Kalektar
The platform was created primarily due to dissatisfaction with the situation in contemporary Belarusian art, as well as the relative invisibility of the experience of Belarusian art in the Eastern European and international context. By inertia, the official cultural policy of Belarus preserved the features of the Soviet period, borrowing the centralized vertical bureaucratic system of cultural management. On the one hand, the current political regime in the mid–1990s abolished or greatly complicated the activities of independent institutions (non-state galleries, foundations, associations), as well as criminalized foreign funding, which led to a long-term stagnation of the art system and the absence of an institute for the study of contemporary Belarusian art which would conduct archival activities and promote integration into the international artistic context. As a result, during the reassessment of the artistic experience of Eastern Europe in all major studies of the 1990s and 2000s, Belarus was practically excluded from the general archive, remaining a “white spot” on the map of Eastern European art. Although there are various official institutions in the country, their activities lack effective research and archival work in the field of current art and cannot withstand criticism.
After 2005, in the environment of independent culture, there are noticeable processes of activation and consolidation of the art community, which led to the opening of non-state institutions – galleries, publications, Internet portals, research and exhibitions. A large amount of material was collected, which requires the preservation and accumulation of accumulated information and experience to create an open archive of contemporary Belarusian art, not only to avoid the loss and oblivion of another period of art development, but also as an example of the fight against the arbitrariness of the official cultural policy. This is how the decision was made to create an independent research platform of contemporary Belarusian art.