shortcut talks to tina smrekar, visual artist and fulltime snorkeler in the fabulous worlds of art, film and music.

You're doing a worldwide project on visual artists' living conditions - how did you get started on this topic?

It was the situation I found myself in after finishing my studies as an artist and wanting to continue working in this field. The fact that artists have to struggle to be able to survive AND produce art is known, a cliché even, but I had the feeling that although practically all of us face this dilemma at least at the beginning of our careers, there is not much discourse whether in the art community and even less in the general public.
Much of our identity nowadays is channeled through work and my question here is how are we supposed to be liable and have credit as artists and how are we to produce art if a lot of our time and energy goes to working odd jobs, often working several jobs at a time.

It also seemed to me we always only know the local situation in a city or a country (which we then take for self-evident) so I then decided to start a survey and interview project with artists living in different parts of the world.

What are some of the most surprising findings so far?

The mosts surprising aspect to me so far is the difference how artists in Europe naturally demand social security for their status whereas in some other parts, especially in the US this is a question without relevance; social security is so expensive that very few can afford it.
It seems that artists in Europe see the possibility of having a voice in the social order, in Austria artists and artist organizations have started a substantial action this spring, when it turned out that the Austrian government wanted money back (the part they paid for the social security of artists) if the artists did not earn enough money, which of course is absurd.

But also in Europe the awareness could be higher. In this system being an artist is a very individualized profession since the persona of the artist has become more and more important if s/he wants to be successful. However there are some very interesting phenomena for example in Brasil, where in the last years there are more and more groups of artists emerging, among other topics also engaging in urbanity (esqueleto, eia, integracaosemposse).


What is your goal for this project, what do you want to achieve?

Firstly my goal is to encourage the awareness for this topic. Countries use culture to present themselves abroad but how much they support individual artists is a completely different story. Historically this can be argumented with tourism – whole cities live of a work of an artist, most prominent examples being Mozart in Austria or Bach in Leipzig. If a city or a country invests in artists today, they will have something to represent themselves with and attract tourists.

Another aim of this project is to identify the particularity of each context from where specific projects are developed for each city. In Ljubljana for example there are practically no commercial galleries which would deal also in installation or conceptual art, but also for the artists themselves it is still pretty much a taboo to sell the works, in the sense of selling yourself out. All this is in part is a consequence of the socialist system but I think it is important to recognize this as an option of earning your living and distributing your works as an artist. So a project we are trying to prepare now in
Ljubljana is an intensive workshop for want-to-be galerists, to maybe bring some young art enthusiasts to the idea of founding an art gallery.


You are from Ljubljana, Slovenia. It's still a relatively little known place in Western Europe. What is the city like - how was it affected by the war in the former Yugoslavia?

Slovenia and its capital Ljubljana, which has about 350.000 inhabitants, have been little affected directly from the war. We only had a 10-day war in 1991, the consequences are more indirect, a lot of refugees came from Bosnia, there are still people whose status is not solved which is a disgrace. And although the cultural and economical ties have been cut of for a while, there have been efforts to connect these areas. A superb example of this is Cross Radio (crossradio.org), which is linking radio stations in different cities across ex-Yugoslavian territories. Each station makes a short program of cultural events and music in the city and this collection is then broadcasted on all radio stations.

Any interesting upcoming festivals in Europe that you can recommend to readers?

There are so many I almost don't know where to start, but there are three I really cherish because they all combine the love for what they are presenting with good atmosphere and the possibility of communicating with the authors.

In the end of May the third Isola Cinema Festival is taking place, a festival of African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European cinematography. It is hosted in a picturesque ancient town center of Izola on the Slovenian coast. The small city center and a part of the beach emerges as a true cinema island with a wonderful intimate atmosphere of
friends of cinema where invited directors are present during the whole festival.

If you want to experience the craziness of the white nights in Lapland and are a film fan, then your place to go would be the Midnight Sun Film Festival in mid June. The festival was founded in 1986 by Kaurismäki brothers and takes place in the small village of Sodankylä, some 120 km above the arctic circle in the north of Finland where the sun does not set in summer and there is not much else to do but watch good movies or take a sauna or drink on the rivershore…

My personal favourite is the City Of Women Festival, which takes place every October in Ljubljana. It is unique in the sense that it really in its heart works trans-disciplinary with a rather experimental profile and connects artists and intellectuals in the annual theme it introduces every year. It takes place on different locations in the city and it is very
enriching to experience the mixing of different audiences, from those in an official national cultural center to those of an underground club, in one festival.

An interesting one is also the international animation film festival Animateka, which takes place in Kinodvor, Ljubljana's only art cinema, in December. They concentrate on East and Central Europe animations in competition program, and this makes Animateka exceptional among other festivals of this kind in Europe.