Starting from the Middle. A Conversation

On March 14, 2025, e-flux Screening Room presented a screening of select films by Hiwa K that was followed by a conversation between the artist and Anton Vidokle and by a Q & A with the audience. The transcript of this conversation was edited for the present publication.

Anton Vidokle: Hiwa and I first met in the course of an experimental project that I organized about twenty years ago. In 2005, I was invited to co-curate the sixth edition of Manifesta, which was to take place in Nicosia, Cyprus. When we visited Cyprus, we encountered a complex colonial legacy. For centuries, the country had been ruled by various outside powers—the Templar Knights, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire—and then entered a period of post-colonial turbulence that included inter-communal violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, which ultimately divided the island to this day. Another effect of colonial rule was the absence of certain local public institutions. For example, there was no art academy. There was also no museum of modern or contemporary art, nor other types of cultural institutions we take for granted.

We wondered: Does a huge international exhibition of contemporary art make sense in a place that lacks institutions that typically support cultural development? So we proposed to use the budget and network of Manifesta to start a school instead—an experimental art school drawing on precedents like VKhUTEMAS in the Soviet Union, the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and even George Maciunas’s unrealized plans for a Fluxus Academy. The school was to be free and open to local and international applicants.

Unfortunately, the Manifesta project was ultimately cancelled due to political tensions. The hosting side grew paranoid, fearing this project could somehow threaten their nationhood. We were fired. It was my first real encounter with intense nationalism—like crashing into a brick wall.

But because we already had invested so much into the research and had grown attached to the idea, I spoke with my collaborators—Boris Groys, Martha Rosler, Walid Raad, Jalal Toufic, Liam Gillick, Natasha Sadr Hanghighian, Tirdad Zolghadr and Nikolaus Hirsch—and we decided to do the project independently in Berlin. We found a small two-story building near Alexanderplatz that we could rent for about $2,500/month (which sounds unreal now) and opened an autonomous school there that run for one year. The program was discursive, with six extensive seminars that sometimes ran late into the night. Since we had this whole little building, we could talk as long as we liked…

Hiwa arrived, as did many other students who had originally applied to Manifesta, along with many Berlin-based young artists, curators, writers, etc. The first thing I noticed about him was the extra-long fingernails on his right hand. I later learned that this was because Hiwa was a flamenco guitarist. At the time he had to stop with the guitar because of a hand ailment and was considering becoming a visual artist instead. So he applied to our program.

At a certain point he approached me and Magda Magiera, who was helping organize the program, and said he wanted to do a performance with Martha Rosler, who was leading an intensive seminar—an alternative history of video art.

At the time, some curators and art dealers were trying to position video as largely aesthetic and closer to painting, distancing it from political engagement, journalism, and documentarian contexts. Martha challenged this by tracing video’s activist roots, particularly during the Vietnam War, when artists used the newly invented Portapak cameras to document anti-war protests and share them through public access TV and other means. She curated an astounding screening series that was approximately forty hours long, highlighting some of these early activist works from California and many other places. Hers was one of the most compelling histories of video art I’ve ever come across.

Hiwa wanted to collaborate with Martha on a performance he conceived titled Cooking with Mama. He proposed that Martha cook one of his mother’s recipes. This put her in a conflicted position. As a politically engaged American artist opposed to the war in and occupation of Iraq, she didn’t want to say no to a displaced Iraqi artist. But as a lifelong feminist who resisted being relegated to the kitchen (unless ironically so in her own performances, like the Semiotics of the Kitchen [1975]), it was a difficult ask. So that’s how we first met.

Hiwa K: To me, her work Semiotics of Kitchen was what I was referring to when I asked her. I loved that work. And I admired Martha, especially her lectures. I loved how she thought and how she spoke. My mother raised five daughters—my sisters—making sure they were all independent, educated, and working women. She is an iconic figure for me, much like Martha. My intention was to bring those two women—Martha and my mother—into conversation through a shared act. As Martha was writing about Vietnam and Iraq war and in her lectures was mentioning women from those countries, I wanted my mother to speak for herself. We would all cook together and I would translate between them. I think Martha misunderstood my intension. But I appreciate how Anton described our meeting.

Maybe you remember, I say in my film Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) (2017) that I had nothing in my backpack but a few abstract paintings when we met. It wasn’t long after I had walked that route from the Evros River between Turkey and Greece, all the way to Rome. I was retracing that path from fifteen years earlier in my film, step by step.

When I first encountered Western art, I felt a deep frustration. I had been painting for fourteen years, trying to follow a Western aesthetic that never quite fit. I didn’t know what was wrong, only that something was. After arriving in Europe, I visited the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (now Kunstinstituut Melly) and felt devastated. I nearly destroyed one of the paintings there. I couldn’t understand how art could be like that. I ended up in therapy for two and a half years. I gave up art for seven years. I studied music, plumbing, and flamenco guitar.

Then, in 2005, I returned to art. We met in 2006. Aneta Szyłak, my soulmate, told me: “Your practice doesn’t fit in this art school,” referring to Kunsthochschule Mainz. I applied there using paintings I borrowed from a friend because you couldn’t apply without a portfolio. I smuggled myself into the academy. But once inside, I didn’t paint. I had a wall like everyone else, but I kept it white. I just stood in front of it every day, initiating conversations with the students and professors. My practice took place in the corridors instead of classrooms; I was expelled by the professors three times. Coming from such a historical gap—after centuries of colonization, including the Ottoman Empire— it felt impossible to simply go back to an art that is decided by one dominant power. There was no tradition to lean on. So, I began by questioning everything around me. I cooked for everyone in the academy. When they asked, “Where is your artwork?” I said, “I feed your students, and they make art.”

Aneta encouraged me, saying there might be a better environment for me. I didn’t know much about the art world then—I had just come from the flamenco scene. When she explained the Manifesta school, it sounded like the right environment. I applied, and thankfully I was accepted. It was intellectually challenging, not just a romantic rejection of Western art. I realized there was much work to do. That year of discourse changed me. In my academy, video wasn’t even considered art. Cooking, even less so. But after unitednationsplaza, I returned and started collective practices with other students. When I graduated, my thesis was a confession: I had applied with someone else’s portfolio. But I had also fed the whole academy for four and a half years.

That practice evolved into projects involving local communities like Chicago Boys (2010–TK), which I presented at the Serpentine Gallery. Even my individual works come from the same lexicon. For example, Moon Calendar (2007) with its tap dancing—it’s about decentralizing power, shaking the center. Many of my works deal with vertical power structures. That was my experience of unitednationsplaza. It was a very intense intellectual beginning. Listening to Boris Groys for the first time—I didn’t even know who he was before. It was an amazing start for me.

AV: After watching View From Above (2017) and This Lemon Tastes of Apple (2011)—two incredible works that are so rich and poetic—four or five times, I am still struck by how distinct your approach is. Going back to Martha Rosler and the origins of video art—often linked to political manifestations, or to performance practices rooted in feminist work in California in the late 1960s and early ’70s—there is typically a connection to the body. But in those traditions, the camera is often a marginal component. The goal isn’t to produce beautiful or refined imagery. It’s more about a documentary impulse.

What I find unusual in your work is that, while your films are absolutely performances for camera, each of them also produces incredibly sophisticated, cinematic images. That was especially visible in This Lemon Tastes of Apple. So my question is: How do you achieve that? Since you’re performing and not directing the camera yourself, how does it come together?

HK: Well, it’s always very difficult to find the right camera operator For my last film, I spent two weeks talking to three different cinematographers. We didn’t speak about camera angles or lenses—we talked about how I see marginalization; how we shouldn’t always point with our index finger; how we can refer with a pinky instead. All of these ideas, which I’ve learned through experience and from my culture.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But I often give a lot of autonomy to the cameraperson. I tell them: This is my view, but you don’t have to follow it strictly. It’s also true for the editing. I don’t see myself as the central figure in the work—I’m just a part of it. Sometimes I even feel ashamed that the film ends up being labeled as “by Hiwa K,” because so many people contribute from their own side.

AV: That’s interesting, because even in Pre-Image, the first film we watched tonight—which I hadn’t seen before—I noticed right away how natural you are on camera. For most people, even walking in front of a camera is difficult. As soon as I know someone is filming me, I start walking unnaturally. There’s this strange dynamic between the body, the camera, and the mind. But in your work, you appear completely natural. I thought, “he must be a very good actor.”

HK: No, no, it’s not acting. I remember telling the cameraman something like: “Just act normal—you’re already crazy enough.” I always tell them, just be with me. When we were filming Pre-Image, I was really depressed the first day. He kept saying “action” and “stop,” but I couldn’t balance the mirrors on my nose. I told him, “I feel like I’m in an office. I don’t know what’s wrong.” Then he asked, “Can I help you with something?” And I said, “I don’t know. Maybe you can come closer to me.” Once our relationship changed—once we became closer—I was suddenly able to balance better. That kind of connection really matters to me.

Honestly, I deliberately avoid mastering it. I don’t want to become an acrobat. I like the imperfections. I’m even afraid sometimes that it might fail. But that’s part of the relationship with the camera operator. If I feel at home with them, if I feel they see me as a person—not as an object—then something works.

I often think of what Martha said, that the cameraperson is a witness. That’s such a beautiful way to put it. That’s exactly what we need in this kind of work—just someone to be present, to witness. I don’t expect them to do anything spectacular. And yes, sometimes very strong images come out of it and they work. But other times, I exclude them because they’re too technically polished. I think: We’re not making that kind of film.

So yes, I’ve had a lot of difficulties with every film, including my new film in progress…

AV: Okay, let’s talk about the film you’re working on now. I saw parts of it, where you’re lying on an operating table, being operated on, while at the same time trying to direct the film. I’ve never seen anything like it. Through the medical screen shown within the film, we see doctors extracting a stone from your colon, while you simultaneously try to narrate and create sound for the film. First of all: What is that stone doing in your body?

HK: I wish the film was ready—I’d love to show you everything. The stone, or rather the object, connects to archaeological artifacts that now face the threat of disappearing in Turkey. The government is building many dams there, mostly in Kurdish areas, to flood those regions and force people to relocate.

Some of the artifacts I used were replicas based on originals that go back between four and twelve thousand years. I only had photos, which Zehra Dogan sent me, knowing I had been searching for something like this for my new film. I made small sculptures from them and then swallowed them. That was the starting point. From there, it was about locating with the endoscope where the object traveled inside me—it ended up in my colon.

The doctors attempted to take them out, but they couldn’t do it—which, in a way, I appreciated. I liked the idea that they failed. The doctor is a kind of dictator figure sometimes.

AV: How did you even convince the doctors to participate in this? I can’t imagine any doctor in the US agreeing to it.

HK: I tried in Germany—doctors said, “Forget it, we’re not doing this.” But in Iraq, they just do it. If you die, they say, “Next.” But they were actually very kind. We had very little time to shoot the film, and we didn’t have enough material, which makes me consider going back to do additional shooting—without repeating the operation, of course. That part is strong already. Visually, it even looks like a dam, and I didn’t expect the camera image inside to be so clear.

There will be few lines of dialogue in the film—conversations between the doctor and me. At one point, he asks me questions I can’t answer because I have the endoscope down my throat. That moment, for me, becomes symbolic of the broader situation. As a Kurd, you grow up having to fight to keep your language alive. For centuries, efforts have been made to erase it. So when something is put in your throat, you’re silenced. However, a technological apparatus can investigate the most hidden places. They have drones, surveillance—they can track you anywhere. You can’t even hide something in your stomach, such an intimate place. They can still find it. I was happy the doctor didn’t succeed in taking them out.

AV: Is the stone still in your stomach?

HK: I look for it every day. [laughs]

AV: I think the area you’re referring to is the Tigris River, which flows from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey through Syria and into Iraq. It’s one of the most important rivers in the world, especially for Mesopotamian civilizations—the land between the Tigris and Euphrates.

I actually know this area a little bit. A few years ago, I filmed there, working with the Epic of Gilgamesh, which you also reference in one of your works. One of our filming locations was the Turkish town of Hasankeyf, an ancient site that had long been protected by UNESCO.

It’s an extraordinary place, almost like a cake made of historical layers. It is the site of some of the earliest settlements, close to ten thousand years old, and its occupation continues through the Bronze Age. The ancient Greeks lived there, as did the Romans and the Persians. All these layers were built on top of each other.

And yet, in 2019, the Turkish government brutally flooded the entire area. They disregarded the fact that it was a UNESCO World Heritage site and displaced all the residents. The dam project had two goals: One was to keep the water within Turkey’s borders, effectively cutting off Syria. This has had devastating consequences for agriculture and livelihoods downstream. The second goal was military—the riverbed had been used by groups like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and People’s Defense Units, so flooding it was a way to assert control.

We were told that, in some places, the water now reaches a depth of 150 meters—that’s about 450 feet. It’s the kind of depth you associate with oceans, not rivers. From the outside, it’s breathtakingly beautiful. But once you understand what’s been lost, it becomes monstrous—a kind of devastation disguised as development.

Audience question: Hiwa, I want to know what your relationship to insanity is.

HK: That’s a nice question. I suppose I’m sometimes unpredictable with my work, even unfaithful to it. That’s the word. I often betray my own work during the process. The point of departure isn’t sacred—it’s just something that gets me going. It’s like a cab that takes me to the train station; the real journey is the train. And the train, in this case, is one of the carriages of insanity.

I think it’s important to betray myself at times, not to be too linear. I’m always open to new developments—if something unexpected comes up, I might change the entire work. I believe in starting from the middle and stretching in both directions, toward the point of departure and the point of arrival.

When I first came to Europe at twenty-three, I tried to avoid the cultural shock by pretending I had always been here. I’d walk into a club, see people of my age drinking, and just insert myself as if I’d only stepped out for twenty-three years and now I was back, continuing the conversation. That “as if” is a strategy when you are not belonging.

So, going back to the camera, to performativity: When you begin in the middle, you need a bit of madness. You need to be unpredictable. Sometimes it’s catastrophic, sometimes it works. But that’s the space I work in.

Audience question: Let me try to approach the idea of insanity from another direction. Lately, I’ve been trying to recover the concept of performativity from its pejorative use and return it to its anti-essentialist potential. Could you speak more about your understanding of performance and performativity in your practice, particularly in terms of constant becoming?

HK: I don’t really know what to call what I do. Performance? Maybe. But honestly, we’re all performing—even now, we’re performing. Although we’re not acting; we’re just here, doing this. In these moments, I just insert myself into the situation and do what’s necessary, like in the cooking projects, or when I walked hundred and eighty kilometers without food for nine days.

In that kind of journey, you can’t have a plan. I just said to the cameraman, “Come with me, and let’s see what happens.” The object changes, too, depending on the cities—Rome, Ancona, Patras. Things shift, new things emerge. I don’t have a prescriptive method. Sometimes I rewrite the script during the editing process.

I’ve never read a book about performance art—I just do things. I learn by doing. And sometimes, like in my most recent work, I find myself asking, “What am I even doing here?” And the answer is, maybe you’ll know tomorrow. That’s how it goes.

Since I came to Europe, I talk to myself a lot—especially when cooking. Once, while talking to myself, I said, “Is it normal that you are talking to yourself?” and immediately answered, “Of course it’s normal.”

Audience Question: As we discussed, Hiwa’s work often engages with performativity in an embodied way—he inserts himself physically into certain spatial conditions to interrogate them by being there. But, Anton, you also mentioned the importance of spending time with other artists, not just as a curator but rather as a collaborator or what Deleuze would call a mediator. Could you speak about how your connections with other artists have evolved in the long-term, and have they influenced your own work?

AV: I think it’s a kind of a “civic duty” for artists to occasionally act as mediators for other artists. Otherwise, the entire field would be mediated solely by people who do not practice art and understand it primarily from the outside, as a subject of contemplation, study, commerce, accumulation, et cetera, not the way practitioners do. So, it’s very important that artists organize shows, write about art, establish spaces and institutions, teach, theorize, et cetera. This takes you a bit outside of your inner world and puts you in a relationship with other artists’ subjectivities, which can be very productive. And for the field of art as an institution, this is very important because this recuperates artistic perspective and voice.

Audience Question: Hiwa, there seems to be a relationship in your work between the body, objects, and interventions. I’m thinking of the mirrors, the harmonica, the music—how these elements connect to activism, your performative actions… I’m curious about how these contraptions come into being—could you say more about how they are formulated?

HK: They evolve over time. For example, I was stuck in an artist residency in Weimar during heavy snow. I couldn’t go out for four months, so I began balancing a broom on my nose while making tea. One day, I thought: What if I put a small object on my nose? I tried filming that and thought, “This looks interesting.”

Then I had the idea of using mirrors. I got some motorbike mirrors and began navigating around my room. The configuration lets you see your feet, one meter behind, and several meters around. You see more than you can with two eyes. I practiced indoors, then walked to Goethe’s grave—about five hundred meters from the residency—with the mirror device. That was my first attempt.

It all started as a joke. But the joke becomes serious. You begin to write about it, reflect on it. In my work, I often say the final touch doesn’t belong to me. I begin blindly, and the LED light comes at the end—it’s not mine.

There’s always that element of blindness. I try to see what can be done with a certain machine, or a harmonica, or another device. Eventually, I realize that what I’m really searching for is my own scattered parts—trying to locate the gaps in my identity. I’m not centered. I’m trying to be centered, to find balance between opposing forces.

It’s a negotiation. In that sense, I’m a classical artist—like a sculptor working with material, but letting the material teach them. I don’t see strict boundaries. I often feel like one part of myself is enslaving another.

For example, in View From Above, I think about how much we associate being above with power—being able to look down. From my geopolitical background, to even have that perspective is a kind of privilege. In the film, the narrator pretends to be from a city he has never visited. His ignorance allows him to share the same sightline as the judge—the same distance, the same detachment. That becomes a survival strategy.

I’ve crossed so many borders and carry the traces and scars of that. These experiences teach me something new each time. I start writing from there. I remember, last year I rewrote an entire script while on a four-hour bus ride. I just pulled out my phone and changed everything—and I was happy with it. So, the process is never rigid. Until a work is finished, I’m always uncertain about it. It’s constantly shifting.

Audience Question: One of the things that really stuck with me was a line in View From Above where the character says, “The eye can see pretty far, but the hand is too short.” It speaks to a tension between bodily presence and what is seen. That brought me back to what you were saying about navigation and orientation, and made me want to ask: What attracts you to the moving image itself? How do you navigate, orient, or perhaps disorient the moving image?

HK: It’s always a negotiation—especially sitting with an editor. And of course, after working with me, they usually don’t want to work with me again. I give them a lot of freedom, but I also come back the next day to discuss what they’ve done, how far they’ve gone, and why certain choices were made.

The editor I worked with on View From Above was amazing. I would love for him to edit my next film, but he probably never wants to see me again. Still, he did a great job. One day he showed me something he had worked on. I watched it and got goosebumps. I asked, “What did you do?” I couldn’t even identify the music—he had manipulated something in a subtle way. Then he immediately removed it. I don’t like tricks. I don’t like to create goosebumps artificially. I want people to feel something from the work itself. So there’s always this back-and-forth. The editors want to help bring out my vision, but I’m also asking them to give me what I want—and what I want is in their hands. It’s a complex process. But eventually, there comes a moment when you feel okay with the work. Even if it could be improved further, they’ll often say, “That’s it. We’re done.” That is how we reach the final stage…

Audience Question: Anton, both you and Hiwa touched on the difficulties in artistic representation within systems that often reduce or misread one’s images. As someone who has also been working with film, do you face similar challenges in visualizing your ideas or feelings, and what role does process and chance versus plan and structure play in that?

AV: Well, yes, sometimes finding a visual language for certain ideas is very challenging. Maybe particularly so in film, because on the one hand the field of moving image is young, but its already so vast and we all spend so much time with all sorts of moving images, from movies to television, advertisements, documentaries, educational videos, cartoons and animations, TikTok posts—its endless. I am not sure that painting or sculpture ever had this type of omnipresence in people’s lives in the past. In this universe of moving images almost everything one can think of has already been depicted in some way, most of the time in a very cliche way. So to imagine something outside of all these representations and make others receptive to different language is quite hard. At the same time, is can be quite exciting to cut through all these layers of existing visualizations and produce something you have not quite seen before. There is great pleasure in this…

Audience Question: Hiwa, could you speak a bit more about the political context of the protest documented in This Lemon Tastes of Apple, and maybe explain what was being performed and chanted?

HK: Yes, the title refers to Saddam Hussein’s 1988 chemical attack on Halabja. He used chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians, and at the time, he had been calling Kurdistan “Allah’s paradise on earth.” The chemical gas was known to smell like apples—he ordered that specific flavor. Everyone knows this.

Years later, after Saddam’s fall, a new government was installed essentially by the Americans, who brought in contractors like Blackwater to supposedly deliver democracy. The film captures the final day of sixty days of peaceful protest. That day, the government started shooting and dismantling the protest. They burned down the stage where people were speaking. It became clear that these weren’t allies of democracy. Kurdish people were once again misled—we thought we had friends, but it turned out they were there for oil. The government was corrupt, and people realized they were being treated the same as before.

The melody I played on the harmonica is from Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). I liked the story of that film—how they were trying to bring a railway to Sweetwater. That stuck with me. It paralleled what was happening in Kurdistan, how they wanted to bring a new kind of “sweetwater”—but it was false. To play that melody, you need a chromatic harmonica—it shifts between D and D-sharp, a very strange sound. I’m not a harmonica player, but someone on YouTube taught me how to play it in two minutes. You have to inhale and exhale to produce the sound, and in the protests, people were inhaling tear gas and using lemons to detoxify. That’s where the title This Lemon Tastes of Apple comes from. There’s an earlier kind of fascism—Stalin, Hitler, Saddam. But what we face now is neoliberal fascism, enforced through economic models. Western countries were involved in that massacre, and in many other genocides, including the one that is happening now. I didn’t subtitle the chants in the film on purpose. I didn’t want them to be fully understood. Too often, when we understand a certain conflict, we put it on the shelf to come back it “later,” but that never happens. I didn’t want this work to be understood in that way. I wanted it to engage the viewer immediately, implicating them without giving them the chance to postpone it.

Audience Question: Hiwa, you mentioned jokes earlier, and I’m reminded of some of your other works like Wrestling with Bakir Ali or The Bell Project (2007–2015). Could you talk more about your relationship to the joke—what it means to you and how it appears in your work?

HK: I come from Sulaymaniyah, which is known for its humor—people there joke about everything. Even in Moon Calendar, you can see me almost laughing. The cameraman was making faces, and I kept it in the footage.

Humor is a way of dealing with difficult situations. You know this, coming from the region—how important jokes are for survival. Even people from Halabja, who were attacked with chemical weapons, were telling jokes in the midst of tragedy.

For me, the joke isn’t always funny. It can create disintegration with reality. It can surprise you. Like watching a man lying in bed, making rhythm with his body, and then suddenly you see his stomach and hear it. That kind of disintegration is important. Jokes slap you from an unexpected angle. They tell you something you didn’t anticipate. That’s why I once said, “I started an affair with reality.” When you survive three abortions and your mother tells you, “I didn’t want you—I tried so hard, and you still came,” then you come up with a sentence like that. You’re never the official man of the house. You adapt your body to fit through small windows, because you’re not allowed through the door. That’s the role of the joke. It requires elasticity, unpredictability. It produces something new—even for yourself.

Audience Question: Hiwa, your work clearly engages with cultural preservation, particularly of language. That seems to be a recurring element in many artists’ work, especially those from places under colonial occupation. I’m wondering how your work has been received in Kurdistan—especially in Bashur—considering that, with everything that’s happened, art often gets pushed aside.

HK: People respond in different ways. If we’re talking about the government, I’m probably the most disliked artist in the country.

When I returned to do the Chicago Boys project, I gathered a large group of musicians and we held discussions about neoliberalism and its impact on Kurdistan and Iraq. Initially, the government was thrilled. They gave us access to a museum. But once they listened to what we were actually saying, they reacted very differently. They didn’t say anything outright, but they sent people to monitor us. Eventually, we were told to leave and hand over the keys.

But the public responds differently. Some people really appreciate the kind of work I do—not necessarily the aesthetic, but the engagement. For instance, during that project, we cooked in the museum twice a week for three months. The museum had been built when Paul Bremer came to power, after Saddam. Because of corruption, it had never been used—it stood empty for twenty years. We reopened it.

Each screening brought new ideas, new people. They liked being part of something active, something that welcomed their input. The same happened during the protests. We didn’t know each other, but people started to gather and participate. The government was trying to suppress us, but we used gestures like music to push back. We went close to the militias, and it encouraged others to continue.

I don’t want to romanticize it. But during those four years I spent there, I heard many people say they had been on the verge of giving up. And somehow, they kept going. That means something to me. Not everyone reacts that way—many are simply struggling to survive. But that kind of engagement made it worth it.

Audience Question: Anton, you spoke about pedagogical experiments of Night School and unitednationsplaza as responses to the failure of institutional infrastructures, like in the case of Manifesta 6 back in the early 2000s. I wonder, what do you think about these types of discursive projects today, do you still see the model of a school as a viable alternative to usual art exhibitions—or has that shifted over time?

AV: I think priorities shift over time, but these shifts are also cyclical, and so the need and urgency sometimes come back in a slightly different shape. While around 2006 the need for a kind of a majority discursive art project had to do with emergent art practices that were grounded in excluded, overlooked, or marginalized histories and narratives, as well as certain theoretical ideas, these days the need for independent educational and discursive art spaces has to do with the kind of an attack on the educational sphere that we see happening all over the world. This attack takes many forms: bureaucratic, economic, political. It ranges from various types of “optimizations” that effectively shut down and eliminate critical programs, to defunding or outright banning whole universities, institutes, organizations, and so forth. So my personal feeling is that a space where an open, independent, critical conversation among people in the arts can happen is really necessary today, as much as it was twenty years ago.