This is the first interview in my blog and it definitely isn’t the last one. Here, I am opening a series of interviews with cultural operators, artists, curators, theorists who work across Europe. Maybe you will be one of the next speakers.
Suzana Milevska is a visual culture theorist and curator. She received PhD at the Visual Culture Department at Goldsmiths College in London. She initiated project The Renaming Machine which was presented in the Case Study section. Through this conversation we talked about Macedonian and South East European contemporary art and cultural scene, project Renaming Machine but also about art in general. Hope you’ll enjoy reading.
What is the role of contemporary art and culture today in South East Europe and where do you think their potential is hidden?
I can speak only from my personal professional experience within the region, as a freelance curator and writer (since 1989) and within institutional frameworks, as a curator of the Museum of the City of Skopje (from 1997-2004) or Director of the Visual and Cultural Research Centre in Skopje (2006-2008). Exactly because of my heterogenic working experience I consider independent art and cultural projects extremely important for balancing the state and non-governmental institutions' cultural policies and practices: as a kind of imaginative critique and corrective mechanism that can enable decentralisation and democratisation of culture.
Regardless to whether the institutions are strong and long established, or weak and just starting, I see independent art and cultural activities as potential magnifying glass that can enlarge any cracks within the cultural systems aiming towards its improvement. Therefore I highly estimate the importance of young independent artists, curators and other cultural workers that act in subversive and uncorrupted way but not only through criticism.
What is the role of art institutions in cultural and artistic practices in Macedonia?
The answer to this question is manifold. The paradox of the art institutions in Macedonia is that professionally the state institutions are still underdeveloped and weak but politically they are very strong and centralised, being protected under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture. In contrast, the independent non-governmental institutions are professionally profiled in more interesting and contemporary ways but have no societal and economical support. Therefore one feels a kind of unfair competition that is going on between the government-run art and cultural venues and institutions that have enormous financial and media support for mostly right wing projects that focus on nationalistically over-written projects and the small but socially relevant alternative projects that receive support mostly from abroad. The government is still not aware of the importance of supporting the non-governmental and independent cultural projects for its own democratisation.
Where do you find the most important impulses for development of contemporary art and culture in Macedonia and wider in the Western Balkan region?
I have always been extremely suspicious in the roles of the art institutions of the Balkan states whose political organs and institutions that are still overburdened by corruption and limited accountability. Therefore the most important impulses for development of new strategies and even cultural policies come from grass-root institutions and art practitioners themselves, from self-organised small collectives and communities that use the strengthened networks as certain alternative to institutions.
How would you describe Macedonian art scene in qualitative sense, and especially in comparison with other countries of Western Balkans?
The artists in Macedonia mostly act in individual and creativity-focused way that is generously supported and promoted by the local institutions and the state via the Ministry of Culture. While one may agree that this is not necessarily negative, I want to question whether such art and art policy appropriately reflects the contemporary momentum of the troubled Macedonian society and whether this is the contemporary role of any art and artist today. In my view self-referential and aesthetically polished projects are luxury and self-indulged that neither have social relevance on the one hand, nor appropriate market on the other hand. Therefore I have difficulties to define the art scene in Macedonia as locally and internationally relevant even though from time to time there are individual projects that stand out and open up relevant societal, cultural or political questions such as gender and ethnic inequalities, unemployment, privatisation, etc.
Can art today provoke any particular change, not only in the art itself, but also broadly regarded and can it be use as a platform for questioning wider social context?
I believe that any artist, curator or art collective (but not art in itself) can be the impetus, the clinamen that can move things in better direction. I hold that we can reverse the interpellation process and, instead of police and other governmental apparatuses as in the Althusserian analysis, the art practitioners can also act as the agents of interpellation that could push any process of self-construction within society and person-hood. Having said that, I want to state that I see no difference between the activists that intervene in society more directly, by protests or concrete political or juridical actions, and the artists who have other means of reflection and action such as irony, humour, visual interventions in public or other electronic media, etc. The activists' and artists' means are indeed different but the effects often have similar relevance: hence I advocate the term «artivists».
What would be the effects of the project “The Renaming Machine”, if we talk about art as of an engine for thoughts?
The project “The Renaming Machine” started as one curatorial research experiment that focused on the particular phenomenon of renaming that has been frequently experienced in the South East Europe and the Balkans in the recent decades. Particularly important provocation was the constant international pressure on my own country to change its name as a direct result of the absurd claims of “ownership” from our Greek neighbours. Therefore the project started as a very modest concept for a book, a collection of essays but grew in a series of conferences, workshops and exhibitions dealing with the impact of the various strategies of renaming. Soon after the beginning of the project’s conceptualisation, I started collecting already existing historic works but soon the project developed in continual accumulation of the newly commissioned research art productions and theoretical reflections.
Throughout the project’s development it also turned out that the phenomenon of renaming is much more dispersed and relevant than I could have ever anticipated since it encompasses a larger array of phenomena related to it in various regions and cultural contexts. There are many fields and areas in which renaming has been used strategically, either in positive or negative way: starting with re-writing proper names, institutional titles and toponyms, overwriting gender, ethnic and cultural difference, I did trace artists working with the issue of renaming in Finland, Switzerland, Germany, South Africa, Sweden, etc.
These projects only prove that such a pattern of cultural and political activity already has been interpreted by many artists and theorists as one of the most relevant political and cultural mnemonic mechanisms in various societies. Therefore the project “The Renaming Machine” became an on-going platform for unravelling and deconstructing the cog-wheels, links, gears, and other components of the renaming apparatuses that still continues.
Tagged as:
contemporary art, independent culture, interview, macedonia, south east europe, suzana milevska, western balkan
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