This issue of the magazine, just like the previous one, focuses on the pandemic we are experiencing. We are now in the second wave, with much higher rates of infection and, although the mortality rate is proportionally lower, the absolute number of deaths is greater. The second wave is...
The Bridge
THE SECOND WAVE AND OTHER THINGS
This issue of the magazine, just like the previous one, focuses on the pandemic we are experiencing. We are now in the second wave,...
Georgi Stardelov/ EVERYTHING IS UP TO THE HUMAN BEING
Georgi Stardelov (Gevgelija, 28 August 1930) is a philosopher, aesthetician, essayist, literary critic and anthologist. He has been President of the Writers’ Association of...
COVID 2020
This is a micro-anthology of poems written by authors from different countries of the Balkans during the pandemic, on the human condition during the...
Zan Mitrev/ LEADERSHIP IN TIMES OF CRISIS
Zan Mitrev, a top specialist in the field of cardiovascular surgery, was born on January 11, 1961, in Stip, Yugoslavia, now Republic of North...
Durim Abdullahu/ Quarantine reminiscence and empty signifiers
Durim Abdullahu is an assistant in the Department of History and Anthropology at the University of Prishtina. He is a doctoral student in the...
Josep Ramoneda/ The disappearance of the bodies
Josep Ramoneda was born in Cervera, Spain, in 1949. He is a political philosopher and is very active in the Spanish intellectual debate about...
Ardian Vehbiu/ KILLER CONSONANTS
A writer, publicist and linguist now based in New York, Ardian Vehbiu is the author of 15 books, including several works of fiction, as...
Siddhartha Deb/ Apocalypse Again
Siddhartha Deb (born 1970) is an Indian author. He was educated in India and at Columbia University, US. He has written several novels, one of which...
INTERVIEW/ Courageous Citizens: Alessio Mazzaro
Alessio Mazzaro’s project Edinost was selected in the 2018 Courageous Citizens grant call Courageous Citizens.
What was your idea about?
I wanted to extend to...
Thedoros Nikolau/ FROM EAST TO NOWHERE
Theodoros Nikolau was born in Chalkis, Greece in December 1982. His first interaction with
investigative journalism comes in 2007, in the newspaper TA NEA (Lambrakis...
Bashkim Shehu/ ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Bashkim Shehu is an Albanian fiction writer, who lives in exile in Barcelona.
Many of his books have been published in Albania and some of...
THE CHALLENGE OF THE PANDEMIC
The Bridge, a cultural magazine, is devoting two special issues – this issue
and the next one - to the COVID-19 crisis. This is the...
Asli Erdogan/ Sophia, the wisdom of POLIS
Aslı Erdoğan is a Turkish writer, human rights activist, and columnist . Aslı Erdoğan’s
books have been translated to several languages, including English, French, German,
Italian,...
Perico Pastor/ BON DIA, BARCELONA
Perico Pastor was born in Seu de Urgel, in 1953. He studied in Barcelona,
immigrated to New York in 1976, and stayed there for about...
Interview: Ivan Krastev with Jordi Vaquer/ Pandemic and change
Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna....
Delina Fico/ IN THE SAME STORM, BUT NOT IN THE SAME BOAT
Delina Fico is a prominent civil society leader and manager with expertise in advocacy, gender issues, institutional and individual capacity development, strategic development,
communication and...
COVID-19 AND HUMAN RIGHTS/ SERBIA AND PANDEMIC: CARE FOR CITIZENS AS AN EXCUSE FOR...
(We are publishing parts of Bulletin number 155 of Helsinki Committee for Human Rights i in Serbia)
During the months-long isolation and state of emergency...
Arben Dedja/ A not-so-old- history of pandemics
Arben Dedja (Tirana, 1964) completed his studies at the Faculty of Medicine (1988) in his
hometown and later worked as a doctor in the province....
Woflgang Klotz/ ETHICAL AND POLITICAL COLLAPSE, OR WHAT WE (RE)LEARN FROM COVID-19
Wolfgang Klotz was born 1954 in Lower Franconia as son of a workers family and in an environment deeply informed by traditional Catholicism. Studying...
Ion Caramitru/ Art in the time of the pandemic
Ion Caramitru (born March 9, 1942) is a Romanian stage and film
actor, stage director, as well as a political figure. He was Minister of
Culture...
Nikola Madzirov / Poems
Nikola Madzirov (poet, essayist, translator) was born in 1973 in Strumica, in
the family of war refugees from the Balkan Wars. When he was 18,...
Mediha Adrović: IS IT BECOMING A COUNTRY OF OLD MEN?
Mediha Adrović was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1979. Graduated from the Faculty of Political Science, Department of Journalism. “Journalism is a...
Krzysztof Czyżewski: THE CULTURE OF COEXISTENCE IN THE LONGUE DUREE
On practising the ethos of the borderland
Krzystof Czyżewski – practitioner of ideas, writer, philosopher, culture animator, theatre director, editor. Co-founder and president of the...
Zharko Basheski: My art – a mirror of the personal experience in the outer...
Zharko Basheski, born 1957 in Prilep, is a Macedonian sculptor and professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje. His point of view...
Šejla Kamerić: 1395 DAYS WITHOUT RED
Šejla Kamerić is a Bosnian visual artist. She works with various media such as film, photography, objects or drawings. The all-pervading elements in her...
Josep Ramoneda: From “11 Thesis on culture”
Josep Ramoneda was born in Cervera, Spain, in 1949. He is a political philosopher and is very active in the Spanish intellectual debate about...
Aleksandar Prokopiev: CHRONYSTERIC, TRIBUNE, CLOWN
Aleksandar Prokopiev, born in 1953 in Skopje, is one of he most well-known Macedonian writers. He graduated in 1977 at the University of Belgrade...
Thomas Symeonidis: ON ART: Draft for a pocket aesthetic tractatus
Thomas Symeonidis (Thessaloniki, 1977) studied architecture at the National School of Architecture in Paris (Val-de-Seine) and engineering at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He pursued...
Andro Martinović: When everything else is put aside, culture remains
Interview by Amila Kahrović-Posavljak
Andro Martinović - Graduated World Literature and Film and TV Directing. Director of the Montenegrin Cinematheque. Professor at the UDG and...
Burhan Sönmez: The Yellow East, The White West
Burhan Sönmez is the author of four novels, which have been translated into forty languages. He was born in Turkey and grew up speaking...
Vladislav Bajac: Before the beginning
Vladislav Bajac is a Serbian author, translator, and publisher. He was born in Belgrade in 1954 and later studied philology at the University of...
Bashkim Shehu: THE UNHOLY TRINITY OF NEW MEDIA, POST-TRUTH AND POPULISM
Bashkim Shehu is an Albanian fiction writer, who lives in exile in Barcelona. Many of his books have been published in Albania and some...
INTERVIEW, EXCLUSIVELY FOR “THE BRIDGE”/ Fred Abrahams: The collapse of communism and the tragedy...
Fred Abrahams is associate program director at Human Rights Watch where he trains
research staff and supervises work on technology, conflicts and refugees. He has...
Human Rights in the Balkans/ Robert Wilton
Ignorance Kills
Robert Wilton is a writer, translator, coach and Balkan wanderer. After a dozen
years in the British Civil Service, he was advisor to the...
HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE BALKANS/ Ismail Tasholli
I, You and Man
Ismail Tasholli studied analytical philosophy at the University of Graz, Austria,
furtherly specializing in sociology. He is an active political commentator in
Kosovo’s...
Amila Kahrović Posavljak/ Is there literature Nobel Prize after Handke?
Amila Kahrović Posavljak was born in Sarajevo, 1984. She survived three and a half years of siege as a child and it made a...
HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE BALKANS/ Deyan Kiuranov
BG to EU, and Human Rights: negative attitudes, no acts
Deyan Kiuranov, PhD, of Sofia, Bulgaria, was active in the Bulgarian anticommunist
opposition and afterwards worked...
HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE BALKANS/ Sonja Biserko
Human Rights in Serbia: Subordinated to geostrategic deliberations
Sonja Biserko is a Serbian campaigner for human rights. She is the founder and president of the...
Balkanofilmophilia
The story of the Balkanofilmophilia in today's reality (cultural, political and historical) of the countries of Southeast Europe is an urgent necessity for us...
Péter Krasztev/ Split societies, illiberal salvation
Péter Krasztev ( Budapest, 1965) is a social scientist, literary historian and translator, Associate Professor at Budapest Business School (Communication Department).
After receiving his Ph.D....
Elizabeta Sheleva/ “Everything I touch turns into Words”
Elizabeta Sheleva was born in Ohrid (1961). She is professor at the Department
of General and Comparative Literature, University in Skopje. She is the...
Ardian-Christian Kyçyku / Kuciuk/ The Uneaten Pages
Ardian-Christian Kyçyku / Kuciuk, is a writer in Albanian and Romanian, born on the 23rd of August 1969, Pogradec, Albania, author of more than...
Georgiana Aldessa Lincan/ I am Roma and I feel privileged because I have white skin
Georgiana Aldessa Lincan is a 24 years old Roma feminist and activist, graduate of the
Master of Politics, Gender and Minorities within National University of...
Gonca Özmen/ Ekphrasis: A Way to Connect Us with the Other
Gonca Özmen was born in Burdur, Turkey, in 1982. She studied English Language and Literature at Istanbul University, receiving an MA in 2008 and...
COMMUNICATING VESSELS
Are the Balkans part of Europe? This question is not simply about geography. Nor is it just about membership or the prospect of membership...
Ferida Duraković/ WAS THE WAR BETTER?
Ferida Durakovic (Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina) graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy. Her first collection of poems, published in 1977, earned two literary awards for the...
Thomas Tsalapatis/ Crisis in poetry and poetry in the crisis
Thomas Tsalapatis was born in 1984 in Athens. He studied at the Department of
Theatrical Studies of the Philosophical Faculty of the Kapodistrian University of
Athens....
Andrej Nikolaidis/ SNITCH ON YOU NEIGHBOR
Andrej Nikolaidis was born in 1974 in Sarajevo, to a mixed Montenegrin-Greek family. In 1992, following the breakout of ethnic strife in Bosnia that soon evolved...
Alexandra Channer/ Language, political creativity and the murder of a city
Alexandra Channer began translating in Kosovo in 2009 while conducting research for her doctoral thesis on Albanian national self-determination movements. She translates a selection of...
Ágnes Heller/ Cosmopolitanism as philosophy, as refuge , and as destiny (II)
Agnes Heller is one of the leading thinkers to come out of the tradition of critical theory. Her awesome intellectual range and output includes...
Iulia Enkelana’s Artist’s Statement
Iulia Enkelana (the pseudonym of Iulia-Maria Kyçyku, born in 1999 in Bucharest, in a Romanian and Albanian family) is the author of a several...
Ivan Krastev/ The Missionary Who has to Become a Monastery
Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. He is...
Agon Maliqi/ The illiberal equilibrium in the Balkans
Agon Maliqi is a policy analyst, civil society activist and media writer from Prishtina, Kosovo. He is the creator and co-founding editor of http://sbunker.net,...
Josep Ramoneda/ Europe Disconcerted
Josep Ramoneda was born in Cervera, Spain, in 1949. He is a political philosopher and is very active in the Spanish intellectual debate about...
BORIS A. NOVAK: INTERVIEW FOR THE BRIDGE (interviewed by AMILA KAHROVIĆ-POSAVLJAK)
Boris A. Novak (born in 1953) is a Slovene poet, playwright, translator, and essayist. He teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Ljubljana. Novak...
Edon Qesari/ An elegy for the vanquished two: Slowness and audibility in the...
Edon Qesari was born in 1983. He teaches history and politics, and works in Tirana. His scholarly interests include marxism, especially the Gramscian perspective,...
Aleksandar Prokopiev/ THE PEEPER (excerpt from the novel)
Aleksandar Prokopiev, born in 1953 in Skopje, is one of he most well-known Macedonian writers. He graduated in 1977 at the University of Belgrade...
Georges Banu/ The Ancient and the Modern or the Crossroads of Continuity
George Banu was born in June 1943 in Buzău,
Romania and is a well-renowned theatre personality
and critic. He studied at the Academy of Drama and
Film...
Nadezhda Alexandrova/ New Janissaries, old refrains
Dr. Nadezhda Alexandrova is an associate professor at the Faculty of Slavic Studies at Sofia University...
Ioanida Costache/ Romania: a hostile home for its Roma
Ioanida Costache is a PhD candidate in ethno/musicology at Stanford University, where she works on issues of race...
Vasile Ionescu/ “The exclusion of the Roma is historical and hysterical”
Vasile Ionescu is a writer, one of the founders of the Roma political movement in Romania and a member of the Wiesel...
Ágnes Heller/ Cosmopolitanism as philosophy, as refuge, and as destiny
Agnes Heller is one of the leading thinkers to come out of the tradition of critical theory. Her awesome intellectual...
Jean-Patrick Connerade/ Why Europe needs a bit of ‘balkanisation’
Jean-Patrick CONNERADE is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Imperial College London, Honorary Professor at the East China University in...
Andrew Finkel/ When Propaganda Fails
Andrew Finkel has been a journalist based in Turkey since 1989, during which time he has...
Lindita AHMETI/ Memoirs
Lindita Ahmeti was born in Prizren in 1973 and lives in Skopje. Her first poetry collection,...
Gradimir Gojer/ A WOMAN AMID MONDRIAN’S CUBES
Gradimir Gojer is a Bosnian theater director, writer and actor who was born in Mostar, in 1951. He studied and earned a degree in...
Saša Ilić/ Polip Festival: Who Will Bring the Word to Me[*]
Saša Ilić is a writer, journalist, and social activist. He has published three short story collections, The Prevision of the...
Ana Pejović/ Festival Krokodil/ How about Cruel optimism – XI literary festival KROKODIL
Ana Pejovic (1980, Prijepolje, SFR Jugoslavija) is a cultural professional and a translator from Belgrade....
International Literary Festival “Pro-Za Balkan” 2019/Synergy: literature, film, music
The 7th International
Literature Festival Pro-Za Balkans, which
brings together well-established authors from Balkan countries, was
held in Skopje from 19-22 May...
Alek Popov/ The Boss of the Old Bazaar
Alek Popov (born Sofia, Bulgaria, 1966) is a leading Bulgarian writer, author of four novels, several...
South East European Film Festval/ A European window to the Balkan film
South-East European Film Festival is an international film festival of 15 South-East European countries. The festival is screening a selection of feature,...
Patricia Corbett/ MEMORY’S LENS
Patricia Corbett is an independent arts critic, curator and lecturer, specialising in interdisciplinary genres. A former director of...
Kostas Peroulis/ Deconstructing family, deconstructing the country: the new wave of Greek cinema in...
Kostas Peroulis was born in Pireas in 1974. He studied law and comparative literature. His collection...
The Scream of Bedri Baykam
Bedri Baykam claims that he started to paint when he was only two years old, and has had several exhibitions since the...
Instrument of activity
Biljana Djurdjević /
Based in Belgrade, Serbia, Biljana Djurdjević is an artist whose work in a range of media,...
Ardian Vehbiu/ REQUIEMS FOR ORALITY
A writer, publicist and linguist now based in New York, Ardian Vehbiu is the...
Between Festivals and Roma discrimination
In our region, many international artistic and literary festivals fall in
the May-June period, which this issue of the magazine covers. Consequently, we...
THE WALL AND THE BRIDGE
In a recent interview, Pope Francis talked about the walls, both legal and physical, being built by wealthy countries to keep out...
We live in a time when the European dream is at risk
Where is Europe going? This question is being asked with increasing concern. We live in a time when the European dream is...
DOSSIER/ WOMEN’S CONDITION: WHY BETTER IS NOT ENOUGH
Tatyana Kmetova is an anthropologist and an activist in different NGOs in Bulgaria since 1991. She is a founding member and Executive...
Interview/ Zilka Spahić Šiljak: Women have to struggle more than men to overcome challenges
Zilka Spahic-Siljak is a university professor from Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she lives and works. She is a leading research scholar and public...
Always disobedient
By Staša Zajović
Feminist ethics – Women in Black resistance
We have always been disobedient: ever...
Always disobedient – Women in Black
Activist group and network of feminist/antimilitaristic/antinationalistic/ antifascist/alter globalist orientation, whose members are women, but also men of diverse generations and ethnicities, level...
The lived experience of Albania
Born in 1987 in Bucharest, Romania, Alice Teodorescu is a cultural analyst, bloggerand author. She studied communication and media studies at the...
BALKAN WALLS AND CULTURAL OSMOSIS
Venko Andonovski (1964), the bestselling novelist, short-story writer and playwrightduring the last fifteen years in Macedonia. His work has been translated in...
Young people in the Balkans: Bridges over the river of the history of conflict
Geron Kamberi is currently an Associate Researcher and works for different Albanianthink tanks. Last three years he worked as Executive Director of...
TO RHODES IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SULTAN CEM
Nedim Gürsel, born in 1951, is a Turkish writer. In 1979, he received inSorbonne his doctorate in comparative literature after completing his...
About Photography
Burim Myftiu (b.1961, Prizren) is an Albanian-American photographer, curator and visual artist. He is a member of New Haven’s Arts Council in...
AFTER THE BATTLE
Anastassis Vistonitis was born in Komotini, Northern Greece, in 1952. He studied Political Sciences and Economics in Athens and Philosophy in Thessaloniki....
FROM PRISHTINA WITH LOVE (AGAIN)
Vladimir Arsenijević (b. 1965 in Pula, Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia) is an awarded and internationally acclaimed Serbian writer, translator, editor and publicist. He won the 1994 NIN-award for his...
“PARASHUTA”, by Edi Hila
Edi Hila was born in Shkoder in 1944. Hila studied painting at the National Academy of Art in Tirana until 1967. Around...
“The Cyclist”, by Dado Djuric
Dado, born Miodrag Đurić in 1933 in Cetinje, Montenegro, chose as an artistic pseudonym the pet name given him by his mother,...
Where politics ends, culture starts
By Amila Kahrović-Posavljak
December is probably the liveliest cultural month in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the summer vacations and...
Transpositions between Poetry and Music
By Gonca Özmen
Gonca Özmen was born in Burdur, Turkey, in 1982. She studied English Language and Literature at Istanbul...
On the Right Side of the Sea
By Alek Popov
Alek Popov (born Sofia, Bulgaria, 1966) is a leading Bulgarian writer, author...
European values, the first step in the foundation of Academica Balkanica Europeana
Jordan Plevnes (1953) is the Secretary General of the Academia Balkanica Europeana. He is also founder and Rector of University of audiovisual arts, ESRA...
THOUSANDS OF YESTERDAYS BUT ONLY ONE TOMORROW.
Text by Jacques Lacarriere (1925-2005), spiritual founder of Actor of Europe, published in daily newspaper Le Figaro, Paris, in August 2003, for the First edition...
Problems with intercultural dialogue: Misleading symmetry
Amila Kahrović Posavljak was born in Sarajevo, 1984. She survived three and a half years of siege as a child and it...
Balkaniotheque: in Search of a Region’s Identity
Thodoris Nikolau was born in Chalkis, Greece in December 1982. His first interaction with investigative journalism comes in 2007, in the newspaper...
FROM “CLOCK WITHOUT HOURS” (2016)
by Ana Blandiana
White on White
I write in white on white
Though I...
Parallel / Normal
Doruntina Basha a playwright and screenwriter from Prishtina, Kosovo. She is the author of five plays and several short screenplays. Doruntina is...
The Bridge
The Bridge
LATEST ARTICLES
THE SECOND WAVE AND OTHER THINGS
This issue of the magazine, just like the previous one, focuses on the pandemic we are experiencing. We are now in the second wave,...
Georgi Stardelov/ EVERYTHING IS UP TO THE HUMAN BEING
Georgi Stardelov (Gevgelija, 28 August 1930) is a philosopher, aesthetician, essayist, literary critic and anthologist. He has been President of the Writers’ Association of...
COVID 2020
This is a micro-anthology of poems written by authors from different countries of the Balkans during the pandemic, on the human condition during the...
Zan Mitrev/ LEADERSHIP IN TIMES OF CRISIS
Zan Mitrev, a top specialist in the field of cardiovascular surgery, was born on January 11, 1961, in Stip, Yugoslavia, now Republic of North...
Durim Abdullahu/ Quarantine reminiscence and empty signifiers
Durim Abdullahu is an assistant in the Department of History and Anthropology at the University of Prishtina. He is a doctoral student in the...
Josep Ramoneda/ The disappearance of the bodies
Josep Ramoneda was born in Cervera, Spain, in 1949. He is a political philosopher and is very active in the Spanish intellectual debate about...