On contemporary art in the Balkans: An interview with <PERSON> · Global Voices
<PERSON>, Territory, Plostad Makedonija, Skopje, 2009. Copyright the artist.
<PERSON> is a curator of contemporary art, writer and lecturer at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. He divides his time between Scotland and the Balkans, researching contemporary art in the ex-Yugoslav space, in particular in Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. His book Critical Art in Contemporary Macedonia (2016) is the first in-depth study of the contemporary alternative art scene in Macedonia in English.
In his interview with Global Voices, <PERSON> explains his quest as an art researcher and his efforts to connect the different parts of Europe by challenging stereotypes about the Balkan region:
<PERSON> (FS): How does the “Western” art world perceive the ex-Yugoslav or the wider Balkan art world?
<PERSON>. Courtesy photo.
<PERSON> (JB): It’s hard to give a definitive answer to this one. I don’t really think the old binaries of “West” and “East” are helpful anymore, for as the Cold War period recedes into history these binaries mean less and less. Probably a more useful distinction is “the EU” and “the Rest of Europe”.
There are small, very dedicated groups of scholars from Scotland, England, France, Germany, Austria and North America who are very active in the ex-Yugoslav region in the field of visual culture. Beyond that, I am afraid there is still a lot of misunderstanding and ignorance generally.
In terms of the art world, interest has grown a little in the last few years. 739
I started working intensively on the art history of Yugoslavia, and the post-Yugoslav contemporary art worlds around 2006 simply because I had been challenged by what I had seen, and equally baffled by the almost complete lack of English language material on it. This has begun to shift decisively in the last decade.
For example, in the last two to three years, the Tate has established a Russia and Eastern Europe Acquisitions Committee and is beginning to show names like <PERSON> from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and <PERSON> from Croatia, regularly in its permanent displays. MOMA’s extraordinary contemporary show of Yugoslav architecture also shows they are now really paying attention to the region. There are other players like calvert22 in London, and Nottingham Contemporary in the East Midlands, that also continue the long-standing, but rather sporadic UK interest in Yugoslav art which started in the early twentieth century with the work of <PERSON>.
FS: What challenges do you face as a researcher who is not actually based in the Balkans, and needs the information in English?
<PERSON>: English language sites like Global Voices, Meta.mk, and Balkanist, as well as independent journalists like <PERSON> on Twitter, are critical to researchers like me in the Balkan region. Only a few international newspapers offered serious coverage of the political and diplomatic personalities involved in the protests and political upheavals in Macedonia from 2015 to 2017.
Only in times of extreme crisis, such as the Kosova situation from 1999-2001, are Macedonian affairs covered seriously. I am also convinced that the journalistic coverage in our newspapers was because of increased diplomatic involvement from the US/EU in resolving the political deadlock of 2016 to 2017 and in the focus on the terrible conditions facing many migrant people as they passed through Macedonia, rather than a serious interest in internal Macedonian affairs.
<PERSON>: What are the main findings of your research in the ex-Yugoslav space?
<PERSON>: I suppose the big surprise for me when I first started working in the region was how much Yugoslavia still existed culturally at some levels, even if it was long finished politically and legally. Back in the 2000s, there was still some sense of a Yugoslav cultural space: People in Skopje were interested in novels published in Ljubljana and artists in Split and Dubrovnik were interested in hearing about what was going on in Novi Sad. In 2018, I’m afraid that this is no longer so much the case.
In Macedonia, as you know, the system for cultural funding and the cultural infrastructure is largely unchanged from Yugoslav times — just it subsists on about one-fiftieth of the money that it did before 1991. In the parts of ex-Yugoslavia still outside the EU, I have the sense that institutions, although they exist, have (with a few exceptions) ceased long ago to fulfill the functions they were established for.
The result is that artists have had to establish their own cultural infrastructures and ecosystems in response to the failure of these institutions and try to make work in that way. 739