Interview wiht Raša Todosijević

"What is the situation for young artists?

Many young artists have left Serbia. For me it’s OK; I can travel; I have contact with people though I’m completely broke. But it’s worse for the youngest artists who have finished the Academy. They have no money; it’s difficult to travel around; there’s no information, no magazines, no contact with foreign artists and so on. We can expect the effect of this isolation to last. We are living through a time of the latent infection of isolation. The real effects will appear over the next ten years. Otherwise they make art that looks like the art everywhere else, in Germany, in France, but they’re poor and they get no response, no cultural response. After a while they have no chance to develop. Another thing is that at this time there are no cultural taboos. Most of the cultural taboos have disappeared. Young artists tend to resist—to fight against the older generation. I’d like to be a decadent artist with money, cigars, a glass of whiskey. I would like to give up being the avant-garde artist. I’m fed up with such slow elevators. Elevators go bloody slow here. So the best thing for young artists is to go abroad. There’s no sympathy for those who dream of political change. Art will be dominated by modernism and Hotel Kunst [art bought by hotels and placed in rooms]. This kind of art will be the priority for the new generation of liberal politicians who don’t want to be involved in avant-garde art, something they don’t understand. In all of eastern Europe, Hotel Kunst will be the mainstream. Video, computers, technomedia, a little bit of dance, a little bit of painting.
Why do you use your name in your works like Thanks to Raša Todosijević?

It’s a late reflection of fighting for individualism, that’s why. You have a fictional system of collectivism like Serbia, like Czechia, like Europe. What is the opposite? It’s the individual— my name. Die Serbische Kunst ist tot, es lebe Raša Todosijević Kunst. Of course, it’s an allusion to the Tatlin piece Kunst ist tot, es lebe neue maschinen Kunst Tatlin. Raša Todosijević is an individual. Serbia is the collective. Fighting in the face of the ideas of the collective. This is why I emphasis my name; I’m using my name as a medium for individualism. If you look in the dictionary, you’ll see the meaning of the term “individualism.” You’ll be surprised how negative it is. I’m saying that I’m Über Serbe. I know why I’m using German in that special context. I’m fighting for my own identity, my own way of defining my existence in the bloody, dirty place Belgrade and Serbia are today. I’m not well accepted here; they think that I destroy everything I touch. Of course, I destroy rotten things. Serbia now is in a rotten position, very very rotten. This fight started in the 1970s. We were against our professors. Our professors were extremely stupid people. As a young student I wondered why my professors were so stupid. On the other hand I had to obey the instructions and judgements of those stupid people.
Not much has changed in thirty years?

No, not one millimeter. Every time I give a lecture, I first try to explain this contradiction: if somebody wants to believe me they first have to believe in my authority. But how can I, who is against all authority, be a trustworthy person? It’s all games.
How is it living here then?

I’m like a Rabbi. I talk, make art. That’s all. I said evolution here is bloody slow. I dream of being very conservative: a fat, rich artist.
Will you ever?

No. That’s the tragedy.
Vladan Šír
"

01.04.2000