidou in Paris will be announced soon. The jury reason in awarding the main prize resided in the capability of Cartoon Movement to develop a distinctive

Special Mention of the Jury The jury recognized and awarded with a special mention the unique path of French composer Éliane Radigue, an artists’ artist. Her work has been deeply shaped by constant interest and curiosity in the world. Exploring minimal rhythms and changes in different harmonies that unfold into intricate sonic webs, she has been a

23 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

© Bea Borgers

©Delphine Migueres

major influence for generations of composers, musicians and artists alike. Her compositions continue to touch audiences, and promote unique forms of empathy, understanding and introspection. One of the most innovative and important contemporary composers, and a pioneer in electronic music, Éliane Radigue has renewed her creative process since 2002. Enriching her compositions with new timbres and resonances, she has been collaborating with acoustic instrument performers, for whom she composes, without any score, on the principle of oral and aural transmission. The Laureate The jury acknowledged Eszter Salamon’s ambitious and uncompromising work that explores contemporary issues, touching on what has been forgotten, excluded and


repressed in Western consciousness. The jury particularly valued the strong European resonance of her work and the way it articulates individual and collective experiences. Building on history to imagine a possible future, Salamon’s work, including her Monument series, embodies an immaterial inheritance of gestures, movements and dances to reaffirm art’s insight into the contemporary world. Born in Budapest, Eszter Salamon lives and works between Berlin, Paris and Brussels. Her work has been presented at the Centre Pompidou, Avignon Festival, Ruhrtriennale, Holland Festival, The Kitchen New York, HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Berlin Documentary Forum, Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels, and Manchester International Festival, as well as in museums including MoMA, Witte de With, Serralves Foundation, Jeu de Paume, Akademie der Künste Berlin, mumok Vienna.

Jury of the Evens Arts Prize 2019 Cristina Grande - Head of the Performing Arts Department, Serralves Foundation (Porto), Andrea Lissoni - Senior Curator of International Art (Film), Tate Modern (London), Malgorzata Ludwisiak - Director, Ujazdowski Castle, Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Frank Madlener - Director, IRCAM (Paris), Christophe Slagmuylder - Artistic Director, Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Ernest Van Buynder, Former Chairman Evens Foundation, M KHA (Antwerp) - President of the Jury.

24 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019


Evens Foundation Board of Directors

The Team

Published by

Corinne Evens, Honorary President Yolande Avontroodt Angélique Berès Monique Canto-Sperber Daniel Kropf Xavier Vidal

Antwerp Marjolein Delvou, Programme Curator Federica Mantoan, Programme Curator Caroline Coosemans, Office Administrator Myriam Vanvinckenroye, Liaison Officer

The Evens Foundation © 2020 Evens Foundation www.evensfoundation.be

Executive Committee Monique Canto-Sperber Corinne Evens Xavier Vidal

Concept, Graphics & Production Wils & Peeters graphic design

Paris Anne Davidian, Programme Curator, Head of Paris Office Warsaw Hanna Zielińska, Programme Curator, Head of Warsaw Office Magdalena Braksator, Project Manager

25 I EVENS FOUNDATION I Annual report 2019

All pictures copyright to their respective owner(s). The pictures are used for non-commercial purposes only. If any images posted here are in violation of copyright law, please contact us and we will gladly remove the offending images immediately.


Contact Details Antwerp Office

Paris Office

Warsaw Office

Frankrijklei 37 bus 12 2000, Antwerpen - Belgium T +32-3-231 39 70 F +32-3-233 94 32 antwerp@evensfoundation.be

7, rue Charles V 75004 Paris - France T +33-1-44 54 83 90 F +33-1-44 54 83 80 paris@evensfoundation.be Fondation Evens France

ul. Chmielna 21 lok. 20 00-021 Warszawa – Poland T/F +48-22-692 49 21 warsaw@evensfoundation.be

www.evensfoundation.be


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.