‘We all came from Soros’

Abstract

Focusing on the period between 1994 and 2006, this study of the Soros Foundation and its spin-offs employs a mixed-method approach to explore the structure of the visual arts scene in Croatia and the role of Soros Foundation organisations within it. Based on a quantitative analysis of network visualisations and a qualitative structural analysis of narrative interviews, which are theoretically framed around the notions of network and complexity, the article moves the research agenda away from assumptions about what Soros Foundation organisations were supposed to be, to a more embedded understanding of what they actually were in a specific space-time. The analysis foregrounds varying strategies and trajectories of Soros Foundation’s Croatia-based organisations. It demonstrates that they served mostly to maintain continuity with the socialist period during the 1990s, while real structural change, at least partially due to the Foundation’s influence, happened only after 1999 with the emergence of the independent cultural scene.