ARKZIN ANNUAL REPORT 1996 and PLANS FOR 1997

January, 5th, 1996 since 21st November 1996 (date when Radio 101 lost licence for frequency), there has been lot of events that occupied us. After President Tudjmanis speech on arrival from USA (24th November) in which he announced new attack on independent media, NGOs and foreign foundations which support them, Croatian police and state controlled media started the campaign against all those "enemies"! As part of that Arkzin’s journalist Bozo Matic has been summoned for police interrogation because the article published in September that deals with wealth of president Tudjmanis family. Case has not been lifted yet, but we expect it during January. According to the Penal code sentence could be up to one year of inprisonment. As reaction Arkzin initiated and with Coordination of human rights groups and Croatian Journalist Association organised signing of two petitions both dealing with the legislation concernig the freedom of media (during one week action 15.000 signatures were collected in several towns in Croatia. Results have been given to the members of Parlament. Our representatives demanded the meeting with the Prime minister and Ombudsman. Public was wery supportive to the action and we hope that it will result in changes of legislation). Attack on Soros foundation followed. Financial police blocked their account and three employees will be put on trial. All NGOs and independent media that received grants from Open society Institute Croatia are now expecting similar financial interrogation.

OFFICE

This year Arkzin has moved to a larger office which has enabled us to separate three working spaces of journalists/editors, graphic department & business manager/secretary. More and better equipment obtained with the support of Westminster Foundation has significantly improved our productivity and speed of the working process, and in the same time lowered the amount of fuss, especially at the time of dead-line.

PUBLISHING

During the year Arkzin has been published on 40 pages in circulation of 8000 copes. Last issue in 1996 was published on 48 pages and in next period we will continue to do so. Further rise of the number of pages will depend on financial possibilities. All that would be impossible without new and more equipment and the active engagement of our journalists, layout artists and designers. Also, it helped us to achieve our old ambition of widening the spectre of our activities. In autumn we have published first two books in our Bibliotheque Bastard:Kultura lazi (Culture of lies) by Dubravka UGRESIC and Barikade (Barricades) by Boris BUDEN. Dubravka Ugresic recently got Charles Veillon European award for literray essay for Culture of lies and Boris Budenis book has been critticaly acclaimed in independent media (Feral Tribune, Vijenac, Radio 101) and received lot of media attention. Along with some other small Croatian publishers we have presented our books on Frankfurt, Belgrade (in cooperation with Radio B92) and Ljubljana Book Fairs (with assistance of Open Society Institute - Ljubljana). Both books are on lists of best selling books in Croatia. Smaller ammount of the books has been distributed to Sarajevo and Belgrade. Next books Society of Debacles &Commentaries to the Society of Debacles by Guy Debord, Medien Archive by Dutch group Agentur BILWET, colection of essays Net Criticism and Dying in Toronto by Dasa Drndic, are now in translation and preparation and we have plans for some more. Together with magazine Dani from Sarajevo Arkzin will be co-publisher of the book of political posters titled "Izdajnik" (Traitor) by Bosnian author Samir Restan from Tuzla. Since August in every issue of Arkzin we print two pages of "BERLIN 1936 - The E.L.V.I.S. File" political comic by Milan Trenc - famous Croatian illustrator and cartoonist, now living in New York and working for papers and magazines such as Wall Street Joural, New York Times etc. Our plan is that after serialising it in Arkzin we print the book with complete story. Another plan in that field is translation of Art Spegelmanis MAUS I & II, famous cartoon about the Holocaust. With his agent we have alredy agreed the conditions for purchasing the publishing rights. Graphic design for the promotion purposes we have published several posters - on the occasion of April 10th - Day of establishing NDH (Croatian quisling state during WW2), two for the Buden’s and Ugresic’s books, one in support of Radio 101 (Lotta continua!) and redesigned and larger version of that one as a call for the signing of the petitions for the freedom of press. Our designers and photographers participated in several collective exhibitions of graphic design - Zagrebacki Salon Mladih i 31. Zagrebacki Salon. Our photographer Ivana Vucic also had one-wo/man show of her recent work (some of which has been previously published in Arkzin). All that, along with several graphic design and layout jobs for other organisations (Center for Women War Victims, Society for Improvement of the Quality of Life, Serbian Democratic Forum - Croatia, Montazstroj dance company ...) signified the establishment of our design studio.

TRAINING OF YOUNG DESIGNERS

As planned, new equipment and new space have enabled us to extend our work in training of young journalists & graphic designers. Now we have two new girl photographers (also students of design) and around dozen of young journalists-contributors - most of them are actually students at the Faculty of the political sciences that has department of Journalism and feel that the Arkzin is for them valuable opportunity for gaining the experience, practice in the real production of articles and papers. In April we printed small advertising asking for young people interested in design and desk-top publishing & willing to learn and work in Arkzin. Four were serious candidates. One of them - Nedjeljko Rpoljar (age 24, student of electrotechnics) had previous experience in use of the computers and some experience in design (but not in layout of papers) and, after initial accomodation, he is actively engaged in production of Arkzin doing the design & lay out in PageMaker. Now he is practicing skills in scanning and use of the Photoshop & FreeHand programmes. The other two are associated with Arkzin, gradually learning and practising the use of design programmes - often on supplement material for the magazine - summaries etc. - but yet not actively participating in the creation of the papers. The fourth is 17 years old Grga Franges, with great skills in computers, programming, Internet etc. but little knowledge and practice in production of newspapers. Besides learning these, he is actively engaged in preparation of Arkzin web sites. With easier access to the computer and use of the scanner now our illustrators can make illustrations in digital format, make collages and photomontages. The most advanced is Blazenko Karesin - his illustrations are now most used in our magazine. We feel that his new style and greater use of the photography affected the overall look of the magazine. Also, he is now main person in design of our web pages.WWWa) Computer, equipped with appropriate software and modem connected to our local Internet service providers - CARNet (Croatian Academic Research Network) and HPT (Croatian Telecom), allows us access to various informations and pictures on Internet which is very valuable for a small magazine/company such as Arkzin is - without the large network of correspondents and big archive. One example could be recent events in Belgrade because state controlled media filter informations and thru e-mail and Internet we were able to recieve more and diverse informations, including pictures. We have established the @rkzin WWWeb Master Team consisting of five young graphic designers as the basic group involved in making, developing and evaluating our Web site and our E-mail connectivity. Our WWW site is now permanently "under construction" new pages being added daily and they could be checked at http://pubwww.srce.hr/arkzinhttp://vukovar.unm.edu/arkzin - which is the mirror of our site in New Mexico which enebles much faster access. Besides texts from current issues, there are English summaries of some recent issues and projects such as supplement for crytical theory Bastard and Bibliotheque Bastard and some personal pages of our journalists (Boris Buden, Marcel RtefanPiP jr...). Very possible state repression is also reason why our move into the cyberspace and creating WWW version of Arkzin is so important and valuable. It has been proved on couple of cases - support action for Radio 101, police summon for the "informative converstion" to our journalist Bozo Matic and two petitions for the changes in legislation dealing with the freedom of the press. We were able to react quickly & put informations on-line the very same day something happened, which is very interesting for biweekly such as Arkzin! Other persons and organisations created their own support pages for Radio 101 but because our photographers followed events daily our site had most photos.We hope that we have establish interesting approach to the visual side of the Net, and a recognizable expression of our identity - connected to the design of magazine.Feedback information shows us that our site has attracted the attention of readers as well as Internet surfers around the globe, and serve as valuable source of information about situation in Croatia and ex-Yugoslavia. Also, that part of our activities significantly rised our telephone costs and addditional financial support for phone bills is very wellcome.Because there is possibility that the HPT - Croatian Post & Telephone company will succed in gaining monopoly on Internet providing and that CARNET - Croatian Academic Network will strictly be reserved for the members of University, there is also the possibility that we will have to move to server in Ljubljana - possibility obtained thru our good working connections with perons in Kud France Presern, Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab) & magazine Very Cyber Indeed with whom we plan to organise next NetTime conference (this year held in October in Budapest) in Zagreb & Ljubljana in May 1997. Another of our plans for next year is to create archive of arkzin WWW pages and former issues on CD-ROM.

At the end I just have to mention our greatest problem with the magazine - financial! In current political and social situation in Croatia we can not expect such magazine - dealing with civil rights, NGOs, alternative movements and subculture as well as theory and critique of ideology - to be profitable. Also, state monopolised distribution is taking 70% of our newsstands price. Costs that we can not cut and that we have to pay regullary every two weeks are the printing costs - till now mostly covered by Open Society Institute Croatia. In arrangement with them we had to move to printhouse Novi list in Rijeka what significantly rised our other costs (mostly transportation of papers) that Open Society Institute did not cover and that we had to pay from our reserve. Your financial support was crucial for us during this period, and without it we would not be able to realise some of mentioned activities. In the situation when destiny of our main donor, the Open society Institute - Croatia is unclear, we hope that you will continue to support our projects and thus help the development of the civil society and democracy in Croatia.

PLANS FOR 1997

• Regular publishing of Arkzin and increasing number of pages
• Promotion of Project Arkzin in Sarajevo (magazine, books, WWW...) in the beginning of February
• Promotion of Cultural association Ambrosia from Sarajevo in Zagreb in the beginning of March
• Bibliotheque Bastard - app. 12 titles
• Further development of WWW site
• CD ROM with Arkzin archive (past issues, WWW site, English summaries, photographs, other projects, further development...)
• Cooperation with ELECTRA - Womenis Art Center in development of Alternative video center (see appendix 1)
• Coorganisation of March 8th Womens festival in Zagreb (with ELECTRA - Womenis Art Center & B.a.B.e. - Womenis Human Rights Group)
• Coorganisation of the NetTime Conference about social implications of digital communications (with LJUDMILA - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, Slovenia and ADILKNO/Agentur Bilwet, Amsterdam) NEEDS!
• Running costs, rent...
• Part funding the printing costs of Arkzin to enable rising number of pages
• Another telephone line dedicated to e-mail & Internet and covering costs
• Translation of books (Medien Archive by Agentur BILWET, NetCriticism , MAUS, Zizek...)
• Financial support for organising conferences and promotions

Those events will have role in building our image and marketing promotion - especially in situation when our marketing budget is very tight and main media such as TV state controlled we have to develop alternative marketing strategies and ways to reach our target audience.

SincerelyVesna Jankovic, editor-in-chief; Dejan Krsic, executive editor

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