East Coast Europe

Edited by Markus Miessen

Designed by Zak Kyes

Published by Sternberg Press

East Coast Europe deals with perceptions of contemporary European identity and its relation to spatial practices and international politics. It is a program of public conversations, interviews, a design project, and a book. The project invites leading figures in culture and politics from the two east coasts – of the United States of America, and of countries in the vicinity of the present European Union such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Lebanon, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine to comment on their perception of Europe today.

ECE dives into the urgent details of a dense network of contemporary experience of the European Union’s extensive exchange of knowledge, people, and goods with the East Coast of the United States and also with its own eastern border. These two crisp north-south borderlines belie many geographic spatial complexities including the islands of Switzerland and the Western Balkans that now reside within the landmass of Europe but outside of the European Union. ECE investigates the cultural and political confluence between these two north-south borderlines, one geographic and one political. What is this new transverse region through multiple time zones? What are its challenges and possibilities for social, political and spatial practices? What is the future of international cultural practices in light of the expansion of the European Union? What are the changing prospects for intercultural collaboration between the players within the single entity of the European Union? What are the new emerging roles for cultural practices beyond European boundaries, like the East Coast of the United States and the “East Coast” of Europe towards Russia, the Middle East and Asia? What is the future of the cultural representation of European boundaries? What are cultural practices currently learning from this geopolitical expansion?