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GIVE TO TAKE / Intellectual Property Agency / QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Answer by Vesna Milicevic / Visual Artist living in Belgrade, Serbia

The integral part of European identity is a classification on East and West.
The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe shows how common identity could be dramatically changed as a result of shifting of the world powers.
This struggle to find oneself in the post cold war world order has not always been so easy for some countries.
For republics of ex Yugoslavia, it has not been peaceful. From that point of view, these new made countries are rather opposition to each other than an unity.
In Serbia, my native country, people are faced with shifting of the international powers from the one side and burden of recent national history from the other.

And when we talk about the artworld, the "fall of the iron curtain" opened the possibilities to Eastern European artists to be part of the international art scene. In my opinion, these works were something new, fresh and different influenced by specific social, cultural and politic contexts.
Nowadays, thanks to Internet, the Southeastern artist cannot feel isolated any more.
His/her background could influenced the work but I do not believe that we could talk separately about new European or western European art world. The art scene is one with many artists and their various and authentic statements.

GIVE TO TAKE / Intellectual Property Agency / QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Answer by Eleonore de Montesquiou (Artist living in Paris, Berlin and Tallinn)

Do you think the concept of Eastern Europe is still appropriate within
New Europe?

yes, very much so, as long as the grandmothers are alive, they have a common language, they grew up with the same cartoons on Tv, songs, etc, but it is not the case anymore for the kids born after Perestroïka...

they are similarities in all fields

- economics
- social security
- in the countries with a strong russian population: celebrations/conflicts/citizenship issues
- they all have in common is a very difficult relationship with Russia
- crushed insutry and agriculture, strong service based economy
- creation of a (new)national identity, this a long topic, but at least the most obvious signs of creation of an image: monuments, e-economy booming, beautiful women, honey...

and so on..

In your opinion, are all the members of New Europe defined as a unity, rather than in opposition to one another (especially in relation to the artworld)?

No, not from the inside, it is a Wetsern cliché indeed to include all Eastern artists in a group, or Southern Eastern artists on the one hand/Northern Eastern, or the Baltics (which does not mean anything...) and so on - practical organisation for exhibitions

They are some links of course, Tallinn-Riga, Tallinn-Vilnius but they are based on personal connection rather than an essential unity

GIVE TO TAKE / Intellectual Property Agency / QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Question by Stefano (Visitor)

Question:
Dear Ivana, since I found the resultes amazing, I d like to know more about financing of your gallery?

Answer by Ivana Blago, curator at Miroslav Kraljevic (g.mk.hr)

Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic has a specific position within the Croatian contemporary art scene. Whereas the scene is generally polarized between the state-owned and city-owned institutions that date from the time of socialism and the much more vibrant non-institutional scene that has started developing since late 1990's,

G-MK's position is somewhere in-between, or beyond these divisions. Developed from the socialist model of workers' cultural association withing large state companies (and the utopist idea of making workers not only consumers but also active participants in producing culture, as well as a way of controling their free time), the gallery Miroslav Kraljevic started out as the exhibition venue of amateur artists / workers of INA - one of the major oil companies in ex-Yugoslavia and now Croatia. Today, INA is a prosperous company on its way to become a fully privatised corporation, and it is still one of the sponsors of the gallery, the support being also a heritage from socialost times, and not a capitalist model of corporate investments and promotion through culture. The scope of this financial support is, accordingly, merely symbolic.

Other regular sponsors of the gallery program are the usual suspects / Ministry of Culture Croatia, Office for Culture of the City of Zagreb. Individual projects are sponsored by collaborations with foreign embassies in Croatia, collaborations with international partner institutions and EU cultural foundations. Most, almost all of the funding, is targeted at programming and production.

The situation here is very similar to what many NGO organisation in culture face - the lack of institutional financial support which, in our case, results in the fact that the gallery officially employs only one staff member - the director, which sounds absurd in every way, and especially regarding to the amount and diversity of the program we are producing.

GIVE TO TAKE / Intellectual Property Agency / QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Question by Gaby Bila-Günther

Lady Gaby aka Gaby Bila-Günther was born in Romania, grew up in Australia and is now a resident of Berlin. She is writer, curator, artist and performer. ladygaby.awardspace.com

Question:
Do South Eastern European artists compete with one another? If so - Why? If not - Why not?

Answer by Simona Nastac (Free lance curator and curator at ICR, London)

Yes, they compete one with another, as all artists do - no matter their national identity. This is because art is a competitive affair. An entangled system productive of value, power and prestige within which artists have to challenge permanently the existing hierarchies, beyond any topics of national and cultural identity.