course for curators of contemporary art: course participants / study excursions / program collaborators / exhibition / course participant's texts

Eda Čufer
A conversation with Marko Košnik

You have just returned from a few months of travelling across Europe. What are you currently dealing with?

At the moment I am trying to work from a mobile position on a regular basis. This means that I am restricting myself to portable technology and work with individuals, and that I try to perform my everyday work on a small working desk, wherever I might find myself. I am trying to avoid festivals and large events and I am trying to work within the frame of personal creative relations which are slowly emerging in Europe. I am practising at behaving as if I lived at home, even though I am constantly on the move. My co-workers and I are trying to establish a larger number of long-term co-operations which would no longer be linked to the programme cycles of large producers. For the last four years we are trying to operate in the sense of a laboratory. However, this laboratory is no longer established as a space - territory or organisation, but as an exchange of experience and joint research.

Who are the co-workers that you have mentioned?

For instance, I work with Margrit Ribben, Dirk Bruinsma, Ulrike Gabriel, Gerard Couty as well as a number of other artists. We also co-operate with smaller independent institutions such as for instance Station Mir in Caen or Code-Lab in Berlin.
As a principle I co-operate only with artists (i.e. independently established personalities) who can not merely be hired for an individual project, but a joint point can be found with them on the basis of which we can establish our artistic co-operation. We are establishing co-operation within a synergetic field amongst those areas in which we have been persistently working in already for a long time. Each one of us speaks in his own artistic language and we do not try to simultaneously translate these languages, instead we synchronise it through a codification system which has to be developed and supplemented from project to project.

On what sort of a level does this new codification system work? On the level of a tool? On the level of a group? Social context?

Mainly on the level of language. We are dealing with the issue of how to translate from an intimate experience, from an artistic experience, into a joint field of operation which embodies the community and co-operation. I would be exaggerating if I say that we are dealing with a language as an individual communication body, because we are not creating a new Esperanto, however, we are creating a language which is based on the broad inclusion of body-movement, sound, musical and fine art elements as well as a computer programming language. I like to speak of an anthropological approach, but there is great chaos surrounding the anthropological methods (especially in theatre) therefore I prefer to avoid this label. I prefer to call this codification process a practice in synchronisation. Synchronisation is my new basic concept.

Should synchronisation define itself through a certain goal?

The goals are defined by each individual for himself. The search for joint goals is a part of the discussion, a dialogue. We must understand each others goals and we must also understand why we will (at a certain moment) join in a common effort.
When I state that I co-operate with authors, I am speaking about people who have 20 or 30 years of experience and a surprising variety of knowledge which most of them have gained through years of work and not through the adaptation to the logic of various trends. However, they are people who (in their own environments) carry the entire local scene upon their shoulders. Each and every one of them organises one festival or the other, they sit in a committee or are involved in a similar activity. They come from very different social spheres.

Are you therefore some sort of a cultural activists?

It is not as simple as that. For instance, Margritt Ribben, who is one of the persons I co-operate with, apart from the numerous creative activities, also sits in a committee of the town of Bern and oversees the criteria according to which the artists receive financial support. At the same time she is also the director of a festival and a member of the Swiss improvisation orchestra. However, if you try to figure out how she operates you can not reduce her activities to a single denominator, for she manages social mechanisms as intermediates which she tries to upgrade with innovations. To come to the point, people in their environment ceased to operate on the level of identification, they prefer to approach the society as an instrument, which you must learn how to control and therefore you must also actively create it. This, of course, must take place on a level still accessible to the artist. This means that you play by the rules, but at this you try to do more than would be necessary if you merely followed the inertia. At such a relation the wholesome spectre of operation is important, from creativity and organisation to pedagogics. And at the end, when you take a look at what remains purely artistic at such an operation and you come across high abstract structural art, we can ask ourselves, is this really that by which we recognise activists today.

The Hexpo festival was an attempt to establish such a flexible wholesome model of organisation in Slovenia. In three Slovene towns a number of interesting people, creative personalities, experts within their fields, appeared within one month, and all of them shared their knowledge with anybody interested virtually for free.

The fact that Hexpo took place in Slovenia is not something which would be a special virtue of this project. It could take place between three different cities, for example Maribor, Graz and Zagreb. On the other hand it is true that the situation in Slovenia was prepared for such a project, for there were people and organisations in Ljubljana, Maribor and Koper, who could be connected within the frame of such an effort.

I am interested in how would you define the profile of this festival and how do you evaluate the local response and results? In short, was this a process of learning how to work with various new technologies, i.e. visual, sound and so on?

This, as well as with the theory connected to this field. We have defined five fields. These were: audio-visual materialisation, management, organisation, communication and art as a pure form and theory. However, even though I have often travelled between the scenes I still can not clearly decide as regards the results and effects. A large number of strong personalities participated and they found themselves in various groups in various places where they had to adjust to the situation as they went along. And the situation changed a great deal through time. From all this a mass of stories emerged and that was what we also wanted, i.e. not to give the project a unified image. And so it happens that a year later (in Europe as well as at home), I came across completely different evaluations of the event. The entire project functioned on three different levels. The first level were local structures and people, who operate within these structures; the second level was the organisational structure of the festival and the third level were the guests and, of course, the interested public and the students. All of these groups mingled and from this various stories emerged. Some people, mostly younger (and as a rule from the East) were very critical as regards the organisation. They wanted more acknowledgement and they often did not manage to orient themselves in the given conditions. Others, mainly older and already established artists, managed to find their way around more easily. However, I am of the opinion that the effect from this event will be noticeable only in a few years, for people connected between each other in intensive situations and they are keeping up their connections and from this new co-operations will emerge. In any event a wind of change has appeared and we (at least the more sensitive) have been missing something like this in our area.

The lectures were cancelled or postponed and because of this there was a general feeling that the festival was poorly organised.

Hexpo was a synchronised action carried out by 15 co-producers, who, together with a number of employed professionals and in co-operation with over 50 unpaid volunteers, hosted an international team for three weeks. In the period of three weeks, the number of the international team varied from between 18 and 24 tutors and between 35 and 40 assistants, who worked in Maribor, Ljubljana and Koper. The teams travelled on a weekly basis between the three towns. In total we produced 23 performances, 27 lectures, 20 concerts, 15 film and video presentations, 5 round tables, 5 installations, 3 exhibitions, 90 hours of workshops in the field of multimedia, 140 hours of Internet live coverage of activities, 42 hours of original radio programme, 1 interactive CD-Rom and 12 short videos and documentaries. In Ljubljana the last announced day of events was cancelled entirely and before that two events on Metelkova were cancelled, and three were postponed for a couple of hours. If some people in Ljubljana decide that because of this the entire event was poorly organised, I would doubt that they were aware of the entire picture of the project.
The announcement of events was the hardest nut to crack, sometimes this occurred merely due to the equipment capabilities of certain scenes. A few great names attended the festival, names that are hard to persuade to come to Slovenia, and if they are persuaded, they are very expensive. Here we are talking about people who appeared in the roles of tutors, debaters, lecturers and artists. One of the goals was to stage confrontations with the public and this would result in a synthesis, however, various groups were more or less successful at this, one was better in Koper, while the other was better in Maribor. The idea of Hexpo is that we once more learn the rounded up collection of skills that enable us independent operation. By all means the guideline was that we stop waiting for the specific bureaucratic solutions, but for every one of us to do as much as possible for his field. In the five years after the fall of the Berlin wall, when the East and West met, everybody hoped that the ones responsible will establish compatible production or mediation systems, and at this I do not have in mind only in the art and culture fields. In the East we first started to directly copy certain models. However, experience has taught us (us, who not only produce, but also research) that these systems merely enable the basis for what we need, that is why new models must be sought for. At this I am not complaining, this is merely an ascertainment that the conditions you need in order to synthesise your knowledge will not be found at the point where the systems are modelled. In order to find them you must go much deeper and broader into life. Life (with its chaos and numerous layers) is much more inter-disciplinary and interactive then a technological medium. That is why we deal with the Internet or other new technologies more like with some kind of a lever, which is based in the virtual, however at the end it must also bring new qualities to this side, to the palpable life. However, there are numerous cases in which this does not turn out this way. In the case of Haider, who came to power during the preparations for Hexpo, the Austrian left wing could face its 'real' measure. It is very well organised on the level of the Internet, however, at the time it could not manage actions on the level of 'live performance'. Generating situations, which accelerate experience is a demanding and complex function in the urban world. On the other hand everybody is touched by the heat of e-mails or companionship at a distance. Such a flu is a necessity today, unfortunately many a person is (even after the first hesitation) taken from the social scene for good. Often this remains merely at petitions. In many places around the world this will prove to be an even worse virus than all computer ones put together.

As much as I understand your work you try to operate in a manner as wholesome as possible. However, could you say that at least one of the mediums through which you express yourself is dominant? For instance music or performance?

No, by no means. I had the good fortune that in the period during which I would have to chose between one medium or the other and specialise myself, I found myself in great personal trouble. At that time I wrote a lot. I wanted to become a writer. Then I once more decided to work with music. In the 1980's I dealt mainly with concepts and scripts for the works of groups in which I co-operated. At the moment I am preoccupied with the 'no media definition, which means that you (as an artist) operate from a spiritual and mental starting point, you adjust and learn to operate within a certain situation and chose and master tools which are the most suitable for it. In ideal circumstances you should be capable (in any situation) of encouraging a process which enables a reflection of your inner problem as well as a reflection of the situation surrounding you. This is all about the position in between, a position which is not 'intro' nor 'extro', not 'exo', nor 'eso'.

I see your work as very polarised, into projects within which you work in groups and into projects in which you are dealing with very individualistic and even rigorously formal research. If I think of you as an artist, I see you as an extreme individualist and formalist. To what extent are you conscious of this polarisation and how would you explain it?

For me this is a form of breathing, which, amongst others, also has very important regeneration effects. My work encompasses very diverse time intervals, in duration as well as regards the manner of inclusion into the broader space. If the project demands that I have to learn to programme in a certain programme environment and this will take one year of learning I will take this time. I am trying to establish some sort of dynamics between the individual and group work, which from within and from without does not function so polarised as it might seem to you. However, it is true that everything returns to projects which might be demanding organisation wise and might (through numerous co-workers) reach the social body more directly then a show or an ambience, which emerges behind the closed doors, in spaces which are isolated from the everyday noise. Already the 1985 performance of Cavis Negra in Cankarjev Dom was a mass project and the Belum contra solem also merged twenty 'independent artists' which were seen by approximately 2000 people in Nova Gorica. The transmission which I organised through 3SAT for Van Gogh TV and Documenta 92 from KUD France Prešeren, Radio Študent and Kanal A, was once more a great effort, even though it demanded only a few hours of attention from a number of participants. In this sense Hexpo represents a sort of a milestone, for not only did we carry it out during the time when the Soros Foundation started reducing its funding, at the same time also Manifesta was taking place - a festival with a completely different idea and organisational background, which surprisingly announced quite a few goals which were very similar to the ones we suggested within Hexpo. The fact that two such events, both distinctly international, could take place in this small, overburdened with itself country, at the same time, without touching each other or declaring themselves as regards the other event (and at least as much as I know nobody from the cultural elite publicly noticed this) is not a small thing. This encouraged the hope that there is greater pluralism in the international circles as one would care to desire.
And it would be possible to add more than just salt to this Slovene cultural pot. The more I will be of this opinion, the easier I will get lost outside the internal circles, in my less visible, chamber projects.

Taking into account the fact that you are aware of the dynamics in the 1980's and 90's, I am interested in your evaluation of the changes that have occurred during the past twenty years in Slovenia.

I am of the opinion that during the last twenty years living in this area was a privilege. This is an exceptional area, which found itself in transition, even before it officially started and which imploded back into its past, when the official transition started. This is a very broad theme, however, I can at least illustrate it with the familiar quotation as regards Plečnik's plans for the Slovene parliament, in comparison to which the dome above the German parliament is merely a poor copy. However, our cone will not become transparent so soon, for we are dealing with the unbearable gradient of the pyramid, claustrophobic arithmetic facts of the Slovene social environment. These are images, which influenced our generation as some sort of insane beauty at which we felt that if we throw ourselves into our own time, we can truly influence the development of global events in this space. In this sense I remember the 1980's as an exceptional period. This was a time when we tried to incarnate Hamlet in a country in which the conditions for this were never truly structured. But, even before this Slovene Hamlet really realised how this could take place a large pie fell from the sky and offered a certain solution. I think that in the 1980's certain philosophers, such as for instance Rastko Močnik and Slavoj Žižek offered very questionable strategies for this area, however, later on these strategies (when we followed the French model of the march upon the institutions) seemed plausible and even right. However, I do not know in which direction things will move now and personally I am not a great optimist. As regards our generation I can say that the march upon the institutions is at least partially executed. At the moment we have found ourselves at a point at which, at least those who have not turned into complete cynics, are trying to deal with the trauma. Trauma first appears on the intimate levels and it seems like the process, which leads up to having a greater insight into the trauma of the area, takes a bit longer. Group organisation and the logic of organisation in general is extremely split in our area. Therefore, I am not polarised because I perform megalomaniac group projects on one side and rigorous research on the other, but it is schizophrenic that people on the intimate level make their balances, yet, as soon as they find themselves in the public sphere, they self-censor themselves. We are still not at the level of that Hamlet who would publicly perform and challenge the hardly established substitute father. I think that we are currently dealing with a complete privatisation of the cultural work. This is a final break from the dreams of self-management or with the previous starting point of the 'pasture community'. However, I ask myself if culture in this area can take any other direction than that given by the communist model. Communist not in the sense of communism as a historical period, but as an original model of a Christian commune. Something such as free access to intellectual work, as an open operational system, open programming code, especially the one from the top of the cone, ideological, such as Linux for example. Instead of being capable of taking advantage from the fact that we have the main part of the cultural planning already paid for in advance, we prefer to follow our noses. Maybe such action seems possible from the personal perspective or the interests of a smaller privileged group, however seen from a broader aspect I do not believe that a truly operational market of intellectual work is possible in Slovenia. We have the advantage that we can define ourselves especially through our culture. And even though we are not always dealing with such wealth that we like to jointly try to convince ourselves, our identity is based on the fact that for us only culture remains. Let's hope that this is that moment which will in future encourage also somebody else to confrontation.