Alenka Pirman
A conversation with Nevenka Šivavec
Study
I enrolled into the
history of art studies without having a specially expressed passion for
visual arts. However, as I chose comparative literature for my major studies
I thought that this is an appropriate combination. The comparative literature
department was by far better and it suited me to the bone. It taught how
to think and deconstruct universal truths. Mainly it taught various methods.
The history of art department concentrated on learning various facts by
heart and I have a feeling that I have not learnt a single thing. I am
certain that I could have learnt most of it without attending the university,
just from books, learn it by heart.
At a certain period during my studies I also worked in the ŠKUC gallery,
mainly behind the bar, but I did also help set up exhibitions. I am certain
that ŠKUC was a much better school for me than the history of art department.
At that time we were carrying out a program prepared by Marina Gržinić;
this was the heroic period of Neue Slowenische Kunst, the punk movement,
Radio Študent, the underground scene.
My non-reflective, intuitive aversion to any true or imaginary authorities
found a theoretical and practical base in alternative culture. My bourgeois
schoolmates from comparative literature never came to ŠKUC 'because it
stinked there'. However, I (who came from a worker's family), found this
environment extremely suitable. I arrived somewhere during the New Collectivism
exhibition and the poster scandal, one could say that was in the height
of the events. At the age of 21, everything goes through you very intensively
and the subversive anti-institution pose that was the norm in ŠKUC swept
me off my feet. In many ways it also formed my 'curatorial' posture, which
soon found itself in front of its first serious trial.
Working
I returned to Celje, because there was a chance of a job there. It was
a job that was at the time most unsuitable for me, but there was no way
I dared to reject it. In the commercial gallery Izba I was selling things
that were at the time exhibited in galleries (exactly what every honest
member of an alternative movement strives to oppose) - works that are
in the taste of the bourgeois middle class, in appropriate room formats,
nice frames (it was the period of a framing revolution, for there were
all these new materials available). This was the worst period in my life:
because of a cushy job I gave up all of my principles. I think that the
potential customers felt my aversion to what I was selling, for I was
a relatively unsuccessful trader with works of art. Every time that somebody
entered and asked for Dora Plestenjak or France Slana I went to the toilet,
bashed my head against the wall and sobbed: Is this what we fought for?
Of course I am currently speaking only in a figure of speech, but the
discordance between alternative culture and the cute commercial gallery
was at that moment truly painful. Fortunately, my superior soon saw through
me and realised that she has chosen a totally wrong woman for the job,
a woman who could be more successful elsewhere, in a job with more creative
input. Thus, I gradually started to help at setting up exhibitions in
the Likovni Salon gallery. Luckily, I also become pregnant at that time
and this only fastened the process.
Salon
At that time all Slovene galleries exhibited unproblematic modernist and
postmodernist art. The Celje Likovni Salon was a respectable gallery with
a respectable program. As any enthusiastic beginner I started to introduce
certain changes into the program, introduce artists who were from my generation
or younger. At the time I was mainly disturbed by the fact that there
was no real contact with the local art community and public. I do not
know whether anything changed for the latter. The public for contemporary
art is always a big problem. You gain it by starting to work extensively
in the field of advertising and PR and increasing your work on spectacles.
The most common recipe for an increase in the public within a small town
is to offer elitism in the bourgeois sense. This means that you exhibit
already tried out things that carry no risk, spice everything up with
a little glamour and invite respectable speakers. People come if they
know that it is worthwhile to put on a exclusive dress, if they will be
noticed.
At the beginning of my curatorial practice I tried to find the recipe
for a large audience. Thus, the first exhibition that I prepared was Modo,
modo (Fashion, Fashion). It presented creators on the boarder between
useful and decorative art with an explicit intention: to attract as many
people as possible. I invited Alan Hranitelj, Ema Kugler and Lidija Bernik.
For that period it was a great achievement that the exhibition travelled
from the gallery also to other places in town - into the Špital Chapel
and the Lapidarium of the Regional Museum. There was a lot of visitors
and they all seemed satisfied. However, I found myself in doubts. The
recipe for a large crowd is simple, but this is a great trap. It is easy
to fall into the most banal populism. And again the bashing against the
wall commences: have we really fought for this?
Holism
As a curator I met various types of artists. However, once I met Borut
Hlupič in Celje, 80% of the artists who have graduated, have international
careers, who confirm that they are artists, seemed uninteresting. Hlupič
fascinated me with his total dedication. I saw that he is not a complete
lunatic - that he has not got a compulsive symptom, but that he is well
aware of what he is up to. Whatever he does, whether this is drawing,
painting, politically agitating - it seems to make sense, he chooses the
right form to place the message across. This is when I could clearly see
the problem of my position, i.e. being trapped in this bourgeois institution
of art (academy, museum, media, market), which produced the exclusive
definitions of art and artists that we have to believe in. It was because
of Borut Hlupič that I started to think about the so-called outsiders,
especially about the problem of their inclusion into the system, without
going into the cultural policy of the different, in a sense to the position
of 'ideological patronisation' that we were warned about by Walter Benjamin.
I was helped to solve this dilemma by an artist from Celje - Marjan Krošl,
who persistently keeps to his mission of being a medium and guide and
relentlessly tells everybody as regards his convictions. I was most influenced
by his theory of the transfer from the formal to the complex perception.
This is an expanded perception, a perception that does not see the world
only in a materialistic (formal) sense, but also in a complex sense (materialistic-energetic-spiritual).
And if, as Marjan Krošl states, the modern method was based on revolutions
(repeated demolition and reconstruction) this can now no longer be true.
Those who build their position and progress on this basis, can not come
much further than the edge of their ego. That is why Marjan persistently
spreads the idea of provolution, i.e. inclusion instead of exclusion.
All of the theories dealing with the end of art or the changes in its
position have also contributed to the relief. In fact we have found ourselves
in a period, when art has already left the galleries and museums and exchanged
them for other places.
Collective
I am finding myself ever closer to the idea of working in a collective.
New relations that are emerging within the frame of network operation
are one of the most exciting new things generated by the Internet.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about the fact that curatorial work
should be collective. I do not feel competent enough to perform all the
tasks a curator should by myself. I think that excellent ideas can emerge
within a team of people, who know each other, who know the position of
each other. It is interesting that there are no new collectives in Slovenia
that would emerge with a declaration, a manifest. I could say that, throughout
the years, we have managed to create a sort of collective in Celje. This
is a group of people, artists and people who follow them or merely sympathise
with them and this group has gradually transformed the local art scene.
We managed to generate a stimulative environment in which a broad spectre
of creative work is taking place, i.e. the start of community art, the
artists-in-residence program, etc.
At this moment it would thus be necessary for me to back off, for I have
been in one place for too long. Or at least in accordance to the democratic
principles of collective operation to reassign tasks with a consensus.
However, this is almost impossible. Permanent employment in an art establishment
- this is in any case a schizophrenic position, especially in Slovenia,
for you have nowhere to go. If you have such a function you have to stick
to it. You can not be a part of the alternative movement and at the same
time a curator in a state job. You can not keep bringing down the system
that you keep building during the eight hours of work in your spare time.
Or can you?
Professional
I am very doubtful as regards this celebrated professionalism, i.e. to
be professional at any cost. The course for curators educates curators
- professionals. I think that this is not the best option, even though
I immediately grabbed the opportunity to become a tutor to the future
professionals and collect my fee. We teach young curators that they should
not make mistakes, that everything has to run according to the plan, that
all things have to have a good concept, that you have to start with the
exhibition with time to spare - the best is to start two years in advance,
etc. All of this is alright, but I think, that professionalism can influence
the curator in a negative way, especially if the curator is setting up
an exhibition of contemporary production in close relationship with the
artist - a contemporary, with whom the curator shared time and space.
Mistakes, disagreements, conflicts - anything is better then the polite,
predictable, airtight projects. Not everything that shines is golden.
Education according to the western principles... I do not know where we
got this idea, but one thing is certain - we did not get it from Russia.
When I started working in this profession I was terrified of professionalism,
perfection seemed to be unbearable. A sort of training. If you are 100%
professional, you are 100% trapped into the mechanisms of the system.
Even today I endeavour for our projects to remain open, imperfect, unfinished,
to contain a crack from which they can re-establish themselves or brake
along them and fail.
Holy
I am still attracted to things that have a subversive charge within them.
Apart from the idea of a collective I am also very intrigued by the following
issue: in Slovenia art and its educational system (the faculty and academy)
are explicitly secularised. Until recently I have never really came in
touch with an artist, who would be religious or would dare to state this
aloud. This remains a taboo in the circles surrounding contemporary art.
You are immediately labelled as somebody who belongs to the new-age movement
or they start whispering behind your back that you are pathetic and a
church mouse. At a certain stage I was shocked by the realisation that
I am keeping company strictly to atheists, nihilists or cynics. This is
suspicious. This cannot be right. For a long time it seemed to be normal,
now it does not seem so anymore. As years go by you realise that art should
also discuss the more important things. I became interested in religious
artists, who do not create kitsch secular images, but express the transcendence
with the language and form of the 21st Century. I am interested whether
it is possible to talk about this in the language of contemporary art
(not material - as for instance in sublime painting) or with the new media.
Is it at all possible that these new media are not linked to the holy,
could they exclude it?
The level of secularisation and cynicism in our society is clearly seen
in the fact that the Celje project, which should supposedly be questioning
the possible synergy of art and religion in the language of the 21st Century
was rejected by the Ministry of Culture, with the reasoning that the starting
point is unproductive already in its base.
Ervin Potočnik is an artist who made me think about this in great detail.
He is known by very few, for he does not have his deserved place in Slovene
contemporary art, well, actually he sometimes exhibits with the over-modern
artists - a group of artists that operate in frame of the Muzej premoderne
umetnosti (The Museum of Over-modern Art).
In his MA thesis he mentions the problem of the reactions to his work:
mainly this is a categorical rejection of the religious contents and forms.
In this negative pose it can easily be overlooked that it is possible
for the artist to be religious. The other rejection that he meets is that
he is said to blemish holy matters. Ervin is thus religious and an iconoclast
at the same time. This is an extremely strange and difficult position
that he has found himself in. The Brajnović family from somewhere close
to Rovinj, Croatia, operates in similar conditions. They are all Jehovah's
witnesses (they have actually declared that they have stepped out of the
institution) and they are all artists. The sons Tomislav and Petar are
contemporary artists who work with video and sound. The father Marčelo
Brajnović is politically engaged and anarchistically keeps declaring the
'God's kingdom' at Croatian political and religious meetings. He does
this through posters and pamphlets. I have a great interest in such things.
In order for one to reach this position one has to pose the following
questions - what is art, who am I, what and for whom should we exhibit
here? When you truly pose such key questions everything turns upside down,
but at the same time it leaves you with a great feeling of freedom.
September 2004.
Further reading (texts by Nevenka Šivavec):
"Elitism on the
boarders", The Town of Celje, Alternatives of the seventies, exh.
cat., Likovni salon Celje, 1999.
"If we write... ", Men, exh. cat., Zavod za kulturne prireditve
Celje, 2001.
The Town of Celje - Phantasms of the eighties, exh. cat., Likovni salon
Celje, 2002.