Helena Drnovšek-Zorko has been appointed the Slovenian Ambassador to Japan in 2010. Until then she was the Head of the Division of International Cultural Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. Before that, she served as Chargé d’Affaires in Canberra, Australia, and in 2002 she was nominated a first residential Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia in Ireland. In 2006, she was appointed as the Asia-Europe Foundation Governor for Slovenia. Helena’s field of expertise is intercultural dialogue and international cultural cooperation within the EU and national external relations. In recent years, she has also been engaged in promoting the intercultural dialogue between art and science at national and European level.

• Do you agree with the widely used expression that culture is the fourth pillar of sustainability” (alongside social, environmental and economic issues)?

Culture should be the fourth pillar of sustainability. Within culture there are contemporary art practices dealing with the cohabitation of techno-world and nature, like art and biology, art and biotechnology, art and artificial life etc. They all contribute in one way or another to our ecological consciousness. Climate change is just one area of it.

• What do artists and arts communities in Slovenia and in the region do in order to translate global issues (including climate change) into artistic visions? Can you give an example?

Among others, I would like to mention three main institutionalised art practices in Slovenia that are dealing specifically with climate change:

• Bunker is a non-profit organisation with a background in theatre that runs an annual festival. Raising awareness of climate change issues among the local community represents a substantial part of their programme.
• Zavod Projekt Atol with Marko Peljhan has been involved in issues dealing with climate change over the last 12 years. The project also deals with other global issues like communications, migration and strategic resources planning.
• The Cosinus project, run by Kapelica Gallery from Ljubljana, motivates and showcases artists dealing with biotechnology, medicine, recycling materials and technologies, nature etc. It has been established on the initiative of the EU Commissioner for Science and Research and the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It has been in existence for the past three years, showing artistic projects dealing with above-mentioned topics in the Barleymont Building in Brussels and beyond.

• How do artists and arts organisations convey the message on climate change to citizens and communities? What feedback do they receive?

Artistic practices are always immersive, participatory and interactive. They demystify and co-modify the knowledge gained by scientific research. In many cases, the feedback is fairly good, but it also shows the necessity to continue in a more complex manner than just providing a space. In product design, for example, designers encounter the problem that there are only two major glass factories left in the EU that allow product designers to use glass as a 100% recyclable material. The knowledge (the know-how) in these areas is slowly dying, because there is no awareness at a political and economic level (and thus also financial) to support the “traditional” sustainable knowledge and practices (connected with traditions, cultural heritage, customs, etc.).

• How can we educate young people to understand the importance of climate change through artistic projects?

If educational institutions included contemporary art practices in their curricula, a lot more awareness would be gained than through the traditional subjects that currently exist, such as: history of arts, history of music, etc. The support of effective community projects dealing with climate change is far from sufficient. The well elaborated and presented complex artistic/scientific projects should challenge this traditional humanistic knowledge in the primary and secondary educational system, as well as at the university level.

• Does the policy framework in your country support issues related to climate change (for example, is there government support at a regional or local level)?

This area of art and culture productions is mostly left to occasional personal initiatives, rather than taking a systematic approach.

• Are you currently working on an international initiative related to arts/culture and climate change?

At the moment, I’m involved in enabling the Cosinus 2 initiative, which deals especially with ecology and climate change at the European level. This initiative promotes and presents artists, projects and institutions and addresses the problems of ecology, climate change and critical development to a high-level political audience. I am also deeply involved in the Arctic Perspective initiative (API), which deals with the social, environmental, cultural and political complexity of the area, working closely with the indigenous communities and their leaders in Canada and Norway.

• What is your opinion about the use of online spaces (social networks, community of users, online forums, blogs, etc.) for the promotion of issues around arts/culture and climate change?

We found online activities too hermetical, addressing those already interested, while addressing a wider audience still remains unsolved. However, the online databases have great archival importance.