PATTERNS is a transnational programme that aims to research and understand recent cultural history. PATTERNS initiates, commissions and supports contemporary culture projects in a variety of formats and media. The programme focuses on the visual arts and culture of the 1960s until today.

Call for submissions

As an addition to projects already underway within the framework of PATTERNS, we are launching an open call for submissions. This call addresses projects in Central and South Eastern Europe that share PATTERNS' areas of interest. We support research, publications, as well as artistic and cultural projects and initiatives.

PATTERNS aims to document, analyse and investigate different aspects of and practices related to the transformation of daily life and culture in Central and South Eastern Europe, while accounting for the pluralities that describe the region. PATTERNS seeks to promote understanding and knowledge of a differently lived past, which can facilitate a shared present and future. In doing so, it takes on the role of a “contemporary witness”. The initiative focuses on the 1960s and 1970s, as well as on the “transition” period leading up to the present. The period commonly known as the "transition" is, without question, an important historical turning point, not only in the sense of reshaping and redefining what art and culture could mean in a post-totalitarian society: At historical and geographical fault lines, stories and historical documents emerge. The concern of the project is to chronicle these.