Art for Social Change – the leading slogan accompanying the events of the European Culture Congress – serves the author as a point of reference for critical analysis of the ways of understanding the social change in the context of contemporary role of art(s) and the legitimacy of using such a slogan by the organisers. The author refers also to the statements of the artists and curators invited to participate in the ECC, commenting the congress’ slogan. The perspective suggested by the author on understanding the role of art in creating the space for communication and in exercising social being together – justified among others by the ideas of Jacques Rancie`re – are being presented as including the postulate of social interaction and the introduction of changes with the simultaneous impossibility to define them unequivocally and to design them a priori.

The article is an attempt at characterisation and evaluation of the events related to the European Culture Congress which took place in Wrocław from 8 th to 11th September 2011. The basic question concerns the meaning of the leading slogan „art for social change” – what change is being talked about here and what would the assumed agency of art mean in this context? While describing the conceptual framework of the congress, its themes and the course of the debates, as well as the character of the artistic events, the author concludes that the radicalism of the slogan and its optimism proved to have been essentially superficial. Beside the a priori accepted idea that „culture counts” and that it does not have to be necessarily high culture in the traditional sense, there has not emerged a coherent vision of the future solutions, and, at the same time, the congress lacked the space for articulation and confrontation of various world views and attitudes. Therefore there remained an unresolved tension between the liberal option („cultural industries”) and leftist one, between the contesting attitude of the artists and the transformative optimism of the organisers.

The European Culture Congress – the shape of the website promoting this event, the organisation of the congress’ space, the issues addressed in the course of the debates and forms of art presented – have become in the article the impulse for the discussion on the problem of the relationship between art and science. The author traces what would be the outcome of looking at art as the laboratory of humanistic as well as social science, addressing this problem on the example of the art of Sound Cinema, which becomes in the above discussion the experimentation with perception.

The Reading Room – an experimental space of the European Culture Congress proved that the blurring of the media boundaries is one of the basic tendencies of contemporary culture including the culture of print. The events of the virtual world become singular activities and today gain the status of the real. Books-objects experimenting with modern technologies – caligraphed on paper with the use of the optic fibre and laser devices, comic books written directly on the cards, are brought to life owing to the people whose activities are reminiscent of the behavioural patterns hitherto typical for electronic media.

During the European Culture Congress one could participate in performances, debates and workshops during which on numerous occasions breaks in the „Europeanness” have been described, the „congressness” has been exposed and deconstructed, and new criteria of thinking about „culture” have been searched for. However, did the congress become an occasion for the reflection on the local context of this event? Were any projects of the change for Wrocław or its inhabitants offered? How is one supposed to think about art, culture and change in the world of liquid modernity of the „end of history”? Who will be changing the social reality by means of art? The artist or maybe self-organised and deprived of the centre multitude as described by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri?

On the occasion of the European Culture Congress Zygmunt Bauman, who presented an opening lecture, is the author of the book entitled Culture in a Liquid Modern World. The basic arguments gathered in this book have become departure points for the discussions taking place in the course of the Congress. These was concentrated on the following relations market – culture, culture – power, however, always locating culture in the alternative of economics or power. The events which occurred during the Congress (i.e. the House of Change), as well as presented „artistic activities” recalled an over twenty year old concept of culture understood as a co-op of consumers. Culture understood in this way allows for finding in the events of the Congress if not a subversive potentiality, at least discreet resistance”.

An interpretation of the work of art entitled Wege zur Behandlung von Schmerzen provides a point of departure for the reflection on the condition of contemporary culture which according to many theorists is in the state of crisis. This crisis, however, is not a consequence of its decline but rather of the fact that its conflicting nature claimed its place, and changed it into a melting-pot at the times of liquid modernity which lacks the dominant system of reference. This melting-pot is a place of an ongoing welter which mixes everything with everything else as in the postmodern cocktail. The organisers of the European Culture Congress had to find their way in this difficult situation. By becoming an element in the welter they however had an ambition to find a perspective which would allow for a self-critical reflection. It is precisely the visual work of Mirosław Bałka, theoretical work of Zygmunt Bauman as well as the music work by Marcin Masecki that have this function and are referred to and analysed in the article.

Owing to the processes described by Zygmunt Bauman the hegemonic culture has undergone in the liquid modernity the processes of dissolution and disenchantment precisely for the benefit of the culture of all-consumers who more and more often and more and more eagerly themselves formulate their own cultural offers combined with each other by the hypertextual network of non-hierarchical references. Not only science but also culture can be disenchanted without the damage for the creative practice. Just like science did not lose itself in resigning to the truth as understood according to absolutist categories, so the culture (especially artistic) will not lose itself in all-consumption, or even it shall gather its new, potentially emancipatory, momentum.

The debates during the European Culture Congress revealed big differences already on the level of the assumptions which guided the interlocutors. That is precisely the reason why they cannot be framed in a single coherent construct. The state of suspension dominated the discussions, as well as that of being on the road towards a better world as an eternal process. Even thought the problem might seem unresolvable, one shall keep trying to resolve it through keeping it in the state of unresolvability.

In his article the author analyses the European Culture Congress in the context of the cultural politics and the discourse on creative industries. This event exposes two main dimensions of contemporary functioning of culture: as the tool of the state politics and as a sector of creative economics highlighting at the same time dangers which await projects aspiring to criticality. The slogan of the Congress was: Culture for social change. It provided the basis for the concept as well as the promotion of the event and it determined the form of the event, revealing at the same time an obvious ideological incoherence. However this call proved ambiguous enough to open room for different, at times contradictory, readings. First of all, the Congress should be seen as the fulfilment of the aim which consisted in an international promotion of the label: Poland as a country of dynamic and modern culture. On that occasion the Congress also promoted social engagement and creativity as main slogans of state governed cultural politics as presented in the National Strategy of the Development of Social Capital. Secondly, the Congress turned out to be a spectacular event while civic dimension was not visible at all. Through the slogan originating in the modernising and creative rhetoric, „culture for social change”, the organisers attempted at least in case of some of the events, to combine them with the idea of culture as a tool of social critique. The shift of associations was however of solely superficial character which allowed to perceive the Congress rather as an obvious ideological manifestation than as a critical project. Thus it was not so much a congress as a festival of culture.

The analysis of the discourses practised today in many various ways within the frameworks of different disciplines of humanities and social sciences often concentrates mainly on linguistic features of the discourses: political, media, etc. However, as Judith Butler claims following Austin’s concept of performatives, Foucault’s devices and Bourdieu’s economy of linguistic exchange, such an analysis could gain a lot if inspired by the theory of performatives: including the activities of language, and all, super-linguistic dimensions of an utterance which can decide to the same extent on the ability of the speaking actors to reproduce or subvert the dominant social systems. Taking these suggestions as the point of departure, the author undertakes an analysis of one of the recent discourses concerning the eceonomisation of art and culture: the creativity discourse. Taking into consideration the linguistic and interactive context of an utterance, where this discourse was present in its full shape, i.e. the European Culture Congress in Wrocław, the author poses the following question: to what extent the statements of the main actors of this event could determine the critical reinterpretation of the discourse of creativity and to what extent they contributed to its enforcing.

Situating the European Culture Congress in the programme of the Polish Presidency in the European Union has inscribed its final shape in an imperative of constructing an image of the country abroad. This context clearly shapes festival-like character of the events from among which only few have managed to break up with the promotional framework of senderreceiver. A specific and deliberative character of these events which succeeded even more so highlighted non-flexible, theatrical form of the Congress, rather reluctantly responding to participation or agonistic arrangements. It does not mean however that as quite a hermetic „execution” the Congress managed to sustain a coherent shape. Quite contrarily, it was based on an essential structural contradiction which was an emanation of an originary discrepancy between the justification of the Congress’ form as „an invented ceremony,” and the attempts at its historical legitimisation. The cultural programme of Polish Presidency in the European Union provided not only the framework as an imperative of professionalising of the ways of planning and realising this flagship event, but most of all it politically inspired the Congress’ idea.

From the point of view of Polish foreign affairs the Cultural Programme of Polish Presidency 2011 has been coupled with its basic aims and directions: creating of a positive image of the state abroad or of the Eastern Partnership. It remains an open question to what extent do the concrete events or projects facilitate realisation of the priorities of the foreign affairs in the current political and economic circumstances in the European Union; to what extent the cultural programme of the Presidency has become a factor owing to which the realisation of the idea of culture as a tool for social change is made possible and whether the most important event of the local cultural programme of the Polish Presidency – the Culture Congress in Wrocław provided an apt diagnosis of the current social and economic situation and whether it offered an intellectual basis for thinking about art as one of the tools of the social change.

In the article the author discusses some chosen debates of intellectuals on cultural foundations of European unification (from those immediately postwar). She shows how and under the influence of which factors does the thinking in the categories of the continent of spirit unifying (mostly western) societies „descends underground” and includes diversified in many aspects and at the same time culturally mixed contexts of lives of its inhabitants (natives as well as the newcomers, older and younger, those from „the centre” and those from „the peripheries”). The efforts of the intellectuals – formerly legislators (in Zygmunt Bauman’s terminology) concentrate today mostly on the abilities to live with difference.