 Hi, I hope you still have energy after this full day of debate. Not so many artistic events today, but talking about art and the effects that Painbrush Factory and the space is similar to this and similar discourses had impact in the last at least I would say 10 years for the community, I would say 15 or 20 and I like to present and I'm happy that so many guests are here also for him and I would like to introduce each of them and let them just say their name and affiliation or in what quality they are here. I won't say anything so I can give the microphone to Stefan and each of you can say... Hi everybody, thank you Lala. I'm not very sure about my quality, but the quantity is one. My name is Stefan Teichano, I'm the Executive Director of the Kluge Culture Center, an NGO that gathers many institutions and organizations in the field of culture. Probably I'm something like a entrepreneur, cultural manager. My name is Yulia Popovic and as we were talking beforehand with Stefan about our complex identities, please choose. I'm a cultural journalist for Observator Cultural. I'm a creative something, I don't know what they put on the website for collective aid. I'm also working as a counsellor in the parliament and whatever. Okay. Yeah and I'm also a student of law. Okay, I'm Istvan, I generally prefer to present myself as a citizen. I'm also a cultural contributor and since 20 years I've been working with the Auto Foundation. I'm Dan Pejosky, I'm working with him. I'm an artist and I try to work with everybody here. Hi, I'm Janos, I'm the foreign guest. I'm from Budapest, graduated as an architect and I'm working at the Contemporary Architecture Center, KIK, and I'm here to represent this association, NGO and our ideas about cities. I'm here to consolidate the majority of architects in this panel. I design, I teach and I promote. Each of you have been involved in the city life and independent culture life in the cities or having an effect upon the cities. Being architect or being artist or also activist or also fighting for the rights of the cultural sector in the parliament or abroad. Can you tell us also my questions won't be targeting all of you. You can answer when you feel like or when you want. We are wondering also after all these years and in the first panel also it was discussed that also the context has changed a lot since our paintbrush factory toured in the city not only us have changed but also the context. What do you think about the last let's say at least 10 years of Romanian context and the effect of art and independent culture on it? Maybe it's a bigger question or take it as it is, fragmatize it. I didn't want to take over because we are a majority but it seems to have a chance to start. When you invited us here and you send us the title of the debate. By the way do you know what's panel in Romanian language? It's a kind of a wooden material. A kind of industrial wooden product. Okay I don't go further. It's a nice piece of material which you can use for doing fake wooden furniture or whatever. Okay so I said I said that I had serious problems with the title. Do we need public spaces that support and produce independent critical civic art? And I may explain because it's related to your question. First thing is about public spaces. What's that public space? And in the last 10 years in Romania I think we had a shift of attention towards public space. And especially speaking about my profession of architecture we struggled with some results to transform public space from infrastructure to architecture that happened in the last years. And I can mention the fact that public space was seen like something we need to circulate from a place to another to lay our pipes of sewage or electricity or wires or things like this to park the cars and other things maybe 15-20 years ago. And we needed a lot of budget for doing that. And the most important thing was to plumb the holes in the street. But nowadays there are many public spaces which became pedestrian spaces which became spaces for events and other things. And we managed to orient some of the public or administration towards rethinking public space through architecture design competition. This happened in my profession and I will not go on. Before saying that do we need public spaces that support and produce independent critical civic art? No. Art is not produced by spaces. It's produced by people. Of course there is a relation with people and I'm prepared to talk about this but it's not the discussion I think it should not start from the space in this sense. Space is not producing anything. Space is containing us. It's facilitating. We are interfering in space but space is not, space is place or should be place. Just for the sheer fun of it. Actually I also had some problems with the title but with a different part of it. My problem was do we need, who's this we? And then as I read the title on it was independent, public and I was thinking okay so actually the guys were poor public. We will probably say yes but the guys who are against public will probably not prefer having it. Then again independent. The guys who are pretty much about dependence will not favor this kind of, will not need it as bad. So it's just a side note. Okay next up. Involved also in the public space. And also producing new places or new contacts that provoked authorities, provoked citizens. What is your taste after all this engagement? Actually I somehow feel that we are always tamed, conditioned, pacified also by dictionary. And because we had to use this dictionary of public, private, of dependent, independent and because we needed connection with other people who were familiar, who were monopolizing this kind of, this was, we started to use this although we didn't really much prefer this terminology but hey this was the language that they were speaking, we were using. Now what I see in the last let's say 10 years, 20 years, somehow the story of the Fabrica for me is that the crisis of 2008 cracked some real big concrete slabs and a little bit of earth appeared. And that's where the flower of Fabrica grew up but after the crisis passed and the happy people who are building the concrete city found this crack they started to oh a little bit of concrete, a little bit of concrete, oh a flower, fuck it. And this is the crisis of the Fabrica. The crisis was the crack in which the possibility emerged and then slowly it starts to be reconcretized again, the slabs are closing and now we have to reinvent ourselves as flowers also. About independence, what I see in the last 10 years after the moment of the crisis and the potentiality of recombination is that there is this phenomenon of depoliticizing the citizen and some of you may be familiar with the term gig economy. Yes that you are working contracts are shorter and shorter and shorter this is typically valid for cultural workers but this is actually happening in other terms too. It's gig politics, it's gig citizenship, it's more and more ephemeral that you are stepping up as a citizen and have a voice and have a political engagement. Well I'm a minority here from all points of view. I'm the only woman besides the moderator and I'm not an artist, not an architect and I'm not working with the city and citizenship in none of my abilities and many identities. And actually part of my work is well convincing everybody about the need for the artists to get out of the city because we have a lot of the all the independent social, civic, politically oriented art that we are talking about happens in a handful of big cities. While we have 46% of people living in the countryside where there's not a thread of public art whatsoever or publicly funded art or culture or anything except for the days of the village and basically I'm very happy to get out of Bucharest, the city which I love because there are too many artists and too many events per square meter per hour per day for it to be relevant anymore. So because it's the only place with enough of a captive audience and enough sources of financing and enough visibility in terms of press everybody wants in Bucharest and everybody's delivering cultural events for a very small bubble. So that's my I'm sort of displaced here because actually I cannot speak about these institutions and spaces in the city but I was actually thinking especially after listening to the panelists before this one about why we are so obsessed with having a physical space because this is sort of for the Romanian culture or the culture in Romania this is sort of a historic issue. We are basically stuck in a period between 1918 when the new Romanian state took all the spaces built by the Hungarian Empire and 1948 so we are there. We are reliving the fight of the non-public. No I won't I won't look for my ideas now I will do it later. So because you ask about the context so context is always changing and well I can be a bit more relaxed and tell you that I finally got invited to the Fabrica like 10 years after when they closed down right so as an artist but on the other hand I want to tell you that well my standard example is this like this country was divided in two by the notion of the salam with soya salami of soya right so the people who stayed in Romania eat that kind of replacement of meat and the people who left in the west were separated by this kind of division today soya is very healthy so what was once a subject of some kind of division between the rich and the poor or whatever is now the opposite right so the same with this we don't have as the panel explained before us the budgets are in question less funding for independence in so we finally have the chance to become radical and conceptual right right so if you look at things in in their kind of not natural but the progressive way any of this kind of switch of context is a chance to reinvent or rethink your position right there's an artist when in the early 90s when I start to be active in the in the scene I first started with the newspaper not with the galleries because the art in Romania at the time was super boring because nothing interesting happening in the galleries in the early 90s but the newspapers were a different platform right so I start in the 90s and somewhere in 1998 an American curator asked me wow but this is art in public space what you're doing in the newspapers what what is this public so as an artist and as a citizen I learned the definition and the switch of the context and I learned how to use mistakes failure unsuccesses missed opportunities and every kick was a kind of this was the this was the recipe and the trick how to use any kick into your advantage and I think maybe this for you here and by the way thank you very much for inviting me finally and finally I'm showing like in plan B right I made it to plan B so I think that's in spite of all this like emotional and very interesting statements about the soul in the morning I think it's a moment an important moment to look at yourself here all the work you did all the energy everything and I think you should do the book it was the discussion about writing down the book you should write this history down because otherwise they will write it for you so you should put it down you should put everything down because it's really interesting it's part of this okay I'm going to say something yeah I can tell you about the Hungarian context of this whole question and more especially about the buddhapesh context I actually have two examples to give you about public art in in buddhapesh one is something that we organized along the Danube there used to be one festival called dunapesh instead of buddhapesh and we helped organize it with the contemporary architecture for the southern geo to have a lot of more professional aspect and we thought about the public art installation competition for which very many entries came and so um in the context of the Danube for a matter of one week there were these very extravagant art installations all along Danube and this was a coordinated effect of individual artists coordinated by us and by the dunapesh crew this was funded by the municipality of buddhapesh and and it was something that people just started to look at and made realize that actually hey like there's something on the side of the Danube because I don't know how many of you know but in buddhapesh we have as public space pretty much non-existent shorelines of the Danube it's occupied by cars and it's not really public space well not in that sense of of of civic interactions and um and so it's very interesting to point that out and the other project I want to tell you about is is something that I don't even know anything about but I just saw it two days ago by chance biking on the side of the Danube next to the cars an art installation completely bottom up was set from the remaining woods uh driven down on the Danube and it was this guy just sitting on the edge of the river looking at the river and I just helped I just stopped and couldn't help but wonder like who did it why and how can I go down there and so it's very interesting that we like the the main question of do we need public space that invites uh actors to do it to do uh the art and uh and I think that uh I can agree with uh with you that it's not really the space that defines it but probably the lack of art so yeah I don't know how to draw a conclusion from this but uh I thought about these two examples concerning the question we all have to answer you said the question was about the the original question was about the transformation of the do you see the context and also the effects of art and culture within let's see the city as the first question but also getting out of the bubble it's also a good idea I'm not even around for 10 years in the in the culture scene um so and and I think that's one of the most important transformations of the in the scene after 10 years not that I'm here but the many other people here my first interaction we're actually with the with the with the fabric at the pencil and this is what inspired me to get into the into the into the culture field so I think um we have we are definitely more working with culture now at least include and this is also uh or especially because of the of the public at the pencil and my first my first interaction with the public hours when you guys were just starting and one of your colleagues came to me as a I was the president of the young entrepreneurs federation back then and she said we are doing this new space we are working on this new space maybe you can help us with some sponsorship so that that was the only connection between the the culture the artistic scene back then and probably the rest of the world or the rest of the city and I did manage to to to offer some good context then but it took me I think four or five years to to return to the fabric as a as a as a as a as a consumer as a as a as a as a person interested in what what what you are doing here um and after I did that I I started to to get the inspiration for my own projects in in in culture so I think this is the main the main transformation of the of the social and cultural context at least include uh this is the main difference between the present time and and 10 years ago there are more people engaged and there are more people inspired and I think that uh fabric has a lot to do with it because there are many little fabric us now uh around um before we started this conversation I asked this one if there was anyone from the city hall invited here and and and when we found out that they were and but they didn't accept uh I said okay so probably it's going to be me speaking on there be how somehow because they are our main patterns of the clean culture center um I don't know it's coming from the from the culture field now it's it's the the need the need to go on uh and and to reinvent it's it's kind of obvious but I think the context changed uh enough uh for all of us to to also question and re-discuss the relationship with the with the public authorities uh one one you're talking about uh supporting arts and and culture in the city because the only thing that they are doing they are doing right now in this in this field is to offer these these grants that are highly questionable as well um but but I think it's I think it's also time that uh that the that the artists that are interested in in strengthening this this connection put more pressure on them to uh to to offer some some spaces as well some infrastructure as well um some some will will will will remain activists and will will fight other battles other battles but I think there are there is a pretty important critical mass in inclusion that can actually work work with with the city like with the official administration to uh to improve this situation and also I think each of you in a way or another have the relationship with the authority national or local maybe some of you have some just to to go on for one minute since I have the mic um um I I think that they are they are activists and they are collectivists and probably I'm I'm I'm part of the second type um and I as I as I said I think it's important that that we would also try to to get this perspective of supporting the local administration and supporting the business sector to understand us better not only to to just claim to just claim default support from them so I'm I'm I think I'm part of this species and but the other the other species I was talking about the the the artist the the intrinsic artist has the same right to to to claim to claim support and to claim uh context offered to him so I think so I think now it's it's a high time it's high time with split responsibilities between the two species and uh because there are different uh battles to to take and uh I think they are they are undertaken okay there is the third also the private one just for fun all day we were complaining about oh we need to invite the political to to to watch us to see us to acknowledge us to understand us to support us etc actually we are forgetting the fact that above the clouds of the politics is the money guys is the chorchilla is the nicuara is the meds is and I can tell you 10 more names yes and the idea is that uh in my humble opinion the political clouds are actually just the guys who are getting the money from left to right and giving the allowances those are not the the the biggest guys the biggest guys are the money guys the the oligarchs that's it and we are always forgetting to talk about them but in so thank you for for bringing back the discussion also to the economics yes and to the private kind of economics so what I see is getting back to the idea of space I prefer to talk about this course of space and I'd like to talk about control of this course in space this course of space now if I take these two kind of controls controlled by privatization and control by political control then I can see a pretty heavy hand in the last years on independent culture the emergence of hardcore private actions and the logic of of private digestion of production consumption what not division of art and the second is politically controlling the channels the actors which is also done by agents by extensions of the ruthless or the the the crude political force as it is embodied but again these are not the actual actors the actual actors are the money guys there was some periods in which it was not so bad for example in the early 90s there were some international funds that could make you bleed like shorosh then then European cultural foundation then European cultural projects co-operation project that you could you could use these were some kind of bubble that could get you to international acknowledgement so you can get back and be a prophet in your own country many of us became known in Europe before we could get known in Romania before we could get known in Cluj then shorosh started to be drew the European Union started to getting European money was more and more a matter of becoming part of bigger than bigger networks cultural management the cultural ministry cut the the share of the Romanian actors they were supposed to pay they didn't and ever since then it is just dragging on dragging on always on the brink of bankruptcy that's that's the part and in terms of political control I I prefer not even to talk about national political cultural politics because it's such a mess chaos and unpredictable it is as it is just a background noise what I'm happy to talk about is local local context local cultural politics and how it is enacted through institutions through finances through financing logic to control all your discourse controlling the discourse in space and in these terms my experience not pretty shitty okay but more about this later the question of working with the private sector my my previous one answer was about a need to also support them understand us better and and I think for for some of us works quite quite well my my my first my first relevant project so to say touching upon culture and citizenship and public space was just in the park the festival I co-founded years ago okay there's many many things that are questionable about it but one one thing is that it it's a it's a culture project that has more than 70 private fund right now so I'm not involved with with it anymore but just in the part now is not it's only getting 10% local or national funding in this budget so I think there the the possibilities are the the possibility the opportunities are numerous as this one said but then the question is where are you going to draw your line your pink line or your your your ethical line when does this money pressure start to affect your your your art or your discourse so it's the classical question but I just want to reinforce that the possibilities are there and it's from my point of view it's it's obviously possible that we we can we can also think about other funding mechanisms than just local or national policy getting funds from the authority it's also how you feel you in certain games and want to feel aware about you in the I'm talking about the city game the urban game then what do you do you continue you work for the citizens and with the artist or you retreat or you defeat the authority or Julia mentioned earlier that maybe the idea for space to have a it's like a trap right so because then you have to run for you have to have the money for rent and then the bigger the space the bigger the rent so well I will I will link it to a question earlier in some kind of each one said about having a voice and how we lost the voice sometimes when things are very good you you forgot to talk because the things are good so it's nice our shows go through the catalog are printed you got invitation life is good so I will I will say Julia I will go for the space because somehow in the if you are not you don't have an address you don't exist and sometimes it's very complicated to maintain a certain integrity if you are moving around and you are very flexible but it is a strategy and decide this is a strategy to escape and go it can work and I'll link into the to what you ask Lala about talking with the people in power right well it never worked for me never so it's simply avoided so I am associating myself with the people who knows to talk with the people in power and I realize that a certain age and certain skills that I can contribute to all this kind of struggle with my drawings or my presence or my name or my signature or my body then I give it my give my body I give my name I give my drawing but I will never ever go again in this play of convincing somebody that I have to have a place in this world fuck you all no I don't want to convince nobody I I'm always in the last 20 something years I'm in a hybrid economy I I live out of my drawing and I did that from the communist and and I working I was working constantly so I generate my income all the time it was not easy not even today so I don't want to convince no minister no expert nothing that I have to have a place to show or a place to express my view but but I want to associate myself with you know I usually I'm invited and I come with energy when it's a beginning when people you know have a projection and things can go good so this is the first time I'm invited to the end or something which is can be also a beginning right so I think well I don't want to project necessarily an optimistic view or something but I want to say well we we have to fight for this voice we have to have a voice public space no way we have to claim it back because otherwise they will feel it with the untold festivals and video mapping and everybody will everybody will be happy right everybody's happy what beautiful so no no no this is a piece of mine too and I have a voice in this and I have a voice in politics too and for the first time in the post-1989 history maybe the next parliament of this country will have some people you can talk with right apparently the things in politics seems a bit optimistic right no actually what I wanted to say is that even if I'm totally out of place in the discussion because I'm not working with this I actually listened to a lot of similar conversations and at some point I'm not very I wonder it's a question that I ponder upon let's say we are so at some point obsessed with having a physical space that we are actually somehow not in place with what's happening as modes of production because actually we are now actually for performing arts for life performing arts space used to be a physical space used to be more important than it is today because now actually most of the theater and and then tends to get out of this physical limited space but we are stuck into this model because actually we never had that space and we we pray for that space even and and this you know somehow limits our modes of production because we we cannot get out of that of that place of mind which is the physical place even if everything in terms of how performing life performing arts are producing means getting out of this and at the same time you know the physical space is what is because from the point of view of the public administration to be something between a bride and a confined place to close down all the the menacing enemies you know it's like they have a designated place where to put the artist at least with in Bucharest with all the public institution it's like that we bribe somebody to run a place to confine everybody uh but is it why we need the physical space besides the the address that you are mentioning is it a gathering place is it because in in a matter of minutes in this kind of conversations we tend to jump into how to find out something like that and where to get it in in what neighborhood but what is it okay so I can actually relate to that question very much because kick as an institution or as an association as we call ourselves we didn't really have a place at first when the whole thing started I was in high school back then so I was not part of the NGO but it was urbanists and sociologists architects and activists who wanted to do something about the city because there was a lack of public discourse about the built environment there was not any programs about public space and any discussion on that matter so they formed this NGO it was in 2006 and they signed a contract with the government for a 10-year contract to put it in an abandoned factory on the well not the center of the city but not the outskirts of the city so in the middle zone after two years the contract was canceled and kick had to move and so ever since that yes we got kicked out and and so after that the association actually started to move around and for quite a long time it was in an abandoned office building in the heart of the city and for a while there we became the biggest architecture center in Europe because of the total area we occupied but then even when we didn't have a space we actually could organize our programs and we have more than 40 programs in the past 10 years that were organized every year there are at least a dozen different big projects which are in federal developed together and next to one another with different project groups but I think that the space is necessary even though we could organize it because as visibility for us and we are not individual artists we are an association so it's a it's more of a gathering space as you say but it's even in our name that it's a center and the center without the space couldn't really exist so three years now we are in a district and back that thing that you mentioned that's okay so how do we finance it we are in a district which allows us to and a lot of other art galleries to rent out spaces owned by the municipality for a very cheap price and therefore creating this artistic boulevard basically and so so I think that it's very important to have a space in that sense to actually have some visibility and in the case of the fabric of course the whole association as I have known it for the past one day but the whole association is linked to this space but I think that maybe in 10 years it has already grown out of the space and became something more intangible I don't like the division between those from the administration and the other mostly us the others and those from the administration while thinking about those I think who's in the administration is the driver from the city halls and the policemen the the counter the chief architect and the mayor the cleaning man and lady the lady and I don't like this at all so for in this case it's the fun you are you are a ghost or something working for the administration okay anyhow so salami with soya or without soya so that that was that was a division a very strong division and if you keep it right now I think you are a little bit lost because times are different division and barrier becomes like your your your friends become enemies well when when pencil a leoprecate no fabric are amongst so no so you can you can think about like what what once is a barrier can become a common ground what what the common ground can crack right so how we face this so we have I mean in my solution but I'm an individual artist I don't carry any organization in my back we try to make one and we did not succeed to legalize it we just forgot about it and so we learn how to face this new reality and what was once an icon of division can mean something different today right and I'm sometimes I'm amazed how if you live long enough you see these changes and well when the fabric and you appear you appear after we fight 20 years so that's what we gave you this reality now you you fought another 10 so it's a total of 30 and I think it's good so I think we have to adapt and to find possibility and bridges but I still think it's us and them say two more things yeah I believe in ephemerity temporality of public space very much and this is one of the basic characteristics if if you occupy it if you got an address address is private so you become somebody which lives there and this this turns into privatization of the public space so it's a lot of thinking around the definition but I still have some opinion from that maybe on your fifth at the end of the discussion so I want to say two more things at this point that you mentioned which one controls and power and I think there is power with control may turn into control and manifest into control and there is power without control and I think art is in this type of kind this kind of power it has power every time art is not controlling it's influencing but not controlling it's producing something but certainly and the last thing you see at this point is certainly you said we have to occupy or to claim back the space and I totally agree I think we we need to do something more than occupy or rebalance reevaluate the public space how is it used not to whom it belongs but how it is used because in the in the public space there is there are commercials there are festivals you mentioned and and this kind of all kind of manifestation for for the people which are organized and then you can find in and facebook comments like thank you mr mayor for allowing this to happen this happens right now many times thank you mr mayor which is the personality which synthesizes synthesize every good thing or every pleasant thing which happens in the city I think it happens in many cities or thank you mr president how you want to say just transforming or putting everything which happens in the public space on the shoulders or in the in the luggage of the in the file of the of the leader of the symbolic leader sometimes it's not the leader sometimes each one you said there are people with money behind and somebody is actually working for for them so reevaluation of the use of public space is my opinion for today and the last thing at this point some years ago I was talking to to somebody from from here from the paintbrush factory having a glass of wine and she asked me what do you think what should we do in the future and I said at that time move out from this place find another place be on move travel okay just shortly getting back to some some of the shortly to the space thing space has some meanings and as long as you you have space means that you have social status either you can find the dimension in which you can regenerate your social status and become actor in the general turmoil of negotiating meaning in the city or you don't so if you can front dimension like establishing a blog becoming an influencer having a newspaper having a tv and with this you can reassign your social status you are okay if not you need to resort to the classical things everybody will ask you okay your artist do you have a no fuck you so as long as is not as much not necessary as such or not necessarily necessary but it somehow people decode that you have social status or not to be a bargain this is this is the shoes and for me this is the end of the story of the space thing other than that some people need it as a sanctuary they need it as a space to organize to meet to redevelop their social relations to to whatnot like the guerrillas if they need a space where they can discuss their future plans okay um what was the question now i get into the question no no no yes um so look i think that this dematerialization of the fabric is a really smart move i hope you'll survive it because i really think so see the idea um look there is um i'm reading a lot of military especially tactics and strategy and the idea is be some of you know it's a temporary autonomous zone theory in which you don't anymore have one space instead you are like a constellation of little lights that travel in the sky and whenever the power shoots at you well they may kill one or two little stars but the target is still traveling it's so when you look look yeah there's a thing over there so that this is pretty much your chance to become somehow less vulnerable by not letting your power enemy to target your space and just to just to give you one example again me this is about much more discursive space about your capacity to control to generate meaning to assert this meaning in a discursive space which is finite there cannot be more than big things that are in public space at once talked about so if you are controlling one and reasserting the position of one you are suddenly becoming a dialogue partner and this is what i started to do uh in parku ferro biari lord for a long time we were generating the protest the circus the sky and in the end we got in the in the position the just for fun 30 seconds of x when yonica russ had became minister of transportation the same day i went to yeah who was the deputy for bese they said look really he made it ministry don't you want to call and tell him that he could sue pasca he can take back the the lease on the on the party etc what a nice idea hello who had a nice interesting idea two weeks later the minister pursued pasca and got the park back so somehow the the turning which was a little bit bad for us a little bit but city because uh i guess the city got back to the park they were not anymore clean all that they all that shit they gave us some money so we could generate generate the cart of the park and thank you very much it's a it was enough play fuck the bulldozers come so this you have your moments of contributing to again with teams with topics to the space and then the guys are okay children played you know that's your story but again your chance in the future is becoming less vulnerable by dematerializing by being your sanctuary being able to bomb like we lost sanctuary the part of the park over the other lord different dimensions for asserting your position as a actor yes you need status to become player in the game yes next up i think your question was on the role of of the artist what's next yeah i i have a dream that meeting such such this one would happen on a wednesday morning uh so so we don't we don't have to always make the art conversation go into the corner of the room in the in the weekend necessarily or like they are doing all these all these conferences during weekdays we should be able also to have discord this sort of conversation days we should have art shows before lunch i think this is this is something that's a new that could be a new plan for for for the arts in inclusion to to go out and get get that power get that influence by not only going to the public space but by also going into into people's lives and agendas and and and and offices and and so on and so forth so i think i think now that we are facing these all those typical challenges of a of a booming city that that we have vacation and very expensive housing and all these very complicated mobility situations so so uh i this is a perfect moment to for seem to make their point i think but but the role we can organize i think is just is by changing the structures and now going back to the idea of a space that's not that that that's also a structure that that that we can change so i think we should have a different uh imagination of space and where where art are in the city and including of the time so why why have a sunday or a saturday i don't know what day is it uh why why why have your your your spare time uh on this instead of making it and making this topic a very relevant topic uh for for for your working time as well i mean this is also that i think we should make your organization for some coffee and space and a place for weekly meetings for the people who want to actually organize themselves actually that's the place but actually that's the plan for now we only have a very institutional name that speaks about our intention to empower and some influence the city but now yes we are we are working on on on two physical spaces one will be open next year and hopefully the other one two years from now and yes this is the idea behind them they will be offered not only to our 100 member institutions and organizations but but to the whole city let's see how it goes also to continue their activity so yeah i think uh my colleague who will do our best please like the art let's hope it works and after that we we can give the microphone to the audience also no actually stephan sorry hmm always quoting you with the same you mean achieve leftist pose with the rightist instrument as i am quoting you correct yes yeah okay uh translating these chet-chet-chet terms hey in one year inshallah in two years but somehow i don't plan everybody happy so i can only have inside this very nice negotiation with an outsider i have can tell you that the total outsider that i see two things first on the that actually physical space in power the the fight for the public space in which was lost by artists in favor of untold then that what i and i did the apologize for my friends that actually work in performing arts includes but what i see i at some point start seeing was that all the energy for uh all the artistic energy went towards preserving the space uh and not in uh you know getting out of the place of the space that's why i'm i'm definitely wondering well i'm asking for you know this set of what a physical space need for performing arts because at some point it actually affects creativity and actually blocks everybody in a fight for uh you know for preserving the space and for and everything they create goes around the space and this is different than the fight for the right to a place to because the space for performing arts is basically a a sign of power especially if we are talking about where that physical space is based because nobody's going in the end upon us to use because they will fight for that that is my very humble contribution to the subject i know nothing about thank you thank you to to continue a little bit of the light to all right i got it so louder what is wonderful about art there are many things wonderful about what i'm mentioning now is that it is endless we can say that there are some pieces of art of which the artist is physical part and these have a kind of relationship but i think it's a temporary relation and there are there is kind of art mostly fine art of which the artist is not physical part maybe not even meet the art maybe not contemporarily so you actually basically asked about the role of the artist in the future for this i think the role is quite in its own way and it's making life that's even if it's showing you the dark the dark side of it's a way of giving hope by showing by identifying the fact by showing the dark side of that the clear role seems to modify as types of manifestation and this is something else wonderful about art and so on so forth and the last thing to mention about this is about this che che che when you say this when you pronounce i see the helmet of Yuri Gagarin which actually you know it was an artist from another empire all right and this guy Yuri Gagarin actually no Gagarin but Gaga that there's this saying they have it now in Hong Kong as the strategy to oppose the violence call it be water that's the strategy they have meaning fluid movable uh hard catch right so if it's the role of the artist in the city is be water right stay critical fight for every centimeter fight for every kind of uh bit of a role you have in the city right i mean i will fight for every centimeter of printing newspaper who have a sense or for any blog or for every space for every independent art or initiative in this town and i will not back down and i will not go in peace but you know i'll make every scandal possible and i think um i will never be untold right or never see you know so uh i will i will give myself for all important i i don't want to accept the fact that me as an artist i can live only in bankrupt cities right that's only my place when the city is bankrupt what so um and you know you as a cultural worker right so we are facing i'm coming from a culture where you mistrust the state now i have to mistrust the private right no and i'm an agent of gentrification in the main same time so what kind of a future do want me to play here right no no that's not that's not how it should be right i mean um when we speak about public space that's the story it's not about cars not about living it's not about cars not urban it's a critical space so you have to reconsider the critical aspect of and we have a voice and we know how to do it no so be water maybe the flow to the public also that was for a while well the question which was also the title of this panel and maybe you i know that you are not maybe the only and the perfect people to answer to it but maybe we can make an exercise of imagination who you personally think that uh independent art should be financed from the public money because there is there is this situation in which i was talking to someone who is a it's part he is part of the public of fabrica depends on other uh independent art spaces from plush and the what make me somehow not understand what's happening and how could i answer and this is why i came to ask you this question because i couldn't find an answer how do you explain to people who are actually art connoisseurs and whatever you want and they enjoy it and they like it but they don't think that all this support should come or must come from the from the public money is it something about the our need for art or our need the society for art or how should we explain this thing like imagine that you are not in fabrica depends on you are somewhere else and someone is asking you why should you do this if you find it not appropriate you cannot answer it's like sorry uh uh action you know it's time uh every question like this in every sense for every form there's somebody who that it uh cost less it be financed this that way or that first we uh we are as workers in the building all in the mood of in a self-explanatory mood we serve just to justify ourselves all right it's like facebook to justify all on facebook we are starting to turn over the education on us on why i will need uh big health why you need education well actually if somebody does there's one level which you can expect like a lot of people's own needs but the effort of claiming each and every one is a little and i will that's why on the other hand it's that simple you know this is uh the uh you know the cost this performance event you don't believe you don't think the art should should be publicly funded this is how much you should is your invoice it's that simple because otherwise you know it's like it's impact and it's uh killing sure arts there's no nine percent of in Romania is for more foreign publicly support uh it's mainly because as a nation poor for anything uh if we are all getting into the explanatory uh just a little uh mood all it will all kill us sometimes it's questions yes okay of course but but there are several talk later on uh pay for the art or the artist what's the level of payment uh when do you pay advance or are you paying excess taking case of failure and many many other cases but yes of course it has also wanted but does it work i cannot really hear myself so recording now okay i didn't really understand the part of the discussion about uh space needing space if the fabric i can reinvent itself because for me the question was not about can art exist uh or like the fabric could it exist as a delocalized relocalized the probably it could but the problem for me is not that the problem for me is that like uh cultural institution that for like 10 years uh produces surplus value surplus value in real terms for the city like the city the mayor the officialities can go to brussels they could go in europe and say we have artists we have civil society we have people engage and they are doing wonderful stuff sounds great that happens and 10 years after when this institution actually comes face to face with the ruthless logic of the market the housing market everybody's like yeah you're independent that's not cool like surplus value was produced for the city and now the city is saying like yeah but you're independent come on figure something out i understand that the independent uh sector can see this as uh and it should be in my opinion a moment for uh more critic more radicalization as dan said but we shouldn't forget the fact that this is wrong this is not okay what is happening is not okay and we should not only like yes we all the time need to reinvent of course that's those uh discussions are all the time value we uh valid we can have them all the time but the specificity of this is not so it is really about this the specific uh your question is also only specific to this time and it has in 2000 in the exrota in berlin and in 2000 it's in budapest peak or by actually you know uh probably uh that was a shame uh like what i'm yes of course not okay like an outside point of it's a shame but uh there are different ways how to deal with it uh one favorite uh piece of dealing uh with any uh trouble is with a protest say that way which i saw once was in leon and so they have a different culture of doing uh stations there was a big text theater for the theater theater they didn't crowd it they didn't have a discussion about what was i don't know i was but what i saw from it they occupied where and they two days of all out of the independence were there to the night making them them show themselves and that also way sure i like some pressure on uh maybe yes that should answer or could but i think that it's not uh like it is right but uh but it's not specific to uh to this shortly um surely you are totally and only you are right um we've been using not surplus value we've been producing natural pet remote city linger on some while the cultural pet and your and it sounds like how it's unfair now is the point when you say unfair you are claimed to first do site that you would now that's the that there are no natural it's not even be on your right leave all are negotiated but actually we did in first we all knew that we are value ceremony and sir is selling those for that that we were back the city of andy were giving it to us they weren't they that we were uncomfortable and sometimes painy then uh what was lost in play yes okay uh here is that there is nothing as exceptionally artists that that's a creation what not this is a dream of product meaning the art which negotiation regimes of production think sometimes make a deal sometimes don't and this is not a moment or also unfair trying to see can i in my negotiation that's all right no i think this should be a municipality i have a comment comment we did not lose did not title of your absolutely so that's it let's look at things as they happen uh but somebody else danger to lose sure of course they have serious problems this is not for for development is to uh make more public space in public buildings if you understand what i mean there is big deal of space which is closed which is not used 24 hours a day which is not used seven days by week which is empty during the vacations or so on so forth so i i see possibility of the extension of public space including possibilities for artists and for containing art in public buildings which is very easy in my opinion because the program the new buildings may have in the program in the list of spaces like cafeteria toilets restrooms may have space for art it can be funny in your years nowadays but it means so easy can have a certain percentage of space or a space for a certain amount of people together or a space for a certain use in festival ways and this may start right now or even even now it happens it may happen in hospitals it may happen in schools it may happen in state inspection for whatever or state agency for whatever this is user space with certain purpose and it's very possible if public buildings do not become anymore so private as they are now because of the institutions which are very much public spaces and at certain point you are afraid that if you do this public presentation also the real state will be attending to the discovery of new spaces in the city those time they were new or more fresh places that needed attention or attention to this but i think now the state sector is so clever they would discover it they already discovered it and so the download can give us a list of their properties i also asked it three years ago it's a list of all their public properties in the city including spaces in private courtyards in courtyards i have a house in which it's raining and it feels well wet and people get to the local places staying there's still a lot of spaces in the city on my municipality and third point i would complete also that our agencies are not there and i also tried to open up the eyes of the municipality for the Chinlalachia in that case for us as a failure and propose a very clear strategy for the authorities to how to engage the community how to give an office for the people from the neighborhood with them they prefer that easy way to keep the space close i would say i would say part of the city's success but so there are a lot of spaces like this and they say and today i also talked with the guys created in joys or who are working with us from 1990 until 2010 me and my wife we have a studio in the middle of Bucharest from almost the beginning we decided this studio is not to produce our own work but because it is in the middle of the city it's a real estate it's a cheap rent we can use it for the rest of the community so for 20 years we made that kind of alternative school meeting gatherings all kinds of stuff we've been kicked out did you heard about the age of care did your life been infected so anybody cared about this you keep talking to ten years so you have to claim that back i believe nobody would care you have to claim this back it's your knowledge shall work and i believe that's a new context out they don't need you out you know so you have to really really discuss this with authority or whatever i don't know we have to even wait but what we did being kicked out we went back to our hometown so as a general statement statement we failed we never get to berlin but we get to see you so and with the cards to do what you said trying to make alliances with an existing institutional situation and we really we discovered that they are this important institution like live public library where it's one of the most democratic space you can have there's no pay there's no ticket to enters all the age can come you know so yes install the this is now one of the reading you know the public library is like an art installation and it's there for a long term let's say so we realize this situation is here there are some platforms some spaces we cannot open again our home because it's our private home now and we don't have time but the library is open anyway so all the knowledge we have and all the resources we put there so it's you can't the entire collection of the day is there the park at anything is there all the books we got we could donate and stuff like that so and this was one of the questions from the entire day which are your allies what allies do you have in this city who is with you when something happens which is your you know just from outside or whatever you did include the participatory we're speaking with the mayor that thinks you're so successful because every other city is so way back really so I think you have to I mean we are in this situation and we gain a new perspective to it I think you are very strong really in this talk I mean I'm living in a former cultural capital no I'm lucky but really lucky so oh yeah it doesn't change it changes in a different very superficial way you know well the city got a truck a vehicle but it's tourist but it's not like we're kind of very consistent so I think you have to think you have to really use this power you're watching the path that we still have a link to the politics and you can ask him and he's coming to this meeting you know we meet here and this is people here and we're still here not the left right in other ones there are five people coming you cannot get people in my room anymore they can board in the five second so I think you should just use this power again and not just give it away so I understand if you don't want to comment on this thing but what you certainly see is that changes in a very much privileged position being so much supported politically financially etc and many of the people from actually come from or have their roots in the internet that's a really huge advantage and my question is to you respectfully can you imagine yourself as an institution with all this human power in it so it's so easy to just meet independent people and oh I feel this is an opportunity for you to step forward on this and become the real middleman and recognition helper of the independent cultural sector before access you should no no no no you should just also advise you I think this is a conversation that needs to be held in a relaxed way and during a very long time actually because it's not something that we can just address in the Q&A it's not complete and this we are me and my colleagues I think we are wanting to do a small or a big purgatory every day maybe and every month just to for us to achieve that dream where we could be that leader that is not so I think it's really it's really easy to question anything from the outside but just to give you a short information not only supported by the local city but also supported by the county and also supported by the ministry of culture and supported by the cultural mobility action by creative euro two grand by horizon 2020 and we're supported by the numbers in the city so so of course this is the story of my life the the banking people telling me I'm too much of a flower of our idea the managers calling me an artist and the artist calling me a manager and the politicians calling me an independent and the people calling me a politician and that I think this is the simple fact that this conversation exists and this sort of accusation exists already make us the people that you expect that the city would have my personal ambition is that when I when I would leave this project I hope that it's going to happen in three years this would be a project which will be solid and sustainable and it's the project that works as the media the true media is going to be through the five forces that we're trying to do together which are the cultural sector the academic sector the city society the business sector and the administration so I don't know sometimes it doesn't ten years are not enough to do something together to be that influence and that little manual asking me to me for us to be we are also I will also ask the audience if you all have some other questions not to monopolize except for I don't have any question but I can tell you this when you are like poor and have nothing your share right when the norwegian puns come they don't even have a problem right they will need the five-year rating contract I think we open up the floor for many new topics this is nice and also I work for the coffee from to show us more space because it's yeah we need space needs for the coffee and it's nice to be mobile in the city I just want to say that I just want to say that we're paying the rent but when we have it I also learned in my work in the neighborhood once I got out of the factory and it was an interesting experiment to go in the as we said Yulia earlier in the end of bonus tool we realized okay we didn't have an official space we were fighting for a space and then we hoped for a potential community center to be our like dream space for the community when we didn't have that and I wanted also to complete what Dan said we realized okay but there are other spaces in the neighborhood the library for us was the perfect community center and the ladies from there were great and also the the local bars were very nice places to be and also we realized to gather the community together we didn't find one space fighting for a green space so somehow this fluidity also like having the meetings in my place and our colleagues realized that the community we were working with it was very important and valuable for that open space but behind the lack of office in the neighborhood and all these frustrations that we accumulated also not having a fixed point on the map but in the same time and yesterday I had a meeting drinking beer and pizza in the cheapest place in the neighborhood I advise you also to go to Kokoba and yeah yeah if you want to gather the people and if you want to organize and mobilize I think you can find it in water and maybe a tea and coffee and I advise you also to continue the discussion with the beer and maybe same here and also I will let you are so famous here for having this kind of very optimistic very social left critical right so you have is a responsibility to keep it right that's a kind of a model not in general very active very active very proud as very fighting for you know now living condition and everything from the rest of the country the success is six percent of the here success also invaded us with other ways in which our city is not not anymore the city we dream of yes my call was also about just being aware that we are we are all part of the entrepreneurial city of the city that is becoming more and more entrepreneurial and how do we position ourselves it's our own responsibility and each of us takes the responsibility for that I'm not accusing anyone everybody knows there he or she or he's a very institution states in relation with this entrepreneurial city some are using that some are new coalitions are going to be formed and etc and you can see the dynamics of the city when I was talking with my colleague that we are tired I also we also maybe expect the younger generation to come and to be continued and together also and to fight against you but also I think we're done I saw the crowd and treated these days I was wondering new people in the city new personal dreams what how do they see the city of today do they know about Fabrica de Pensola and many of them of course not do they know that this existed also in my tour today a lot of people didn't know about the factory and today was the first time they arrived and it was nice always a good time to discover spaces that they didn't realize they existed so it's an interesting context here and then we do have a big planning planning with home and apart from of course so I was thinking in the past this is very spontaneous but still do in the past artists need to model and draw and inspire and now I think artists need enemies alright somebody to fight with somebody to oppose exactly this is one of the fabulous jobs of the future here artists do you want me to be or could be a job? I don't have to be both of the players and I think it's very disillusioning if you are just romanticizing the idea that artists should always fight that we always have to die of hunger that we have to be on the side of stuff it's really not okay no no no it's not dying of hunger, dying of hunger yeah thank you fat joe not dying yet because there is a night together and I will keep the microphone for my last presentation next event so keep your hands clean for you thank you very much I hope you will get more maybe excited or inspired or whatever just don't get down and be impressed if you can or not for too long I don't know but today at 10 o'clock the collective agathe the public defense will be leaving the party so you are all invited and we hope will be there and there is something that will help us to build some solidarity not just to fight against whom to fight because we have that already we just need now to concentrate ourselves with good to associate and to solidarize exactly and get drunk thank you