From 23^rd June to 24^th September 2000 Ljubljana will host Manifesta – a European biennial event, which declares to be innovative model for presentation of contemporary art. It also pays special attention to young authors and the dialogue between Western and Eastern European art.

The third variant of Manifesta will, for the first time, be held in Eastern Europe (or on its edge), that is in Ljubljana (Manifesta 1 took place in Rotterdam/1996, while Manifesta 2 took place in Luxembourg/1998).

This, in our view, makes the event significant not only for Ljubljana and Slovenia but also for the Eastern European countries and for the Manifesta itself. (Ljubljana will serve as a special case study for the Manifesta and its concept of establishing close dialogue and links between Eastern and Western European cultural space.)

In order to avoid passive and uncritical acceptance of the event and with this the imposed art system (Manifesta is a Western European initiative) on the one side and an a priori rejection on the other, the initiative group in January 1999 (after the news that Manifesta 3 is coming to Ljubljana) decided to set up a research project Manifesta in our Backyard.

In the research project Manifesta 3 serves as an example of a large representative contemporary art event and thus as an example of the manifestation of the cultural industry.

The goal of the research project is to encourage a critical discourse on the prevailing operations of the contemporary artistic system in accordance to market mechanisms and the dominating (post-modern) ideology. At the same time we wish to encourage the self-reflection of the protagonists on the local artistic scene (specially ourselves – SCCA-Ljubljana) as well as broader. Parallel to that we would like to encourage the formation and emancipation of individual models of operation within the art system, based on the specifics of the local context.

In this context the research project seems to make sense and be of importance also due to the fact that in the year 2000 all Soros Centers for Contemporary Arts (20) will stop operating within the frame of the Open Society Institutes.

With the time when all SCCA’s will be organised as individual organisations and for them and the countries in which they operate (countries in which SCCA’s will often be the only or at least the dominating promoters and producers of contemporary arts) a possibility for a different system operation will occur.

In the research project we have focused on three fields and formed three working groups, the work of which is co-ordinated by the main working group, which in turn is constituted of the heads of individual working groups and the co-ordinator of the exhibition.