Speakers
About this event
Before we debate touring logistics or ticketing algorithms, before we map ecosystems or measure carbon footprints - we need to answer a more fundamental question: What do we stand for?
EEMC exists at a specific moment in European history - a moment when the foundational values of the European project are being tested, challenged, and in some places actively undermined. Democratic backsliding, rising authoritarianism, restrictions on artistic freedom, attacks on media independence, threats to minority rights - these are not abstract political problems. They are the daily reality of the live music ecosystem.
A festival cannot operate freely where freedom of expression is conditional. A touring circuit cannot function where borders are instruments of exclusion. An independent venue cannot survive where the rule of law does not protect cultural space. A diverse music scene cannot thrive where equality and inclusion are treated as optional extras rather than fundamental principles.
THE FOUR FACES OF TAKING A STAND
The panel brings together four figures who each embody a different dimension of what it means for art and the cultural ecosystem to stand for values:
Dan Perjovschi - Art as Witness. The artist as citizen, armed with nothing but a marker and a conscience, drawing truth on walls for forty years - under dictatorship and in democracy, in MoMA and on protest banners. His drawings are 'copyleft' - free for any activist purpose. Art's first duty is to see clearly and to say what it sees.
Michal Kaščák - Art as Principled Rebellion. The festival director who started in underground clubs under communism and built Pohoda on values - antitotalitarian concerts in 120 Slovak clubs, pro-LGBTQ+ events in 250 locations, solidarity journeys to Ukraine. Recipient of Slovakia's highest civilian honour for defending democracy. Cultural leadership means accepting consequences for your convictions.
Vlad Yaremchuk - Art as Survival and Solidarity. Partnership Manager at UAME | Music Saves Ukraine, the initiative of the Ukrainian Association of Music Events focused on cultural diplomacy, supporting Ukrainian artists on European stages, and delivering humanitarian aid to civilians. Programming Director of Atlas Festival - Ukraine's biggest music event, which returned in 2024 with a new focus on fundraising, raising over 4.8 million EUR in two years. When values are under the most extreme threat, art does not retreat. It transforms.
Fruzsina Szép - Art as Radical Inclusion. The co-founder of TAKE A STAND who builds festivals as spaces where everyone belongs - Superbloom doubled its wheelchair areas, 70% female audience, 45% women and queer artists in the lineup. She grew up walking through Munich's Olympic Park with her blind father and turned that memory into a design principle. Values are not abstract principles but design decisions: who you build for determines what you stand for.
Art is not a luxury that follows after a society has secured its values. Art is the way a society discovers, defends, and renews those values. It is the first language of freedom - and the last to fall silent.
Opened by a keynote from Prof. Özgehan Şenyuva and moderated by Elena Calistru, the session closes with a collective commitment: a values statement that will serve as the ethical compass for the entire conference - and for the EEMC movement beyond it.
EEMC STANDS WITH UKRAINE
EEMC stands with Ukraine. We stand against the war. Against the invasion. Against the destruction of a sovereign nation, its people, its cities, its cultural infrastructure, and its right to exist.
This is not a political calculation. It is a values statement. If human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law mean anything - then there is no position of neutrality available when a European neighbour is under military attack.
Vlad Yaremchuk's presence on this panel is not symbolic. It is evidence - of what happens when values are tested under the most extreme conditions, and of what the music ecosystem can become when it chooses solidarity over self-preservation.
When the war ends - and it will end - and history asks what the European music industry did during the years that Ukraine fought for its survival - what will your answer be?
Values First. Then everything else.
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