At the beginning of the nineties you studied in Belgrade and Budapest and traveled around the Near East and Latin America. In the mid-nineties you came to Zagreb. Could you describe the atmosphere that you found in Zagreb? How was the situation in the country reflected in the art scene (and vice versa)?

I graduated in 1994, after having studied for seven years altogether. During the first part of my studies, in Belgrade, I studied drawing and sculpture, while I spent the second part, in Budapest, making ambient installations. Around the end of my studies I started exploring the possibility of working and functioning independently, and tried to find the meaning of making art. I started in Jordan and Syria, spent a year in the countries of South America and, finally, came to Zagreb. When I arrived in Zagreb, I was neither familiar with the art scene, nor able to get into it; it was completely hermetic. It was only after two or three years that I started getting a grasp of things. There were not that many exhibitions and possibilities at that time, so I finally became part of the scene when I participated in the group exhibition, Biennial of Young Artists in Rijeka in 1997. After that I became visible and began understanding and recognizing the key figures and events. Some time before that, in 1996, I went to New York and Minneapolis on a scholarship awarded by Soros Foundation's ArtsLink program, which I perceived as a great opportunity, since the war and everything that had happened made any kind of activity difficult. You couldn't travel or get money for larger projects. I returned from the USA with my first computer and the first experience of connecting to the Internet, and I also gained a basic knowledge of making websites. The Open Society Institute-Croatia, as part of the network of Soros foundations, offered free classes in Photoshop and other software here in Zagreb. It all seems trivial now, but at the time getting a computer and gaining the necessary skills opened up possibilities for further work. For me it was the crucial experience.

You said that the project Closed Reality-Embryo was the first work that gave you a way out of the strained relationship with yourself and your environment. What strained relationships were you talking about and how did you find a way out of them? Does it refer to your embarking on interdisciplinary collaboration and the Internet?

Embryo started in 1997, but only reached the Internet in 1999. It was a finished concept on the Net in 1997, but it took me a couple of years to get it going because back then, as I've pointed out already, everything was more closed, even in relation to other professions. Besides, I was younger, people didn't know me, so it was harder to find collaborators for the project. Back then, people found the idea of embryo, game, Internet... strange. They were distrustful. I wanted the work to be detached from the everyday issues surrounding us, but also to be connected to the social reality and to attract people outside the art world. That's how I started doing multidisciplinary work with people who were strong within their chosen disciplines. I see multidisciplinarity as a bridge toward different types of expertise, different experiences and mindsets - those of biologists, sociologists, philosophers, programmers - which fuse to create a new meaning. Embryo was the first project where I adopted this approach, and the combination of using the Internet, working on a project with several stages, budgeting, forming an NGO and working with a number of collaborators came with the multidisciplinary process.

What is it that the Internet offers and other media do not? What was the significance of the Internet in the strained socio-policital situation that you have described?

I couldn't finance ambient installations because they require a lot of space and physical effort, so the computer monitor became my studio; technically it was the simplest and cheapest, as well as, actually, the only possible choice at that point. During the day I worked as a web designer in a studio and at night I worked as an artist. This life was physically demanding, but it offered me both a chance to survive and to make art. The Internet also helped me make contacts, not only with people outside Croatia, with whom I worked on projects or communicated but also with friends whom I grew up with and went to college with, and who were living abroad. I worked on the Internet because everything else was financially out of my reach, not because it was my first choice, my great wish or my great concept. With time, other media of communication with the audience crept into my work, like the billboard. NAMA: 1908 employess, 15 department stores from 2000 was my first step into that medium.

You try to involve a wide circle of collaborators (citizens, workers, marginalised groups) and researchers (sociologists, social workers, philosophers, doctors...) in each of your projects. What aspects does the notion of participation incorporate; on what levels is it manifested, how does it define the work and how has it developed with time?

I make a distinction between the multidisciplinary and socially engaged projects. The multidisciplinary projects, like Closed Reality-Embryo, Distributive Justice and the latest, Creative Strategies, I budget myself, through the non profit organisation. I apply for money, develop the project in segments and pay fees to the people involved, so the central role of financing and organizing everything is mine. When it comes to the works where I am invited to exhibit, I am "just" an artist; someone else does the financing and organization, which makes a great difference in the creative process.

In multidisciplinary projects I don't express my own attitude. For instance, I don't say what I think about genetic engineering in Embyro, or which theory I find just in Distributive Justice. The goal is to give the visitors the opportunity to form their own opinions by actively participating in the project. It's important to me to increase their awareness of today's society and to give them a chance to be more creative, whether it is in their relation to genetic engineering, justice or their everyday living strategies. Irresponsibility is often the result of not understanding things. I believe that gaining insight into things awakens your responsibility toward the society you're living in.

Projects like NAMA, Austrians Only and 1CHF=1VOICE were defined by the curatorial concept and the exhibition's logistic framework. In these works I engage with a particular group of people; I work with them and I try to give them a tool, a sort of instrument to empower their position. It's not about simply pointing out the problems faced by, say, asylum seekers, workers in the black market or unemployed women and then waiting for others to help them, it's about empowering them through a tool we create together. In that sense, all the visitors who want to play a game on the Internet, fill out a questionnaire, take part in discussions or give an interview are participants in multidisciplinary projects, while in socially engaged work the participants belong to a particular group of people that is somehow marginalized in society. In the latter I stand up for the worker, criticize the way illegal immigrants are treated in Switzerland or Bosnians in Slovenia, and so on. I'm not trying to be a mediator, I'm trying to give those involved an opportunity to participate directly, without facing any danger.

In socially engaged projects, the process often begins with doing research. I start by identifying the social problems of the places I'm invited to and the reasons these problems are generated. I often need experts' (sociologists', psychologists', social workers') help in doing research. We then move from a well-known and explored position, if there is one, or do our own research as the preliminary of the project. For instance, when doing Austrians only we discovered that the Linz association of Latin American women had done a major survey on the way employers treat their maids the year before. I founded my work on that research. I wouldn't dare go somewhere and work with vague ideas; I utilize the existing research or organize my own. Most often I use polls and sociological surveys, and rarely theory, because the things I'm concerned with are very specific and exact: specific problems and specific people. In socially engaged work a theoretical background won't help me, but it will in multidisciplinary projects. Distributive Justice is entirely based on the theory of distributive
justice. So the methodology, goals, manner of working and participation are all completely different. With socially engaged work the viewer needs to become aware of the problem and his/her own role in it: he/she does not participate directly. If you are, for instance, a Swiss treating your Bolivian maid badly, you need to become aware of what you are doing and question your attitude. But in 1CHF=1VOICE illegal immigrants were invited to participate by each giving 1 CHF - a donation for the renovation of the Swiss parliament, which does not acknowledge their existence.

You describe your work as building bridges and yourself as some sort of project coordinator. How much does this destabilize the institution of the author? How important is this aspect for your work?

I frame the project and assign everyone a segment to work on alone. I make sure that nothing dominates, that everybody can fit in and function well both collectively and on their own. To reach this point of encounter and to enter a collaboration, I first do a lot of talking about the subject of the project with my collaborators. I find this approach very exciting and interesting, I always learn a lot. When everybody basically understands the other participants in the project, the real collaboration begins. However, everyone remains in their own field of expertise, which is for me the point of multidisciplinary collaboration. I believe I can't be a programmer, a designer, a sociologist and a philosopher at the same time, I simply can't have all these kinds of knowledge and all these outlooks. The different readings that are brought into the project are a great wealth and they look like a unique whole from the outside. And it is my job that this whole we created communicates with the visitors at the exhibition.

As for the destabilization of the institution of the author, I wouldn't say I destabilize it, but empower it. I think that letting go doesn't mean destabilization and giving up on authorship, but changes the form of authorship. To me authorship is collaboration. People participating and learning something new with joy, concentration and interest and later bringing some of the enrichment that we built together into their own work - that's authorship to me.

Do the organisations/institutions dare to be critical or is the artist forced to adapt his/her work to those enabling it to happen and those showing it in their gallery/museum?

That depends. I haven't come across censorship in Croatia because you are mostly offered empty gallery walls to exhibit whatever work you have. The institutions never or rarely participate in funding, and there are no sponsors to get "mad" if you do something with a critical or political edge. You don't get money here to be critical, to shake things up, it is never suggested that some changes could be caused or at least questioned by art. It's different in Western Europe; money is assigned to large projects because there is an awareness that artists can raise questions, communicate differently, conceptualize dialogues on important social problems in a new way, and there is a willingness to back this up. Not always and not everyone, of course, especially when it comes to private sponsors. It is because big productions can happen that the possibility of censorship is greater than in Croatia.

Do you think this has been slowly reaching Croatia, for the past ten years maybe?

Maybe in other areas, but not yet in art. Abroad, people know that you have to pay for every phone call or billboard and they are ready to give you money. But there are situations when they don't take it all the way. Many will at some point say: "OK, now let's get back to the gallery and exhibit this." Then I get mad and fight for the project to go on, because it's not about the gallery but the people involved. Every time I get an invitation, I try to figure out whether the curators would go all the way or whether they are just pretending to want social change, but would actually like to be part of an important museum, mainstream system or another elitist story that they are currently "criticizing". Then again, we're all people and people change. Maybe they intended to go all the way, but eventually changed their mind... I respect showing my work in galleries, but it's not the most important thing to me. What is more important is what happens outside the gallery, with those to whom the work is dedicated. Only then can we start talking about a change.

How would you comment on the differences between working abroad and working in Croatia? In this context, how does the place where it is performed determine the project?

Distributive justice is a project conceptualized like a framework that every country adds its own material to, like when you add clay to the framework of a sculpture to make it grow. In a way it's all related and it doesn't really matter what country you're in. However, the problem of justice was read completely differently in each country. Embryo works in a similar way: it was interesting to talk about genetic engineering in India because their religion gives them a completely different angle on the issue from the one we have. In that sense, the work functions in the same way every time, but the approaches to the subject and modes of dialogue vary.

However, my socially engaged projects are deeply entrenched in the social context from which they stem. That means that NAMA cannot be done in Austria and 1CHF=1VOICE cannot be done in Croatia. Even the methodology changes in different projects. Wherever I work, I always have to think of how to get people to communicate. Unfortunately, I can only work where I am invited, and I am mostly invited by the richer countries and those more open to criticism. I would love to work in China and explore social awareness, but it looks like that won't be possible anytime soon.

As for funding, I believe that the more experienced you are and the more complex your projects get, the more elaborate your financial plan needs to be. However, you rarely find any understanding here in Croatia, so I still spend a lot of time partially budgeting projects. It is the cultural policy of funding projects in visual arts that I find really problematic. The much criticized policy of "let a thousand flowers bloom" is still at large: producing a great number of little projects, none of which can ultimately lead to any real change. I would like to be trusted on the basis of my work so far; trusted that a lot more money is required for this kind of projects and that the final project will be exactly like in my project application.

How do you perceive the public space and how does intervening in it differ when you do it as an individual and as an artist? Is it now easier for you to act in public space than it was a couple of years ago, in 1997 or 2000?

The public space includes the Internet, newspapers, galleries, city squares, shopping malls... I look for new ways of expression every time, depending on the problem I speak out about, but also on the space in which I speak and its audience. The medium in which the work is created is also "public space", whether it is the radio, a billboard, a street action or the Internet. However, I see a difference between my using that space and trying to change it. When I merely use it, I can make my own private conclusions, but I don't act on them there, publicly. The everyday use of space allows only for small fluctuations in action, which are not good enough for me. When I want to make a greater impact, I shape it through art. Actions in the public space used to be more visible, while today the public space is crammed with too much of everything, so public action demands that you come up with new strategies all the time. People want to limit the amount of images, news, sounds, commercials that they daily consume so they filter them. It's your job to get inside that filter, into that spectrum of meaning that makes it through to the recipient.

What do you think about the position of artists from the Balkans, the former Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe? Is there a better topography?

It does matter whether you come from Poland or Hungary, yet both are historically parts of the Eastern Bloc. These are different countries and their people have different histories. 'Eastern Europe' is not the determining label anymore; what matters are the political and historical blocs before their socialist histories. It's another matter what "European art" means. Today art is discussed in terms of larger blocs, those of Europe, India, China, the USA, so the question of the Balkans or the former Yugoslavia is no longer that relevant, which is a good thing.

As for the topography, I believe there is a better one. With my work methodology it's easier to be part of an economically more developed country that is socially aware, both because of communication with the audience and financing possibilities. Of course, I think that here, in Argentina or in China there is a greater need for this kind of projects, but need itself is not enough. People have to become aware of that need, and so do the state and city authorities that can make the projects happen. Becoming aware of our reality is a complex process and it is a shame to marginalize art in that process.

At the moment you are teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and working with the future young artists. How do you see your role in the education of the younger generations of artists? How do educational institutions influence the formation of the so-called scene?

I see myself as an older colleague, not as someone shaping them, because that seems "dangerous" to me. When I was a student, people used to say that you spend five years being shaped by the academy and then another five breaking out of that mould, so I am doing my best not to fit into that matrix. I'm trying to show them as much as possible, without evaluating it, as well as to convey to them what I have learned about the job after years of doing projects and exhibitions, thus making their paths easier to tread. However, obviously not everyone needs the same type of experience, so I try to see who's where and what would help him/her develop further. I do project teaching, which means that I try to help them develop their projects and ideas based on their initiative and work. I think it's important that the students take responsibility for their curriculum, and that in the jungle of information and possibilities they find what interests them and what will be useful to them. In other words, it is important for them to become independent during their studies: unlike in some other professions, in art you are primarily on your own.

Petra Novak & Tamara Sertic