Launching an alternative and independent space in the field of culture – the Center for Contemporary Culture KRAK – is a necessity and need for the city of Bihać and its urban life. KRAK focuses on engaged discourse while emphasizing the importance of social practice, visual arts, architecture, design, and performance. The framework within which these ideas are achieved is bordered by a strategy of collaboration, social responsibility and environmental awareness.
The idea and motive for launching KRAK came from the specific political, social and cultural circumstances of the environment in which it operates. The main determinants of this environment are the neglected industrial past, ethno-national conflict, post-war post-traumatic experience, poverty and depopulation. KRAK is an urgent response to the ongoing crisis and social environment in the country, which wants to believe that culture, science and arts can and should be the drivers of social change. As such, KRAK wants to position itself as a platform of alternative learning, collaboration and coexistence with a focus on contemporary art strategies and inventive protocols in the field of contemporary culture.
Participation of a wide range of professionals and amateurs – artists, architects, designers, educators, lawyers, activists, gardeners, ecologists, beekeepers and legal entities striving for profiling and engagement towards socially responsible practices – is a key aspect and fundamental premise of possible creation of the new social realities. KRAK aims to be tested as the initiator of this practice and the incubator of a completely new sociability.
In mid 2020, Revizor Foundation published Artefacts of a Future Past, edited by Irfan Hošić, which cataloged the exhibition of the same name from 2017. This publication serves as the conceptual and program manifesto of KRAK.
