The government is afraid of creativity and wit

One of the most famous street artists, professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Andrej Josifovski, better known as Pianista, will soon mark ten years of creativity. He attracted the attention of the wider public with his unusual and some would say – controversial performances. After he wrote in front of the National Assembly last December with removable artificial snow "Mom, how come the horses rode people?!", he was detained. He is the author, among other things, of sculptures Golden Flower Catharsis, installations A spoon for the hungry, a portrait of Jovan Memedović made of plastic bottles and a mural of Novak Đoković on the clay of the tennis court.

For Vreme, he talks about the role of engaged art, how the authorities and institutions treat artists in our country, about the relationship between art and fear, as well as about his future projects.

"WEATHER" You were recently invited to be an ambassador at the exhibition Art Laguna Prize in Venice. What significance does participation in this exhibition have for you??

ANDREJ JOSIFOVSKI alias THE PIANIST: Recently, exhibitions like this are especially important for me, considering that here my work has been challenged more and more often due to my activist influence, i.e. engaging arts. This is a small environment where whatever you do, which is not according to the will of the ruling structure, is considered dissident action and "opposition-vandal" behavior. And that's not what art should be. So the confirmation of my work that I can't get here, I get at exhibitions like the one in Venice. When I say that I cannot get it in Serbia, I do not mean independent people and organizations, but cultural institutions.

Have you ever received support from a cultural institution in Serbia??

Neither my work, nor my creativity, nor the "Runaway" festival, which has already been held eight times, had the support of any cultural institution, the City or the state. That's why I started looking for my luck at foreign exhibitions, among really expert independent juries.

The work that you will present at the exhibition we are talking about is a portrait of Jovan Memedović made of discarded plastic bottles. What environmental problem did you want to point out??

Jovan Memedović is the man who probably invests the most efforts in the preservation of the environment in this region. He shows this every day with his advocacy and the show "All Natural", so he is perhaps our best ambassador for environmental protection. I got the inspiration for the work by watching one of his shows "Completely Natural" where he and his team rode a canoe on the Drina River, through a floating landfill. Later I saw him in the film by Boris Malagurski Chain weights 3 listened to him say that the people were ashamed and that they organized the cleaning of the river. This means only one thing - change can happen very easily, we just have to speak loudly about it.

Based on what you saw while collecting the bottles for this paper, Do you think that citizens are aware of how polluted our rivers are??

The situation here is painful, but it is not better in some other countries either. The topic of pollution is globally topical. In my work, I deal with the city and society in which I live, but if we scratch a little wider, we will see that a large number of other countries of the third world also struggle with enormous pollution. Those bottles that I collected along the Sava, they are our mirror. They show people's awareness and how things don't work. There are wild landfills everywhere, people throw unusable refrigerators, washing machines, stoves into the rivers... As if it won't harm anyone. I saw something similar at the Kotor Art festival, where divers were removing secondary raw material waste from the bay.

What are the authorities' reactions to engaged art and performances of prominent personalities in general, intellectuals, artist...?

This is what the authorities are afraid of. They are afraid of the criticism of some intelligent people whom they cannot influence. They have no way of fighting someone's ideas, creativity and wit.

You recently performed a performance on Nikola Pašić Square Funeral. Who is responsible for that if Belgrade is really buried?

We are all a little guilty. When I did that performance, people started commenting without understanding the point and the basic idea. Everyone focused only on Nikola Pašić Square, on the fountain that was there and the reasons for its demolition, and I wanted to point out something else. The description of the performance is "I love Belgrade", because everything here happens under the cover of false patriotism, as those who present themselves as great patriots call the rest of us big traitors and foreign mercenaries and thus make room for themselves to systematically destroy everything in front of them.

What is it that, in your opinion, currently damages the reputation of Belgrade the most?

We forget that our hospitals are destroyed, and that we treat children with text messages. When it rains in Belgrade, you can't cross the street because the water has nowhere to go. Nothing works and the infrastructure is almost non-existent. Certain suburban settlements, which are only a few kilometers from the center of Belgrade, have had no sewage system for years. This is a capital city that they call a metropolis, but in fact it is a kasaba, a little bigger village where a lot of things don't work, but that's why we have creaky squares and new, magnificent buildings that will probably collapse at some point.

A few years ago, you erected a sculpture on Bežanijska Kosa Golden Flower Catharsis, with which you said that Belgrade needs cleaning. Why did you choose this particular location??

This sculpture is irresistibly reminiscent of an element that we all have in our toilets. The idea was that it symbolizes the purification of a city and a society that has definitely gone in the wrong direction. That brush was placed on the Bežanija hair as a counterpart to the Belgrade hair To the winner, which the Belgrade gentlemen once called a mockery and did not allow Meštrović's naked sculpture of a man to be placed in the middle of Terazi, instead facing the former Austria-Hungary from Kalemegdan. For me, that elevation is the counterpart of Bežanijska Kosa, which is on the other side of the city, a loess plateau, which also offers an excellent view of Belgrade. Given that I have been organizing the Runaway street art festival on Bežanijska kosa for almost eight years and that it has become a kind of urban district - an open-air museum, the message is that it is necessary to turn a little culture towards the city (the antipode of To the winner), because that is what we miss the most.

How much the audience in Serbia understands street art and how much it is valued?

It is difficult to talk about the future of street art, because it is the only bright art today. The street is a free space, and this form of art is completely free. There is no need to flatter gallerists, museums, ruling parties and private funds in order to have one's works included for exhibition. The problem for those who censor arises when the audience grows to an entire city, state or region, as was the case with my works. When a free people can judge, then there is no place for someone else to decide the value of art. If the people for whom this art is created appreciate and accept my work, my work is done. That's the only jury I respect.

You announced the exhibition and the book, which will be symbolically called "The pianist - previously known to the police". What can we expect from these projects??

The idea is for it to be a collection of previous works, but in my selection. I will try to illustrate what has been the most important in my work so far and through some accompanying texts and explanations to give people an insight into my creations on the street during the past ten years of active work. There will also be anecdotes, I will write about various events, including my first encounter with drawing.

In December, you were arrested for a performance in front of the National Assembly. What mark did that incident leave on you and your work??

That work was just a simple intervention that pointed to the horses on the sculptures, which actually rode the people. It is interesting that all these actions were made by them and not by me. They are the ones who arrested the artificial snow, if they didn't, that work would have had a much smaller effect. For me, it certainly would, because I had a similar performance just a few weeks earlier at Vuk's monument, when I quoted the words of a minister at the parliamentary rostrum in a similar print, but it passed without media fanfare and few people know about it. These are situations in which they themselves contribute to my message being sent. I still haven't received any call for that case with the horses. At first they wanted to prosecute me criminally, but then they did an inspection and saw that there was no damage, so they tried a misdemeanor, but we'll see what happens in the end.

Except for the most recent encounter with the police, was anyone else particularly impressive?

Even when all this started, almost thirteen years ago, the police officers were shouting at me from their cars: "Picasso, Picasso, what are you doing?". There were several interesting situations, so I got the inspiration for the name of the exhibition from various encounters with the police during drawing and actions on the street. On one occasion, I was given an ID and the policeman looked at me for a long time, then he looked at my ID card, and finally he said to me: "Pianist, we asked you to draw for us around the station." I am aware that after all these years of active work there I have a record.

Do the potential legal consequences of your work scare you, or does it motivate you to resist artistically??

I have to admit that whatever I do, I usually don't think about the consequences. Because if I thought about the consequences, then I wouldn't be able to do it. I think we would have many more successful creators in this field if they could overcome the fear that is very present here. There is no place for fear in art, these are two things that do not go together. The absence of fear is what separates an artist from an ordinary decorator.