In an increasingly despotic world, Europe – proud old lady that she is – presents itself as the last guardian of the open society. But what about our own monsters?

Across Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Serbia, Poland, Austria, and the Netherlands, far-right parties are or have been in power. Control over culture and the arts is always among their first targets. History warns us that the most dangerous threats often operate subtly: through bureaucratic pressure, censorship, and austerity-driven budget cuts.

What role can artists and cultural institutions play as politics moves steadily rightward? In collaboration with the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen), the Belgian journal of the performing arts Etcetera invites a discussion on the evolving relationship between European arts and politics with Matej Drlička, former director of the Slovak National Theatre, who was dismissed by the Fico government in one of the most visible acts of political interference in European cultural institutions in recent years, Christiane Jatahy, Brazilian theatre director and filmmaker based in Europe and Brazil, who has seen from the inside how Brazil slid into authoritarianism under Bolsonaro and Milo Rau, director of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna, who has turned the festival itself into a political project and is currently pushing for a European Artistic Freedom Act to legally protect artists and institutions from political interference with the campaign Resistance Now Together.

Moderated by Floris Baeke, co-editor-in-chief of Etcetera