A few days before the opening of Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt, Andreja Kuluncic installed 10 different posters with photos of artists participating at Manifesta 4 at 20 different city-lights locations in the very center of the city. The posters included captions informing us, the viewers, about the country from which the artist comes from, the average annual salary in that country in 2001 and his/her artistic income in 2001. By appropriating locations and the value of the advertisement, the artist aims to investigate the social position of the artists and constraints to art production and artists.
Instead of announcing the dates and place of Manifesta 4 - European Biennial of Contemporary Art, the posters confront the viewers with economic data. Since its very beginning in the mid 90s, Manifesta has been conceived as an attempt to erase the borders between artists from Western and Eastern Europe. Manifesta is a platform where artists meet on an equal basis, but there is still doubt about the equality of their starting 'positions' as related to the set of questions about possible connections between the economic situation of a country and its impact on art practice. The project 'Artist from...' blatantly confronts us with issues of relations between art and economy, or more precisely, with the artist's position within the labor market. Artistic labor has entered the field of artistic interest parallel to the process by which a state had taken the role of main sponsor and supporter of art structures. Kuluncic's interest in re-thinking the artist's position within the labor market, in the coordinates of value and significance of artistic labor within broader social structures does not attempt to make generalizations on the basis of destinies of the individual artists presented on the poster. The posters are not the result of a manipulative choice of representative 'samples' that would best prove the point, but rather an outcome of methodology based on questionnaires issued to artists participating at Manifesta 4. In order to compare artists' annual incomes from art, Andreja Kuluncic, together with economist Volker Schmitt, devised categories for calculating the annual "artistic input", including economic support, income or favors the artist received for his/her work (annual grants, studio allocated by the city, artwork sales income, residency, awards and exibition fees).
Out of 78 issued questionnaires, 18 were sent to female and 60 to male artists; 26 were sent to countries in transition, 52 to Western European countries. Out of 16 completed questionnaires, 8 were completed by women and 8 by men; 8 were completed by artists from countries in transition, 8 by artists from Western Europe. Of course, statistical analysis based on such a non-representative sample is even more open to subjective interpretations than statistics generally are. However, it does raise questions. Why did 79.5 % of the artists polled not respond at all? Why did statistically more female artists and more artists from post-communist countries respond?
A comparison of incomes of the polled artists shows quite large deviations and a strong positive correlation between the artistic income of artists (who responded to the questionnaire) and the average annual salary in countries they are from. When we compare artists' income with average annual salary of the country he/she is coming from, it seems that artists' incomes from art do not even come close to the average annual income.
However, like in Andreja Kuluncic's other projects, Distributive Justice, Closed Reality - Embryo, Nama: 1908 Employees, 15 Department Stores [http://www.andreja.org], the artist appropriates the methodology of scientific research and advertising strategies in an attempt to pursue a personal inquiry of different views of art and its protagonists and to invite us to reconsider the context of contemporary art in a different light.

ORGANIZERS
Manifesta 4, European Biennial of Contemporary Art
25 May -25 August 2002, Frankfurt/Main

curators: Iara Boubnova, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Stéphanie Moisdon Trembley
general co-ordinator: Martin Fritz

PROJECT REALIZATION
concept: Andreja Kuluncic
assistance: Ivo Martinovic
participating artists: Oliver Musovik, Alban Hajdinaj, Anna Gudmundsdottir, Ioan Godeanu, Lise Harlev, Igor Grubic, Bianca Rampas, Mancuska Jan, Yael Bartana, Dirk Fleischmann
photos: Jorg Baumann
[photos taken from special edition of "art kaleidoscope.Art Journal for Frankfurt and Rhine-Main on occasion of Manifesta4]
visual identity/design: dk&rutta [arkzin]
poster printig: Fed d.d., Zagreb
booklet printing: KershOffset, Zagreb
text: Natapa Ilic
translation: Susan Jakopec
statistical analysis: Vojko Sabolovic
expert support for questionnaries and economical data: Volker Schmitt

SUPPORTED BY
Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia
Manifesta 4
DSM Deutsche Stadte-Medien GmbH
Institute for Contemporary art Zagreb

Special thanks to all participating artists.

Zagreb, May 2002