Belgrade in brief
Introducing: BTURN
Bturn is an international online magazine presenting a hand-picked selection of contemporary Balkan and Eastern European culture, covering music, film, art and design, as well as a range of social issues, from education to drugs and sexuality. We want to offer a fresh, straight-forward approach to the complexities of this disparate cultural space in a way that's at the same time entertaining, educative and engaging
For more then a century now, the very term ‘Balkan' has been perpetuated within a multiple stream of references - geographical, cultural or political - whose parameters have remained fluid and inconsistent to say the least, but nevertheless related by a set of historical and contemporary facts, making the life experience in the entire area from Ljubljana to Istanbul distinctively ‘Balkanian'.
So far, Balkan has been known as a terrain of struggle, not only in terms of military conflicts and wars, but as the struggle of projected images and desires. The Balkans is always ‘imagined', from the outside and from within, its mental and geographical boundaries somehow doomed to sliding into the sphere of the obscure Other, that dark subcontinent of the civilized European world.
Civilized or not, Balkan is a place were lots of things happen.
The list of artists and places you see in Bturn's database is by no means exhaustive. It is not an all-inclusive list, but rather our humble selection which we think reflects the richness of the region's contemporary urban culture. This is just the beginning. Bturn is in the process of building a network of regional partnerships with an aim to become the ultimate online and on-the-spot resource for anyone wishing to visit the area and take part in its diverse culture.
