Suzana Milevska / Kontinuirano repozicioniranje
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Maja Ćirić: Uočila sam da ste jedna od dve profesorke sa post- jugoslovenskog prostora koje su zaposlene na Akademiji likovnih umetnosti u Beču (druga je Marina Gržinić), a to mi izgleda kao pokušaj mekog pristupa regionu. Da li mislite da rod ima bilo kakve veze sa tim?
Suzana Milevska: Ovo je veoma relevantna tačka, Majo, posebno uzimajući u obzir jedinstvenu činjenicu da žene dominiraju nastavnim i administrativnim osobljem na Akademiji likovnih umetnosti u Beču. Počevši sa rektorkom Evom Blimlinger i dve prorektorke koji su takođe žene, to je jedna od retkih umetničkih institucija koja promoviše rodnu ravnopravnost na različite načine, ne samo preko kvota već i kroz nastavne planove i programe. Ipak, pretpostavljam da nije bio samo rod od ključnog značaja za ovakav izbor. Pretpostavljam da Akademija likovnih umetnosti takođe pokušava da prevaziđe rodne praznine u zapošljavanju i da obuhvati izvesnu kulturnu raznolikost akademske strukture.
Ranije sam imala mnogo problematičnih susreta sa menadžerima orijentisanim na moć, a često se to završavalo sa otkazom ili sa mojom ostavkom, tako da je ova nova pozicija za mene važna promena i izazov.
MĆ: Srela sam Igora Zabela po otvaranju jedne izložbe u Moskvi 2004. Možda je samo moj utisak, ali je on tada delovao skromno i gledao na svet umetnosti oko njega iz samog polja, teorije, “istine” ako hoćete. Njegovo pisanje o odnosu između Istoka i Zapada je veoma važno. Vi ste dobitnica Igor Zabel nagrade za kustosa u 2012. Da li ste ga lično poznavali? Kako vidite njegovu zaostavštinu i kako se osećate u vezi tog priznanja koje podržava Erste Stiftung?
SM: Četiri godine pre nego što sam dobila nagradu napisala sam tekst “Curating as an Agency of Cultural and Geopolitical Change” koji je objavljen u zborniku Continuing Dialogues, a koji su priredili Christa Benzer, Christine Bohler, Christiane Erkharter (Beč : JRP/Ringier, 2008, 183-191). U tekstu sam opisala svoj prvi susret sa Igorom Zabelom i pokušala sam da prenesem vrlo slične utiske o njegovoj ličnosti i o njegovoj podeljenoj poziciji prema svetu umetnosti. Takođe sam se osvrnula na njegovo interesovanje ka potencijalnom dijalogu između Istoka i Zapada – iako je bio veoma skeptičan o budućnosti takvog dijaloga, npr. kada je pisao o poznatom skandalu oko švedsko – ruskog zajedničkog projekta Interpol (1996. čiji su kustosi bilI Viktor Misiano i Ian Äman). On je ipak bio duboko upleten u mnoge inicijative i projekte koje su pokrenule profesionalni kustoski interes za razvoj takvog dijaloga, uključujući i njegov položaj direktora prve Manifesta koja se dogodila na istoku (2000), pre nego što je Slovenija ušla u EU i njegove izložbe Individual Systems na Venecijanskom bijenalu (2003).
Moram da priznam da sam u karijeri takođe vrlo često suočena sa mnogim protivrečnostima koje se kreću od kritike i neverice ili ozlojeđenosti do optimističnih pokušaja da se promeni status quo. Ja sam prošla kroz čudne obrte tokom 25 godina karijere, počevši od potpuno marginalne i nezavisne pozicije koje su mi dozvolile vrlo radikalnu kritičku poziciju pa do rada pri najprestižnijim institucijama poput Akademije likovnih umetnosti u Beču ili dobijanja nagrade za umetnost i kulturu koja nosi ime Igor Zabel. To mi je zapravo omogućilo da postanem politički i profesionalno nezavisna u svom lokalnom kulturnom kontekstu u Makedoniji i da budem u stanju da održim neku vrstu kritičke distance od inače veoma zavodljive pozicije moći u “svetu umetnosti” koja odlikuje kustosku profesiju, a to je vrsta hegemonističke moći sa kojom se nikada nisam osećala prijatno. Po istom principu želim da naglasim da je to bilo nemoguće bez konstantnog repozicioniranja u profesionalnim i ličnim uslovima, jer sa nedavnim promenama u mojoj karijeri jednostavno nisam mogla tvrditi istu poziciju autsajdera kao i pre. Međutim, ja pokušavam da se borim protiv ironičnog i ciničnog stava koji prihvata začarani krug (na koji često ukazuju projekti koji se bave institucionalnom kritikom) i ne dozvoljava bilo kakvu nadu za potencijale umetnosti da samu sebe promeni ili svet generalno, te pretpostavljam da je ovo delimično u skladu sa nasleđem profesionalnog credo-a Igora Zabela.
MĆ : Vi ste jedna od retkih, ako ne i jedina, kustoskinja iz regiona koja ima doktorat iz Curatorial Knowledge od strane Goldsmiths College u Londonu. Kako su režimi znanja stečeni na Goldsmiths i srodne mreže promenili vaš pogled na svet umetnosti i vašu praksu?
SM: Zapravo moj doktorat nije bio iz Curatorial Knowledge, iako sam predavala ovaj kurs (2002-03 i 2003-04, zajedno sa Žan-Polom Martinon) koji je postojao pre nego što je uspostavljen doktorski program sa istom temom. U vreme kada sam upisala Goldsmiths College jedini kustoski program bio je na odeljenju likovnih umetnosti i već sam imala moju kustosku karijeru pa nisam bila zavedena ovim programom (u to vreme to je bila samo na nivou MA). Upisala sam teorijski i istraživački program Visual Cultures sa prof. Irit Rogoff koji je na raznoliko uticao na kombinaciju različitih znanja koja sam stekla još pre odlaska na Goldsmiths (npr. dok sam radila MA u Pragu na Centralno-evropskom univerzitetu o istoriji i filozofiji umetnosti i arhitekture) sa različitim novostečenim istraživačkim metodologijama i teorijskim diskursima. Uglavnom je više bilo reči o razumevanju načina na koji se nešto saznaje i kako se znanje proizvodi i distribuira oko sebe nego o učenju (hijerarhija, hegemonije, snage režima, znate, sve stvari koje je su kritikovane i proizvedene u skladu Goldsmiths formule “criticality/kritičnost”). Ipak još uvek smatram mreže za Goldsmiths korisnim: na primer, nedavno sam objavila tekst u zborniku The Curatorial-A Philosophy of Curating. Jean -Paul Martinon i Irit Rogoff, London: Academic Bloomsbury, 2013, 65-73 i čak ovde u Beču sarađujem sa nekim kolegama koje znam sa Goldsmiths-a kao što su Peter Mörtenböck i Helge Mooshammer.
MĆ: S obzirom da ste stacionirani u Beču, sa simboličkom vrednošću koju oličavate, kako posmatrate regionalni svet umetnosti danas? Kako gledate na odnos manjih zemalja i na hegemoniju sveta umetnosti?
SM: Ovo je veoma teško pitanje i ja se bojim da pozicioniram sebe u nekoj vrsti proročke uloge. Uvek sam osećala neku vid saosećanja za intelektualaca koji mora da se suoči sa pritiskom da odgovori na bilo koje pitanje (teško je da kada se od vas očekuje da isporučite smisleno i kompetentno mišljenje odmah čim se nešto dogodi!). Vidim tačno pitanje asimetrije i nejednake distribucije umetničkih scena između različitih geopolitičkih regiona, kao jedno od najosetljivijih pitanja koja mi istovremeno smetaju, ali i ja se često osećam frustrirano zbog ograničenja svakog pojedinačnog odgovora.
Uprkos optimističnoj slici koju bih radije oslikala i bez obzira na moju veru u umetnost i agenturu kustosa (otuda moja lična investicija u umetnost posvećenu društvenoj promeni) veoma sam svesna da Manifesta 10 nije jedina izložba u svetu gde VIP kustos sa Zapada uz delimičnu podršku zapadne fondacije pokušava da uvede neke zastarele koncepte o autonomnoj umetnosti u gorućoj političkoj situacija, na Istoku ili na bilo kom drugom nezapadnom kontekstu. Postoji nešto veoma loše sa velikim brojem pretpostavki takvih događaja, uz opravdanje za takve kustoske modele i očekivanja od ovakvih izložbi. Naime, iako umetnici prate postojeći kustoski hegemonijski model postoje izvesna očekivanja čuda – da će jednostavna realizacija izložbe (bez obzira koliko će uspešna i profesionalno dobro urađena biti) radikalno promeniti stvari. U slučaju Manifesta 10 služba sa odnose sa javnošću oslanjala se čak na pogrešne istorijske podatke navodno da je to bila prva Manifesta koja se održala na Istoku (Ljubljana 2000, bilo ko?). Pored svega, kustos samo nasledivši njegov/njen posao postaje heroj, a ne postavlja se mnogo pitanja o tome kako “svet umetnosti” zapravo postaje saradnik, saučesnik i na kraju krivac koji stoji rame uz rame sa sistemom koji najčešće kritikuje i od koga se distancira.
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Prof. dr Suzana Milevska je teoretičarka i kustoskinja vizuelne umetnosti i kulture iz Makedonije. Trenutno predaje na Akademiji likovnih umetnosti u Beču kao prvi podržani profesor za istoriju centralne i južno evropske umetnosti (2013-2015). Njeni teorijski i kuratorski interesi uključuju postkolonijalnu kritiku hegemonih režima reprezentacije, feminističku umetnost i rodne teorije, participativne i kolaborativne umetničke prakse. Doktorirala je vizuelnu kulturu na Goldsmiths College – Londonu i bila je Fulbrajtov viši naučni istraživač. Predavala je na Institutu za rodne studije u Skoplju (2013) i na Fakultetu likovnih umetnosti – Univerzitet Sv. Kiril i Metodij, Skopje (2010 – 2012) i bila je direktor Centra za kulturna i vizuelna istraživanja, Skopje (2006 – 2008). Bila je predavač na mnogim akademskim i umetničkim ustanovama širom sveta (Columbia University – Njujork, Oxford University, Oksford, Alvar Aalto University – Helsinki, IUAV, Venecija, School of Art Institute, Čikago, TATE Modern, KIASMA, Helsinki, MUMOK u Beču, Moderna museet – Stokholm, itd). U 2010. Milevska je objavila knjigu Gender Difference in the Balkans (Saarbrucken : VDM Verlag , 2010) i Renaming Machine: Knjigu koja sažima njena interdisciplinarna istraživanja i kustoski projekat Renaming Machine (2008-2010) . U 2011 je bila istraživač na projektu Call the Witness – Romski paviljon na 54. Međunarodnoj izložbi, bijenalu u Veneciji- Collateral Event i kustos izložbe Call the Witness BAK, Utreht, i Roma Protocol u austrijskom parlamentu. Dobitnica je Igor Zabel nagrade za kulturu i teoriju 2012. godine.
Continuus Repositioning
Maja Ćirić: It occured to me that you are one of the two professors from the post-Yugoslav region at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and that both of you are woman. It looks to me as a kind of a soft approach to the region. Do you think that gender has to do anything with it?
Suzana Milevska: This is a very relevant point, Maja, particularly taking into account the unique women-dominated teaching and administration staff at the Academy of Fine Arts. Starting with the Rector Eva Blimlinger and the two Vice Rectors who are also women it’s one of the rare art institutions that promote gender equality in many different ways, not only via quote but also through the curricula. Therefore I guess it was not only the gender that was crucial for this selection. I assume that the Academy of Fine Arts also tries both to overcome the gender gaps in employment and to encompass a certain cultural diversity of the academic faculty structure.
Previously I had many problematic encounters with power-driven managers, both men and women, and often this ended with either being sacked from the job or with my resignation so this new position to me is an important shift and challenge.
MĆ: I met Igor Zabel at an exhibition opening in Moscow in 2004. It might be just my impression, but he seemed humble and looked at the art world around him from the field, the theory, the «truth» if you will. His writing on the relation between the East and the West is very important. You have been awarded the Igor Zabel Award for curators in 2012. Did you know him personally? How do you see his legacy and how do you feel about that award supported by the Erste Stiftung?
SM:Four years before I won the award I’ve written the text ‘Curating as an Agency of Cultural and Geopolitical Change’ and it was published in the reader Continuing Dialogues edited by Christa Benzer,Christine Bohler, Christiane Erkharter (Vienna: JRP/Ringier, 2008, 183-191). In the text I described my own first meeting with Igor Zabel and I tried to convey very similar impressions about his personality and about his own biased position towards the art world. Also I reflected on his interest in the potentials for a dialogue between East and West-although he was very sceptical about the future of such a dialogue, e.g. when he was writing about the very well know scandal around the Swedish-Russian collaborative project Interpol (1996, curated by Viktor Misiano and Ian Äman), he was still profoundly involved in many initiatives and projects that took on board the professional curatorial interest in developing such a dialogue, including his position of the director of the first ever Manifesta that took place in the East (in 2000), before Slovenia entered EU and his exhibition Individual Systems at the Venice Biennale (in 2003).
I must admit that during 25 years of my career I also very often faced many contradictions that ranged from criticism and disbelief or resentment to optimist attempts to change the status quo. I underwent through strange career shifts, starting from a completely marginal and independent position that allowed me a very radical critical position to being involved in the work of most prestigious institutions as the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna or winning the award for art and culture bearing Igor Zabel’s name. This actually enabled me to become politically and professionally independent in my local cultural context in Macedonia and also to be able to maintain a kind of critical distance from the otherwise very seductive position of power in the “artworld” assumed by the curatorial profession, the kind of hegemonic power with which I was never comfortable. By the same token I want to emphasise that this was impossible without constant repositioning oneself in the professional and personal terms because with the recent changes in my career I simply could not claim the same “underdog” position as before. However I am trying to fight against the ironical and cynical attitude that accepts the vicious circle (that is often implied by the institutional critique projects) and doesn’t allow any hope for the potential of art to change itself and the world in general and I guess that this is partly complying with the legacy of Igor Zabel’s professional credo.
MĆ: You are one of the rare, if not the only, curator from the region that has a PhD in the Curatorial Knowledge by the Goldsmiths in London. How did the regimes of knowledge acquired at the Goldsmiths and related networks change your art world view and your practice?
SM: Actually my PhD was not in Curatorial Knowledge, although I was co-teaching this course (2002/3 and 2003/4, together with Jean-Paul Martinon) that existed before the PhD programme Curatorial Knowledge has been established. At the time I enrolled Goldsmiths College the only curatorial programme at Goldsmiths was the one at the Fine Arts department and I already had my curatorial career so was not very challenged by its programme (at that time it was also only on MA level). I enrolled the theoretical and research programme Visual Cultures with Prof. Irit Rogoff that in many different ways influenced how I combined different knowledges that I already had acquired even before going to Goldsmiths (e.g. while doing my MA in Prague at the Central European University in History and Philosophy of Art and Architecture) with various newly acquired research methodologies and theoretical discourses. Mostly it was more about understanding better the ways how one gets to know something and how the knowledge is produced and distributed than about learning itself (hierarchies, hegemonies, power regimes, you know, all the stuff that is both criticised and produced at Goldsmiths under the formula of “criticality”). Nevertheless I still find the networks from Goldsmiths useful: for example I recently published a text in the new reader The Curatorial- A Philosophy of Curating, ed. by Jean-Paul Martinon and Irit Rogoff, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, 65-73 and even here in Vienna I collaborate with some colleagues that I’ve met at Goldsmiths such as Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer.
MĆ: Being based in Vienna, with the symbolical value that you embody, how do you percieve the regional art world, today? How do you percieve the relation of the minor countries and the hegemony of the artworld?
SM:This is a very difficult question and I am afraid of positioning myself in a kind of a prophetic role. I always felt a kind of compassion for the intellectuals who must face the pressure to answer any question (it must be difficult to be expected to deliver a sound and competent opinion on everything immediately as it happens!). I see exactly the question of the asymmetry and unequal distribution of the art scenes between different geo-political regions as one of the most vulnerable issues that at the same time bother me but also I often feel frustrated because of the limitation of any single answer.
Despite to an optimistic picture that I would prefer to depict and regardless to my believes in art and curatorial agency (hence my personal investment in art committed to social change) I am very well aware that Manifesta 10 is not the only exhibition in the world where a Western VIP curator with a partial support from a Western based foundation tries to introduce some obsolete concepts about autonomous art in the burning political situation, in the East or in any other non-Western context. There is something very wrong with the major assumption of such events, with the justification for such curatorial models and the expectations from such exhibitions. Namely although artists follow an existing hegemonic curatorial model there are expectations of a certain miracle –that simply by realising the exhibition (regardless how successful and professionally well done it would be) things will change overtly. In the case of Manifesta 10 the PR relied even on a wrongly historic data that it was the first Manifesta to take place in the East (Ljubljana 2000, anyone?). On the top of everything the curator only by succeeding doing his/her job becomes a hero and not many questions are asked about how the “artworld” actually becomes collaborator, accomplice and eventually a culprit side by side with the system(s) it often criticizes and takes a distance from.
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Prof. Dr. Suzana Milevska is a theorist and curator of visual art and culture from Macedonia. Currently she teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna as the first Endowed Professor for Central and South European Art Histories (2013-2015). Her theoretical and curatorial interests include postcolonial critique of hegemonic power regimes of representation, feminist art and gender theory, participatory and collaborative art practices. She holds a PhD in visual culture from Goldsmiths College-London and was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar. She taught at the Gender Studies Institute in Skopje (2013) and at the Faculty of Fine Arts – University Ss. Cyril and Methodius of Skopje (2010 – 2012) and was the director of the Centre for Visual and Cultural Research, Skopje (2006 – 2008). She lectured at many academic and art institutions worldwide (Columbia University-New York, Oxford University-Oxford, Alvar Aalto University-Helsinki, IUAV –Venice, The School of Art Institute – Chicago, TATE Modern, KIASMA-Helsinki, MUMOK Vienna, Moderna Museet-Stockholm, etc.). In 2010 Milevska published the book Gender Difference in the Balkans (Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag, 2010) and The Renaming Machine: The Book that summarised her interdisciplinary research and curatorial project Renaming Machine (2008-2010). In 2011 she was a researcher for the project Call the Witness – Roma Pavilion at the 54 International Art Exhibition –Venice Biennale-Collateral Event and curated the exhibitions Call the Witness”, BAK, Utrecht, and “Roma Protocol at the Austrian Parliament. In 2012 she won the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory.
