BRAINSTORMING

Zsolt Petranyi (MUCSARNOK - Budapest, Hungary): It was interesting to be here and listen to what was said by the curators. Concerning art administration in Hungary, over the last few years, the cultural administration has been stressing more heavily tradition in Hungarian culture but most of those who work in the field of contemporary art feel quite isolated from this problem mainly because we know that the issue of cultural heritage is essentially a political problem which does not really concern our everyday practice in the field of contemporary art. As far as we are concerned there is a bigger problem, which is the same one raised by the curator from Romania: why is the new ability for communication we now have at Mucsarnok not a key word in the political arena? Our country would like to be a part of the EU and we feel that contemporary art is a very good means of communication were we could prove that our language in culture is absolutely the same as in Western Europe. However, we have difficulties in raising funds and have continuous arguments with the Ministry of Culture which, on the whole, has an economic background and an eminently political approach to culture and art and therefore attaches to it notions of "democracy" and social purpose. This of course is at odds with the curators’ objective of selecting and focusing on what is really valuable and significant in our art.

The second point on the agenda of the meeting was cultural identity or internationalism. I think this problem is particularly relevant to the countries that have a border position in Europe because artists growing up in these countries always looked to the western European centres and their academies to absorb the European style and import it into our countries. The younger generations in our countries want to participate in the international conversation on contemporary art and feel that the only way to do that is to use the same language and produce works which are perfectly intelligible to, and compatible with, the audience of the international art world. Then we, curators especially, go to Europe and find out that instead many western European artists, say from Denmark, are looking at issues which are rooted in a particular city or in a specific situation. None of us feels we have the “strength” or the possibility of doing this… we are still pushing outwards! On the other hand, I feel the interest the west is now displaying towards the east is very important for us. Occasions such as the Manifesta in Lijubliana are a great opportunity for artists, including eastern artists, to focus on their particular situation.

Sirje Helme (Center for Contemporary Art - Estonia): Just to come back to this image of western art. I have often wondered about it and I think for Soviet people, as Ukrainians and Estonians certainly were, the image of the west had nothing to do with reality, there was no such western art or western society. It existed as a sort of virtual dream in the mind of our society, and remember that the Soviet society was very closed and therefore very different from that of Hungary, Poland and so on. Artists had a dream that western art functioned in a way that there was money, there were institutions, there were good materials, there were galleries, there was everything. Eastern art critics, of course, had another dream of the so-called art world: that if you were a good critic and you wrote very well your work would be published everywhere and always, that you could tell the truth and that there were no political games of any kind. At least half of the problems that arose at the beginning of the ’90 were because of the shattering of this dream and of the finding that what we believed in was a virtual reality. It could even be the topic for a special research: what was the western world in our imagination? Because the whole Estonian avant-garde was based on an image which never really existed but which we believed in like a bible. With this I don’t want to criticise the western world, in fact in some ways I think eastern countries were also virtual for western people. I am always very surprised by clichés on eastern artists and writers and find it always very interesting to discuss about our understanding of each other. This is a great opportunity to confront myself again with other opinions on this issue, for example what was it like in Ukraine?

Jerzy Onuch (Center for Contemporary Art - Kiev, Ukraine): What you are saying is very interesting to me, especially when I see sitting around a table a group of Central-Eastern Europeans, who are from the countries in line to enter the European Union. I come from a country which is the second largest country in Europe, Ukraine, the biggest post-colonial society in Europe, which cannot even dream of joining the EU for the next two or perhaps three decades. That is if we survive as a country and as a nation. My personal case is a case study of the society I live in and of the rules that govern it. Ukrainian society is still an extremely soviet society, in actual facts nothing has changed. It is a virtual country mimicking a real nation with a parliament which is not a parliament, a government which is not a real government, with a president who is accused of criminal activity…. yet, if we compare ourselves to Belarus or Moldavia, we are quite a democratic society. About a year ago I started the first presentation of Ukrainian artists at the Venice Biennial and everything went quite smoothly until about 70% of the work was done, then the post-soviet nomenclature decided that they should make decisions from then on so now there is a new set of people representing Ukraine at the Biennale. What I believe is the worst thing is that some of these artists are quite well known, they are not bad artists, but they decided to join the most conservative forces in Ukraine in order to be present at this Biennale, which means that people in a post colonial society such as Ukraine are almost ready to kill only to be present in this “better part” of Europe. The question of art in this case is totally marginal, so I don’t know how this society can exist and can develop and what the role of art and artists can be in this society.

THE PROBLEM SEEMS NOT TO BE HOW ARTISTS CAN FOLLOW THEIR OWN PATH, BEACAUSE THEY HAVE ALWAYS DONE THIS ANYWAY, BUT WHICH MEANS CAN HELP THEM EXCHANGE EXPERIENCES. SHOULD IT BE ENHANCED CUTURALPOLICIES MADE BY THE GOVERNMENTS, OR CAN IT BE DONE THROUGH PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS?

Zsolt Petranyi: I believe your question has two parts: one is the financial question internal to our countries and the other one is the international side of the issue, as in the case of the participation to the Venice Biennale. Concerning the first aspect of the question, I think that both ministry funding and private sector sponsorship have to exist. This is because the economic situation of our countries is not yet in such a position that the Ministry of Culture can draw to culture large enough amounts of money for us to survive without any other funds. The problem is that the economy of our countries has not reached that level yet, nor has the private sector in fact, so they are not in a position to sponsor art. The issue is constantly discussed and we try to think of possibilities, but we are aware that the management of these companies is still working to survive these first and hardest years in the economy let alone thinking about representation. This has to be achieved step by step. If you question how is this situation is reflected in the Venice Biennale, I think for every pavilion the situation can be very different. This year, for example, in the Hungarian pavilion the situation is rather good because the exhibition is sponsored 100% by the Ministry of Culture but if the curator from Romania was still present I am sure she would say something completely different…

Sirje Helme: I think in Estonia the situation of the private sector is pretty much the same, we cannot expect them to be able to sponsor art. They have, on some occasions, but it doesn’t really mean anything. To answer your question on who is to decided and pay, I think that in an idealistic situation, the government should simply trust the art institutions. In other words, we decide to organise something, we find the partners and then when it is all done the government simply trusts our judgement and puts up the money. Concerning this year’s Venice Biennale, the show is financed in part by the Ministry of Culture and in part by an endowment for culture which is managed by an independent organisation but uses the revenues from gambling and taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. These revenues are rather large and are used not only for culture but also for other projects. Once this money has been allocated the financing will not be withdrawn, whoever goes into power. In this sense it is a very democratic system and an already well-established one: first there is a competition for the curator or the curatorial team or artists and the members of the jury are always presented by different institutions, plus there are two experts and somebody from the previous edition of the Biennial.

SO THERE IS NO POLITICAL PRESSURE ON THS SELECTION?

Sirje Helme: None whatsoever, in fact I would say that the danger could rather be that, there being so many different interests among those who are sitting at this table deciding, mostly artists, critics and specialist, it could happen that to satisfy everybody in some way the solution turned out to be simply not of good quality.

AND IS THE RESULT PERCIEVED AS A REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE OF THE NATION OR JUST BEING AT THE BIENNIAL IS ENOUGH TO THIS END?

Sirje Helme: I would think that the basic idea remains that we have to represent Estonia as a nation but we believe this comes from selecting the best art we can find, that’s all.

Zsolt Petranyi: Turning back to the economic question, I don’t want anybody to think that our message here, as east European curators, is that the west should pity us, because if we don’t proceed it’s our fault. The other problem when we speak about sponsors etc, is that we don’t have any experience in communicating with our sponsors and in dealing with the many other questions concerning communication between the cultural life and the economic life in a capitalistic system. I think it is a kind of precept that as we grow in this kind of economic system we also learn how to proceed in culture and to explain to people what culture is about.

CONCERNING THIS LAST POINT: HAVE YOU, IN RECENT YEARS, REGISTERED AN INCREASE IN THE INTEREST OF THE AUDIENCE TOWARDS CONTEMPORARY ART?

Jerzy Onuch: I can give you numbers, if you like, since I run the Centre for Contemporary Art in Kiev. First you have to remember that in many post-soviet countries the notion of contemporary art is quite new. While this notion existed in countries such as Poland, Hungary, and even Czechoslovakia, although it was oppressed, it was only with Peristroika that you could start thinking of something called contemporary art in our country. It therefore was a completely new phenomenon when we started the Centre for Contemporary art in Kiev in 1995. It took us four years to have about 25,000 visitors a year and last year we had 40,000 visitors. Of course you have to put these numbers in context, (e.g. we have similar number of visitors as the National Art Museum). Our audience are under-thirties and if we want to support contemporary art in the future we have to grow our own audience.

AND HOW IS CONTEMPORARY ART FUNDED IN UKRAINE?

Jerzy Onuch: In a big country as Ukraine, which has over 50 million people, there is not one single institution in Contemporary art which is financed by the state. The only existing Contemporary Art Centre is ours in Kiev and is now financed in the measure of 30% by the SOROS Foundation while the remaining 70% of our budget we have to raise ourselves. Consider also that the funding from SOROS is getting thinner every year, I don’t know what will happen.

Zsolt Petrany: You have no possibility of getting any money from the Ministry of Culture?

Jerzy Onuch: Not if you are an NGO - Non Governmental Organisation - because according to internal laws the Ministry of Culture can only give money to the Institutions founded by the Ministry of Culture, they cannot give grants to other institutions which are not state controlled.

SO WHERE DO YOU GET THE EXTRA FUNDING FROM? FOREIGN ORGANISATIONS OR PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS OR BOTH?

Jerzy Onuch: As things stand now in our programme 50% are Ukrainian shows and 50% are international shows, and we make money from the international shows since they are almost completely financed by the other side or by corporations. For the show we have on now we had the American Chamber of Commerce helping us and the American Embassy also gave us a grant. But on a local level it is very difficult since there is no such thing as a good citizen sponsoring, i.e. private sponsoring to show that they are sponsoring art or culture. If you approach corporate sponsors they will start questioning who will attend, how many people will attend, everything has to go through advertising agencies or PR agencies and at the end they are not interested.

Zsolt Petranyi: What we are saying now about the possibility of collaborations is very important because, yes, the experience in Hungary is very similar: if we have international shows we are focusing on existing exhibitions, we take what is already there. Of course we did a lot of this in the past, for example we hosted the Liquid Crystal Future from Edinburgh Gallery. However, we now find ourselves questioning the role of AFAA, IFA and the British Council in the culture of the east European countries because these exhibitions are for the most part sponsored by this kind of bodies which may accept to take over but this has nothing to do with collaboration. Unfortunately, collaboration, as a possible way forward, is also a matter of economics because we cannot collaborate with western European institutions unless we are able to tell our western partners today how much money we can contribute to the co-organisation of the exhibition next year. The point is I can never say today how much money I will be able to raise for next year. I find this very frustrating but I am happy to see that in Poland the situation is more advanced because there are examples of Polish institutions co-operating direcly with the artists to produce shows which they can now run in different countries. I belive they have managed to set up a very succesful model of co-operation in this sense and, as I said, in Poland there is more that one example of this kind of management in recent years. Just think of the great exhibition of Harald Zeeman at the Zacheta Gallery.....

BUT IS WAS A DISASTER!

Zsolt Petranyi: It was a disaster from one side but from our side it’s very interesting that László Beke (former director of Mucsarnok) had in mind of calling Harald Zeeman , who is his friend, to bring to the Kunsthalle the best and greatest show, and when he got this idea it had already been carried out in Poland. On the other hand it must be said that over the last thirty years Poland has had the strongest position in art and twenty or thirty year ago the Hungarian artists, if they felt they had no possibilities, would catch a train and go to Warsaw and see the artists there if they wanted to get more information on contemporary art.

Jerzy Onuch: Yes but consider also that they have a couple of institutions , like the Zacheta gallery and Ujazdowski Castle, which have quite good financing from the government although it is not enough obviously.

Zsolt Petranyi: Not only that, Poland is also fortunate not to have only one centre because there is Gdansk, Krakow, Lodz, and all of these places have got very good institutions. My country it is basically one centered.

IS IT NOT POSSIBLE TO SET UP AN EXHIBITION OF A HUNGARIAN UNKNOWN ARTIST WHO IS VERY GOOD, RATHER THAN A WELL KNOWN INTERNATIONAL ARTIST, AND THEN EXPORT THIS EXHIBITION TO OTHER COUNTRIES?

Zsolt Petranyi: We tried. For example in the ‘70s and the ‘80s there was a very very influent Hungarian artist, Miklós Erdèly, who really is the father of the new generation and László Beke tried to make a touring retrospective exhibition but realised that nobody knows him, again a question of visitors. If you want to take this into western Europe you can do it but the directors of these institutions know that nobody will come and see the show. That is why I think it is important to suggest a situation in which there is a collaboration among, say, two Estonians, two Hungarians and three Austrians with one key topic that carries over the general message that we are facing similar problems, that we are at the same level but have some small differences.

Sirje Helme: I have just been to see an exhibition in Zagreb, at the Contemporary Art Museum, curated by a Croatian. It is a very good show and they have succeeded in moving it to Slovenia, Liubijana, and also to a gallery in Innsbruck. Also it seems they have some preliminary agreement for this show to travel in Europe. But, of course, they will need some additional money, for example from the APEX Foundation, which is connected to the the European Cultural Foundation, to support travel expenses which are so high.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT ISSUE IS THE NEED TO BUILD A COMMON HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY ART BECAUSE IT IS PREPOSTEROUS TO THINK WE KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT FRENCH ARTISTS AND GERMAN ARTISTS BUT KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BALTIC ART. THE EU SHOULD ALSO HAVE THIS KIND OF OBJECTIVE ON ITS AGENDA?

Sirje Helme: You know Anda Rottenberg (at the time director of the Zacheta Gallery of Warsaw) produced an exhibition on the artists of the Baltic countries in 1995 and tried to send it to other places. The exhibition focused on the historical period between 1945 and 1990, just to give a general idea of what had been done. But it seems very hard to get some attention.

Zsolt Petranyi: Two years ago, I was involved, with group of curators, in a project entitled “America doesn’t like me”, which was to be a photo based exhibition on Eastern European countries with many different historical and ethnical questions relating to the perception of the west as the key issue. However, at the end we did not proceed, we decided to stop.

WHY?

Zsolt Petranyi: Because when we discussed the outcome of this kind of exhibition we realised that it is too late for this kind of exhibtion, we realised that the “photo years” are maybe over, and this East European exotism is also a trap...

Sirje Helme: But you cannot avoid it really, you can see it everywhere, whether good or bad it simply exists. Actually this idea of co-operations could be a real possibility. Curators and historians could start the operation from this level and start making demands for money from institutions which have this kind of priority as part of their cultural policies.