THE ISSUES AT STAKE

1. THE CHANGING ROLE OF PRIVATE, PUBLIC, STATE FUNDING IN RECENT YEARS, HOW DO PERCEIVE THIS CHANGE AND ARE MAJOR INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE STATE, BY PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS OR INTERNATIONAL BODIES?

Ruxandra Balaci: Generally speaking, our Ministry of Culture is an almost conservative institution, very unsure about contemporary art. It wishes for international visibility but has not got the experience and flexibility to promote new media, new people new trends, it is prepared to spend money on projects but then it needs to be constantly reassured about the quality, the level and the significance of what it has financed. I also work for the Romanian museum of art in which there is a small department of contemporary art which I founded some years ago. The staff is very young and we also have networks and structures to propose projects and to propose artists. However, we are not really considered part of the museum: we are tolerated, as some kind of alien structure which parasites the museum.In the near future we will be constituting a kind of nucleus for the Museum of Contemporary Art. Financial support for our activities is found by way of personal connections,from private foundations (such as Soros foundation, Pro Helvetia, Artexpo-Bucharest). International organizations are not really interested in Romanian contemporary art (as Romania is not an interesting country in the international political context) and Romanian artists are not constantly promoted in any notable measure by international art magazines or by the international art market.

Helena Demakova: In the case of Latvia the only important funds come from the state, the city or from private sponsors. In other words there are several systems that can provide money and if your work is good it will find support from one of these sources.

Sirje Helme: I must say I am rather sceptical about private sponsoring in Estonia, the priority of private sponsorship isn't art at the moment. We have two big foundations in Estonia, to which we can apply for funds since we have got a support from these foundations, but I also try to keep good contacts with the Ministry of Culture. The priority for the Ministry is to push Estonia on the International art scene ( at least it is written in their website) which means that they are supporting some international events (like the Venice Biennale, Manifesta) We have normal relationships with governmental institutions, but nothing is eternal, new elections, new parties, new people, new priorities...

Beral Madra: The Venice Biennale participation provides a good example of our situation. The Turkish participation is quite unusual, because Turkey did not officially apply to the Venice Biennale. My friend in Venice, Vittorio Urbani, director of Nuova Icona, decided to represent The Turkish Pavilion and invited me to curate an exhibition: it was more or less internal communication within the contemporary art scene. So I am here not with an official initiative and support but thanks to a mutual friendship and to completely private funding. Similarly, the 7th Istanbul Biennale, which will take place in September-October 2001, is mainly privately sponsored. This and many other initiatives are evidence that in Turkey contemporary art can only depend on private funding. The state maintains three museums of local modern art, but whatever happens in contemporary art, happens in the private sphere. Artists have to face fact that they have to be friendly, co-operative and communicative with the Turkish private sector and so do curators. On the other hand, we could argue whether we can trust the sponsor's money or the state money because in both cases, when they give money, they also want to manipulate, to control or to shape the art in order to project a certain image. That is why the curator has to keep a firm position towards both private and public sponsors. When he intends to represent the artists' interest and to guarantee their freedom, he has to stand against the pressure of state ideologies and capitalist interests.

2. DO YOU FEEL THE UNIFORMATION OF SPECIFIC AUDIENCE OF CONTEMPORARY ART COULD LEAD TO THE LOSS OF THE SPECIFIC CULTURAL PECULIARITIES PUTTING THE CULTURAL IDENTITY OF SMALL GROUPS, OR OF SPECIAL AUDIENCES AT RISK?
IS THE PRESERVATION OF THIS NATIONAL IDENTITY IMPORTANT AND HOW DOES IT OPERATE IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE INCRESING INTERNATIONALISATION OF CULTURAL CONTENTS?

Ruxandra Balaci: I think the mutations occurred in the contemporary art field are very difficult to define even for art theorists. We are now entering the 21st century and like many other fields such as cybernetics or genetics, also art is becoming more and more complex. All audiences are now specialised audiences, generation audiences. I think one can only try to operate within one's own system of reference. On the other hand, I believe the issue between globalisation and cultural identity has become almost a pattern, a common place and yet I don't think one excludes drastically the other, I believe they still coexist. We can only witness changes...

Helena Demakova: At the beginning of the ’90 it was very strange that people in the west always wanted to look for something specifically ethnical in our region, I remember that in Oslo they were saying “you have such an international art, where is the local stuff”. It is as though I came to Italy and said where is your national art, why are you so international. I would like to remind you that is it a matter of the artist’s choice if he/she wants to use a local language or use an international language and insert local, regional references. Art should not have the task of preserving cultural identity, this is the task of politicians, of cultural policies not of the artists. This ties back to the question of audiences, because there is no such thing as a universal audience: the question of uniformation is not really true, as long as there are artists that are not satisfied with following a single road that means that there is an audience that does not want to conform. For example in Riga, but this is not peculiar to Riga and appens in many other capitals, very exciting pieces are created in clubs it’s the VJ culture which mixes sounds and they can be truly marvellous pieces. There are plenty of this kind sub-cultures that produce very interesting things. Some I cannot be part of, they are not for me, but they exist and thrive with other kinds of audiences.

Sijrie Helme: The world is more open for us, we are travelling a lot and can see the international art world functioning around. Estonian art has a long tradition of "invasions by aliens", so the cross-breeding of art is well known. At the same time the "local" has been always a part of our best artworks, our feeling of space, lonelynes or sense of colour and light is different from that of, for example, more southern countries. When the artists loose their roots they can loose originality and become part of a good level, but often very boring, international art world.

Beral Madra: I don’t think the question of preservation of cultural identity can be an obligation for the artist to present the identity of a nation. When the "nation state" needs a new definition, to present the identity of a nation might be quite paradoxical. However, this is what the so called modern nation and their cultural policies demanded and in most cases still demand. This can be a topic of research for a curator and I can give the example of an exhibition I organised which was entitled “Mediterranean Metaphors” in which I looked to Mediterranean cities because I believe the identity of the cities is now more significant than the identity of the nation. So for instance El Cairo, Jerusalem, Beirut and maybe smaller middle-eastern cities have more interesting identities than the countries themselves. One should give the audience the opportunity to recognize the identities of these cites through the eyes of the artist or through the production of the artist. The notion of cultural identity can therefore be the theme of an exhibition but cultural policy should not intrude into the artists’ creativity. National cultural policies must be carried out in a way that they support the arts to produce something wider than a nation.

3. HOW DO YOU JUDGE THE ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION IN SUPPORTING AND FUNDING CO-OPERATION IN THE FIELD OF CULTURE AND ART WITH THE COUNTRIES OF EASTERN EUROPE?

Ruxandra Balaci: Regarding the relationship of Romania with the EU funds for culture, last year we were awarded premier financial support by the EU, in the framework of a programme called Euro Art for cultural projects. The EU worked with the Romanian Ministry of Culture, which is usually rather rigid and highly bureaucraticised, but they used advisers and experts from outside the system so the projects were really sccessfull. For us it was an opportunity last year and this year to promote culture because the budget of the Ministry of Culture is under regime of austerity and so this program helped a lot (even if I have to admit there was a strong discrimination between the amount paid to Romanian experts were paid!). Considering that the Romanian government faces a lot of difficulties in terms of integration and for the pre-accession stage to enter the EU, I don’t know why it doesn’t play the card of culture in integration. In the cultural filed we have a lot of very interesting things to propose, more interesting I think than in other fields and certainly more interesting than the "other Europeans" would expect.

Sijrie Helme: Estonia is working hard to be in the first 5 countries to enter the EU. This is the priority of our foreign policy. It also means many cooperative projects in many fields. At the same time I have never met any question about art or art institutions, standarts, demands etc. Europe is Europe because of our common understanding of culture, but I can't find it in EU documents. In our cultural situation one of the major problems is that we don't have contemporary art museums operating according to European standards. We have a big discussion about building a new art museum, and it is a hard task to explain to the authorities why an art museum is a necessary part of the normal cultural life of a country. The common understanding about contemporary art is not of very good level and I don't believe that the EU's support will help to change it. The EU projects mostly support large initiatives with participants from various countries and bureaucracy takes much time. I rather prefer smaller, flexible variants, as the ECF program APWXchanges which unfortunately is about to close.

Beral Madra: I can’t talk about Turkey’s position in EU funding, because as far as I know, the only support is for social projects, rather than for art. However, I am interested in what happens in Europe concerning the new transformation in the art systems of the former Soviet and Balkan countries. I think that the EU makes every effort to fulfil its function of preserving cultural diversity, but at the same time providing an equality in the systems of communication and exchange. However, there is a big problem in this function. As far as I can see, EU elements for re-forming the art systems have totally different aims and contents that the mainstream art and culture systems. For instance the mainstream international art system has very strong links and collaborations with the international private enterprise. It is a network of artists, galleries, media, curators, collectors, private and official institutions. And therefore it is an impenetrable entity that has its own rules and concepts and does not like to be manipulated by any other power. It has its own power and all the actors of the system enjoy this power. The other system includes official institutions, museums, universities and state/nation political policies. The interests of this system are founded in nation/state ideologies. That is another entity one cannot penetrate into. Another issue are the dynamics of art itself. The artists are independent, free and, they want to do whatever they want to do. This is a kind of nonalignment position and certainly creates another impenetrable entity. So I look at the picture and see that the EU co-operation programs have to deal with these three entities and find a way of a creating a dialogue among all these different strongholds. And this indeed looks very difficult. On the other hand, we should not forget that within this threefold system there are also very different levels of development in art scenes: there are under-developed, still developing and fully developed art scenes. The question is how are these differences going to be.