Zone - Eastern Europe, or in short, the Zone, is a performance festival which began in 1993, the forthcoming one being the third. It has been organised with a view to supporting alternative art in a moment of obvious confusion. The official art having already been dissolved under the direct effect of the communist propaganda, after 1990, a vacant place has been left to questionable and hesitant artistic manifestations. The festival has credited the idea with the existence of an artistic phenomenon during communist Romania, only in the "underground" without the possibility of manifesting itself openly. Performance art is still alive in this cultural space by putting forth artistic, social and political issues of great moment; among these we mention the affirmation of the body as an artistic resource or the comments on the social and political events of contemporary significance in the post-totalitarian society in Eastern Europe.

A space of isolated cultures, an expression of some contrary-minded national identities, permanently searching for its own image, Zone became a mysterious territory of the Central and Eastern European performance.

Being aware of the isolation of the ex-communist countries and, equally so, of their striking similarities (even if of different nuances and development or lagging in time) it seemed that the most important step to take was to establish natural and normal artistic contacts, apart from the official ones. In this respect performance art really proved to be the unifying means as it had never represented the official art in any of the former communist countries.

As a venue for it, we have chosen Timişoara, a cosmopolitan city still echoing with the avant-garde of the 1960's - to mention here only Group 111, the first experimental group in Romania, really interested in the phenomenon under discussion. Another purpose in view has also been an artistic decentralisation in relation to the capital, which corresponds to the local political and administrative autonomy, lost a long time ago.

If this festival, from the very beginning was defined as an artistic area of a former concentration camp, now dissolved, which has reunited artists - "former prisoners", from similar camps, taking all this into consideration, it would be a mistake to persist in the idea of looking at Eastern Europe as at an isolated zone. Preserving its specificity, it seems to be necessary that we should try to achieve an opening towards normality, and without any discrimination of appurtenance, to invite to this Zone, artists interested in performance who ought to make us meditate upon their diverse issues. To this end we intend to invite artists from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, the Republic of Moldavia, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, as well as artists from Germany, France, England, USA.