The lecture examines the position of artistic and socially engaged practices in contemporary political and cultural contexts marked by increasing ideological pressures and processes of democratic erosion. Special emphasis is placed on the independent scene, which, through participatory and politically engaged artistic practices, opens up a space of conflict as a constitutive element of democracy. The rise of right-wing populism and anti-gender movements in Europe and their impact on cultural policies and public discourse are also analysed. Referring to the examples of the Domino Association and artist Arijana Lekić Fridrih, the lecture demonstrates how artistic practices function as forms of micropolitical resistance, intervening in public space and destabilising hegemonic narratives. In this context, participatory and performative artistic practices represent key sites of democratic production, particularly under conditions of shrinking spaces of freedom.
Prof. Dr. sc. Darko Lukić is a theatre scholar who has been living in Germany since 2018, where he works as an independent expert in the field of arts education and cultural production. He is an independent expert in the COST European Cooperation in Science and Technology programme, and has also served as an expert in the Council of Europe Cultural Routes programme (2021–2025), as well as in the multidisciplinary expert group for capacity building for ECOC European Capitals of Culture within AEIDL – the European Commission’s Agency for Local Development (2019–2022). From 2019 to 2024, he was the regional coordinator of the European project EURODRAM.
He was elected full professor with tenure at the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb, where he worked until 2018. As a visiting professor, he has taught at universities in Croatia, Slovakia, Germany, and Spain, and until 2019 he regularly taught in the doctoral programme in literature, performing arts, film, and culture at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. He has also taught at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz (Austria), the Institute of the Arts Barcelona, the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Bratislava, and the Seminar for Slavic Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Halle.
He has been a visiting lecturer at numerous universities worldwide (Austria, United Kingdom, USA, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Taiwan), and has worked as an educator, workshop leader, and trainer in Brazil, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, the USA, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela.
