Interview with Noa Treister

Noa Treister finished the Bezalel Art and Design Academy in Jerusalem, Israel and currently in Postgraduate studies at the Media and communication program of the European Graduate School in Switzerland. She is a practicing artist and a curator, presently living working in Serbia. Noa focuses on rethinking socio-economic-political issues in both curatorial and artistic projects. She is currently running the program “Art Interventions” which is an interdisciplinary program of artists and scholars from different fields and media coming together in disenfranchised communities to re-engage with different situations.

Her exhibitions include: “Adama” group exhibition, Israel Museum, 1998-99; “Mapping space” group exhibition, Klenova Gallery, Czech Republic, 2002; “The Fold”, solo exhibition, Prague, Czech Republic , 2003; ‘Noina Barka’, solo exhibition, Belgrade and Novi Sad, Serbia, 2006; ‘Mi smo (se) navikli’, [We Have Gotten (Ourselves) Used to] solo exhibition, Kragujevac, Serbia, 2007

This interview, conducted by Gert Röhrborn, took place in association with the Citizens of Europe OpenFora, a group of debates among like-informed, not essentially like-minded, people about issues of contemporary life, business and politics in European societies, including external relations and global affairs. Visit the website for more information about Citizens of Europe and OpenFora.

You have been active in the Balkans for some years now. This region is not only a specific case in the transformation process you have referred to, but also, if I may say so, a place where the whole puzzle of the human condition – complex processes of cultural fusion which bring along misunderstandings, intolerance and a history of violence – seems to be in disorder beyond comprehension. It must be frustrating to work there at the grassroots as a civic activist. What attracted you to the place, and why are you still there?

I went there for personal reasons in the first place. The crucial point exactly is why I stayed. I was born in Israel which is a highly politicized zone. After living in Prague for 5 years, I was just bored. As simple as that. Don’t get me wrong, Prague is a beautiful place; but in terms of NGO work and art, there is absolutely nothing happening there, just because they do not have considerable problems with transformation any more. It’s just like any other western country now. Serbia offers quite a different picture. Everywhere you put your finger, you discover a challenge. In Eastern Serbia, where I live, economic depression meets a confusing topography of conflict. The traditional mining businesses have been closed down, so unemployment is extremely high and people have given themselves over to a certain kind of poverty culture. To the west you have Bosnia and Croatia, a region which, though far from being resolved, is a post-conflict zone. In the south it borders to Kosovo, which still is a conflict zone. You cannot find a more problematic place in Europe.

Would you consider yourself a troubleshooter then? I suppose quite a few people could imagine going down there for a certain period of time, doing business or taking care of a political or humanitarian mission. Yet choosing the Balkans as the centre of your life and work, does that ask a bit too much? You cannot solve problems all the time…

…oh yes, you can. That’s just a different level of approach, of your personal expectations in life. I do my PhD on the place of the activist between dominant and minority culture, no matter whether ethnicity, transition or culture is concerned. Following Levinas and others philosophers, I try to leave behind the ruling economy of charity. For me it’s all about the commitment to the other. To understand how your being is created in the encounter with the other. So it is not the “problem solving” kind of thinking but a thinking that opens a space for an alternative to happen. It is not a matter of what you give, certainly not in financial respects. The crucial point is that you give out of the core, not just out of your leftovers. This creates a whole different impact. I do not come to lecture people on my ethical commitments, but in my projects I try to show my dedication to the people concerned. That’s partly why I find attractive about Citizens of Europe. I consider it extremely important to discuss these layers of ethical commitment and conceptual aspects of activism. This is something that is hardly ever done anywhere, not even in the academic world or let alone the activist community. With OpenFora, Citizens of Europe has this unique opportunity to at least touch upon these layers. Even if not every round of debate can end up in a philosophical discussion, it is possible to identify and reflect upon the ethical aspects of activism. People are not always able to discuss these questions directly, but it comes out of every sentence that is spoken here.

OpenFora deal with topics which have a genuine European scope. When Citizens of Europe tries to foster cross-border communication in order to address them, we often encounter the difficulty that language is contaminated itself and under certain circumstances may even hinder communication more than it supports it. How can art help to overcome this situation?

The question is whom you address and how. Modernism decided to promote art for art’s sake. What is neglected in this perspective is that art is a part of the wider concept of culture. Combined with capitalism art ends up to be a commercial product. That’s where the concept of Engaged Art came from in the 1960’s. It’s promoters ascribe a social and political position to art. There is much talk about diversity in Europe nowadays. Nevertheless, with the current systems of funding we face a process in which diversity is slowly segregated into culture and culture is slowly segregated into a position where it has no effect on economy and politics whatsoever. What we did not talk about was what economic diversity is, what political diversity is. Such a discussion does not exist anywhere. We have reached a point where we can actually have diversity; we can have globalisation seemingly happening apart from each other, because these processes do not interfere with each other, because art was taken out of the game. The main reaction to this situation is fundamentalism, namely the wish – whatever nasty forms it may take – to maintain meaning in culture. So I think what we need to do is to give art back its meaning without choosing fundamentalist approaches. In my point of view art’s function is to locate and articulate certain social phenomena which are taboo, and to deal with them. That’s what I do when I address Gastarbajter culture or changing concepts of sex in Art.Interventions. What I have learned is that we as the activists and conceptual thinkers should never forget that people are not stupid. Even if they cannot articulate themselves philosophically or conceptually, they know exactly what we talk about. The idea for “Sex in Transition” came out of the local Serbian community. I see my role in listening to and understanding what local people say, and to put it into a conceptual framework which may help to address these problems. I think this is my duty.

Already judged from the scope of your activities it is impressive how much you have achieved and realized over such an extended period of time. I wonder where you personally get your motivation and persistence from. Does it not frustrate you to be more of a translator than an artist?

I try to keep these things separate. As an activist I mainly play the role of an organizer, translator, and curator. Being an artist relaxes me as much as it is a way to express myself. I try to have one exhibition per year. Nevertheless I see both activities as a form of creating art, as an opportunity to appear as a person. If I had burned myself out it already would have happened years ago due to this generosity cycle I already talked about. Processes of social and cultural change are so slow. You need to understand that you do things mainly for yourself. It is extremely hard to sustain projects like that. If you are in a situation to expect something from the local people you will get frustrated quickly and certainly. It’s not that they do not give something back, quite on the contrary. Yet they have to partially adapt their values and social practice and acquire experience in what methods and attitudes are effective, adequate and sustainable in addressing their needs. I am somehow in a weird position. Of course I have something like a foreigner bonus, and it is rewarding to see people appreciating my long-term efforts. Yet this is the result of years of hard work and millions of small steps forth and back, a success which is extremely difficult to reach and all too easy to lose. To make things ever more complicated, as a foreigner I have to work with local associations to be able to apply for financial support. And here comes yet another problem: It is unfair to expect recently formed local associations in Serbia to raise 50.000 Euros as co-funding resources for European projects. So the situation is difficult, but far from hopeless. As I said, it depends on how you deal with expectations. As far as I am concerned, I do not follow goals or aims. My work is totally open-ended. I articulate a question and see where it takes me. Let’s see what happens.