Strengthening the Eastern Bloc’s Local Cultural Scenes After the Pandemic

Author: Katarzyna Kwiatkowska Photo Credit: Filip Preis & Mio Obernosterer The first wave of the pandemic hit the club community hard. It was also a good moment to think about how to deal with the situation and strengthen the activities of local scenes. That’s why Oramics, a collective from Poland, which supports women, non-binary and queer people in the electronic music scene and focuses its activities on the promotion of artists from Central and Eastern Europe wanted to reflect upon these new circumstances collectively. The collective decided to gather this scene’s representatives and organized the “Eastern Bloc after the pandemic: strengthening local scenes and their cooperation” debate during their birthday event online in 2020. The discussion was attended by artists and activists from Armenia, Serbia, Hungary, Belarus, Slovenia, Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland. You need to know the context we live in When talking about the situation in the Eastern Bloc countries, it should be noted that the context is completely different from what is happening in the West. This region has been suffering economically, culturally, and politically. Far-right governments use pandemic situations for their benefits, violate human’s rights, and spread lies and violence against the LGBTQ community. There are street