Solidarity in the Yugoslav Wars

Asia Tsisar: What I believe I've learned is that, with the outbreak of any war in any part of the world, the first thing community needs to face is the outside interpretation. And the tricky thing about it is both that it is, in a certain way, a prisoner of that interpretation.

And for me, former Yugoslavia is important here, because it was stereotyped by many narratives, but also somehow managed to create solidarity between at least art communities divided by the war.

So maybe let's start there.

Ana Miljanić: This is a lifetime of experiences—not only my own, but learning from other people how to think through what you just mapped as a list of questions, which, you’re right, comes as a package.

The problems of interpretations, problems of solidarity, problems of thinking through the forms and strategies—everything comes at once, together with the misery and hurt and empathy for people. And you could know everything about it, and then again, every day is new. I don't need to tell you—now in Ukraine—every day has its own challenges, and nobody knows how to prepare for it.

And you don't want to be disconnected from that reality, however painful sometimes that reality is, because from those realities come those direct insights about not only what is world politics, but resistance strategies, which do create the real material structure of solidarity. Every day, living through this.

I always remember my friend, Ada Čapić from Sarajevo, when we finally met after the siege, and she said there is this special kind of meaning and purpose which war gives you—unfortunately. Even when you are in the city which is under siege. But staying alive, staying human, a person who could not only survive but think and create, is such a mission that once it is gone, you only then understand what kind of reality you're operating with and how this is untranslatable to anybody who is not there—not because it's complex, not because of some imagined cultural difference, but because of the set of questions you are simultaneously answering to. And we always need to understand that.

And to be frank, I also think about people who are distant from a war. They also have their own routine. You know, routine is above the existential.

Having said that, I think it's a very good question—about how to translate. And the question of representation is always a question of culture and art as much as politics.

And back to the Yugoslavia situation—in the end of the ’80s—the world went from what we thought was the end of history. Oh, how that was wrong... But it was also a time of renewed belief in some kind of world order, return to human rights and international law. And amidst all this new energy and optimism, one place was falling apart. And that's what we know as the Yugoslav wars.

And it's not one war. It's a set of wars, right? There was Croatia, there was Bosnia, and of course, there is Kosovo in the end.

And I always remember, during the ’90s, diplomats, peace envoys would always read some books about the region—how they say, this kind of idea of regional knowledge. And there is an anecdote, which is not necessarily true, but it's an interesting way to think about it.

There was a book by Robert Kaplan called Balkan Ghosts, which is a long durée kind of attempt to explain that ethnic hatred and religious divide existed in this part of the world forever. And you know how people like to write books to conclude how the present was actually made by the past, and there was actually no way around it. And Balkan Ghosts is one of those books, explaining that this was always here—through literature, through culture, through history. And now we are living this war.

And the anecdote goes like this - that some of the high-level politicians in the West who read this book, they were hesitant to propose any peace or a deal, because they said, oh my God, this is way too deep for us to act. It's not like being simplistic and saying, guys, this needs to stop now. It's actually the other way around—saying, oh my God, like, we could never solve it.

And I remember bodily the end of the ’80s—this kind of what we now call the rise of nationalism, which did come first from culture and intellectual circles, and then political circles, and then it became the background for military aggression, and crimes, and wars. And when you think about that—explaining the situation—you need to understand that this kind of media way of explaining things, it depends also on its own informants: people who have authority, the people who already served as explainers or guides through the complexity of some place.

And I think we need to recognize that those people—intellectuals, politicians, artists—also were thinking something which was not fully clear to them, because there were so many elements to it. But one problem with explanation, which precedes interpretation, is that you're explaining something that should make some final and total sense. And this is why that happened, right?

But in situations like a war, or an upcoming war, or a civil disorder of any kind, we cannot understand what are the potentials of those situations we are in. And we are explaining some acts and explaining why something happened, but we are not explaining what is happening. This is not only about the facts, but the interpretation of the facts.

And I think what happened with Yugoslavia is that it was clear that the nationalism was around, it was clear that there were people who would radicalize this situation. Without doubt, there were warnings, but no one actually could predict the horrors which some of those movements—some of that kind of freeing of the evil—would really produce.

There are places in what was Yugoslavia where the evil of what had happened there cannot be predicted. I'm thinking now about places the world doesn't even know about—like Prijedor—, very early in the Bosnian War. People were made to wear white fabric around their arms if they're not Serbs, and thousands of children were killed, and ethnic cleansing was really neighbor-committed crimes.

And again, going back to Ghosts, that doesn't give any excuse to those in power. It's just to understand that, even with the most rational plans, we don't know what could be unearthed and what may happen.

So what I'm trying to say — those interpretations which are going outside, right? We could think through the paradigm of translation, translating to others, and people do that very often. But for me, the question of interpretation always has this kind of inherent problem of explanation—because while you're explaining why something happened, you're also lagging the moment of now, and you're kind of missing the point of what the future is, if it's not some kind of restoration of what it was before. And unfortunately, things will never, in any war, be like before—like, there is no restorative kind of logic. But there is a reparative logic. That's a kind of way to think about it.

And then, of course, there is a question of how solidarity works beyond everybody taking a course in Ukrainian or Serbian or Croatian history and becoming an expert of historical and political and social forces leading us to this moment, to borrow the phraseology of that thinking.

Asia Tsisar: That's a very interesting point, because I believe that the common, let's say, imagination gives us the picture that, in order to be in solidarity with someone, you need to understand them. And therefore, you need to learn as much as possible.

And this question of trying not to explain, but just be in solidarity, was also raised by one of my previous guests [1] in relation to the history of colonial studies and the feminist movement.

So the point is - we don't need to understand in order to recognize the right of the other person or community to exist, to fight for their rights, and to protect their rights.

Ana Miljanić: There is, of course, the way to say we all believe in the rights, in this kind of abstract Cantian ethics idea. That's one way of not understanding each other. But the second way—which is postcolonial theory and feminist theory—is not understand it but still have a factual relationship to it. And this is a much harder, messier concept, because you don't want to assume you know how somebody feels under conditions you are not in.

On the other hand, you can—and probably should—have empathy, even if you don't understand the whole experience, if there is such a thing.

And we do know now, in the world—in Ukraine, in Gaza, in many other places—places which do have history. And if you kind of start reading all those histories and complexities, they will somehow prevent us from acting. And this is not only about the war—it's about changes, democratic movements, peace movements.

They do envision the new reality and the new worlds they want to create, but they also constantly need to fight this complexity. And those two things are not excluding each other—through the networks of solidarity. Because in solidarity and fighting together—and we know this from art—not everything will be translated perfectly, but the things will be recognized on different levels, some kind of meta level of right and wrong.

And I am a believer in art, and I really believe that what we call culture—it's really art and some other things. They do make complexity still work. They could think in that way.

And when you were in Belgrade, making the exhibition—which we are still very proud of, which, I remind you, was called Is It the Same?—you were actually fighting one part of that question: the part in which people assume that, because they went through some things, your things must be the same, right?

That's a very important thing about interpretation—not to interpret things in such a way that people think, oh, I know what that is. Because they don’t. We don’t. But, on the other hand, not to interpret them in this ghostly way I just described, in which they're unsolvable.

But what it tells us is that thinking and choosing and recognizing is not the same thing, right?

There are those ideas, but then there is experience. And if you overemphasize experience, you're also making an emotional appeal to others, but you're kind of distancing or even fetishizing this experience in such a way that you're saying: nobody could ever know what we are going through, right? And this is kind of true—but this is true for everybody, every day.

But understanding and feeling, and empathy—those are different things. And then how, actually in practice, ethically, this shows itself—are also not the same thing, right?

And then an important and crucial, I think, way to understand solidarity is that those are temporalities not of now, but the long months and years of passing without actually an action to stop what is going on. And of course, there's kind of low intensities and high intensities, and the way they create the temporalities which are different.

And this was, in a horrific way, clear during the war in Yugoslavia—that even the places which are two or three hours away by car were going through different temporalities of the war. Not only battlefield, but just through different pressures and to hold different kinds of logics of horror.

Asia Tsisar: Yeah, I can recognize this feeling. You know, war draws a lot of lines between people—and probably many more lines than I would have ever imagined. And it's not only between those who are outside and inside, but also between those who left the country and those who stayed, people who remain under occupation and people who become displaced, and even between different parts of the country.

I see it now in Ukraine—how, in the frame of one war, different regions live through very, very different experiences. And it's not to build any kind of hierarchy between them, but just—sometimes it seems that they fight their own, untranslatable-to-others type of war.

And then there is this question of communication—and the possibility even to communicate—for people divided by those lines.

Ana Miljanić: I would like to introduce the word familiarity. Which is a very tricky word when the war is along the lines of differences. The Yugoslav war starts from the assumed familiarity. We lived all together, people collaborated in culture and arts in many fields before the war started.

Well, there were definitely some peace movements, but it was not so big—especially in Serbia—as it seems today. We should not forget that some supported then Serbian leaders because they were thinking they were saving the others by invading them. Kind of logic which is not that mysterious to you.

Asia Tsisar: We are familiar with it, you know.

Ana Miljanić: Something which you can understand. And it's also the way the familiarity works, right? You kind of say, I know what is good for you. Let me show you.

In the Yugoslav wars, I think what is very specific is that there were still, at that time, a lot of people who couldn't find themselves on either side—so-called Yugoslavs. People who found the way to see the reality, but also connect with those who were against the evil, against the war, in some meaningful way.

I've read a couple of books which were trying to say - “Well, you know, the peace movement was trying to make the connections”.

No—those connections existed, and then suddenly we were in war, suddenly we were on the side, suddenly we were on some scale, which is not a scale in which we thought about ourselves or others, right?

For some. Or people were kind of falling into the line of their own side, because the tragedy of what was happening—the scope of it—was so large that you were hopelessly fitting into whatever was the narrative of those perpetrating war.

However, I think what made networks of solidarity work is the actual connection people had—whether they were family, work-based, artistic-based friendships. And most of all, the feminist and the women's solidarity and collaboration, which never stopped.

There was a certain kind of modeling happening afterwards, but also during the wars, right? Modeling in how to help, how to support each other, how to produce together, how to exchange. The point was to exchange it between the parts which were in war. There was a lot of need from inside, for people who collaborated before, to collaborate again.

Of course, the lesson of this is not let’s have one Ukrainian and one Russian artist paint something together. The point was that… See, that’s where the code of this is different, right?

There were people who collaborated before the war, who wanted to collaborate, who wanted to exchange, show artwork together. And learning from that experience. The point is, you know, we still speak of the first performance from that part which came to another part, or the first writer who… Those were not massive events, but they never stopped from the beginning of the war until the end.

I think the question about forms of that collaboration is also a question of ways you change the way you position yourself.

Of course, we had friends and collaborators. We didn't need to explain much, and we cared for them. We worried what would happen to them—would they survive, would they have enough to eat? That's one part of it.

The second part is, of course, from what position I'm speaking. And this kind of general peaceful position was not enough, because by the time we started communicating and working together, certain things had happened which changed things forever. There were crimes and ethnic cleansing…

And that tells you everything you need to know about restoration—there is no back. But there is forward. And that forward does have in itself part of this friendship or affect you had, right?

And I want to paraphrase some of those conversations in the ’90s when we would go to post-Yugoslav meetings of theater people or people working in visual arts. But you would go to those places in a kind of different way than before the war. You're now somebody working in Serbia, right?

So, to paraphrase, my friend is like: “Well, I became Serbian. I wasn't feeling it, but I became one so I could be critical of my own government, so I could have a position from which I could actually speak about this”.

And this complicated reassertion of identity—it doesn't work the same in all the parts of Yugoslavia. But there is this kind of realignment, which you're going through not because you necessarily want to be on that side or you want to speak for it, but to be a critical part of some community, you need to belong.

Because the whole story from the end of the ’80s until today Serbia is about: do you love your country, or are you part of that community whose self-hatred of your Serbian part is making you say those critical things, right?

And this is the whole history of European critique of European modernity and colonialism and all of that—that being European probably should actually assume being critical of Europe.

But the broader question is - how do you, in the war, assume a certain kind of identity—not to sit in it, but because you don't have space to speak if you are not recognized as part of a certain community. And you do assume that position by accepting both the things you like and the responsibilities which come with that position.

And this is a kind of longer story, which I think is not that much written about, but it was very much a part of those solidarity networks.

And I remember the ’90s as a time when we were talking a lot about the disappointment in some people. Like, the work they did before—books, art, culture—is not fully predictive, right?

You would think - That person must think better—and they don’t. And somebody who wrote about the futures of social equality is fully convinced that this is a very kind of justified cause. And let’s continue with this war.

So what I'm trying to say… You try not to be personal and I'm one of those people who doesn't want to be judgy. I became really interested in how the personal became very important in solidarity networks.

And people would ask you—you would come to the events and they’d say, How is that person doing? What is he thinking? Because there is a lot of that wondering: how is it possible that somebody who always looked like a vanguard of new thinking could be supporting something horrible?

And then of course, the best of us will ask: What is it with us that we didn't see this coming? Or we didn’t understand that this is possible?

Asia Tsisar: Yeah, disappointment is a very good word here. And I probably still, every day, get confused by the comments of some people whose thoughts used to be important for me,

but also by very basic principles—you know, they teach you in school about, like, what human rights are, that there is some kind of system of international order. And then, how in a critical moment, suddenly, those become an object of interpretation and negotiation. And you're like, Why?

Ana Miljanić: I really like us to speak about it through the idea of disappointment, because it's not personal, right? It's way too large.

I was sitting at some… After our performance, there was a discussion—and one very young person, a couple of years ago, said: “Listen, this is very interesting, but can you tell us how we could make sure that we always stay on the right side of history?”

And I was like—Absolutely!

It's like, I refuse this question based on two things. If you're only trying to stay on the right side of anything, you will probably not know what the right side is.

But more importantly—what is history? It's a kind of interpretative narration of facts. It's not the history any state—even a state under siege—should have our alliances to, but to other senses of right and wrong, and principles we believe in. And they all—from art to law to ethics to religion—demand that we, every day, put them in practice, right? And that's non-negotiable.

Like, the idea of “lessons learned” is an idea of actually constantly learning and reading and understanding different ways of thinking, only in order never to stop thinking and feeling. And when we can't feel, we can't—but we kind of hope we will.

And this activism is not just the idea of being some kind of active human in the world, but—I'm going back to these kinds of questions—what we can do, what we started with, to those days and temporalities we live in, and which we do need to make sense of.

One more thing which I think speaks to this kind of disappointment, which radicalizes some people in this network and empathy and understanding and the willingness even to be understood could cease when you see so much suffering and nothing is done. And this is the disappointment with yourself—your incapacity or impossibility to do more.

Just think about some event in ’95 we had in the Center—it was in the days leading up to and after what we now know as the genocide in Srebrenica. Then, we didn't know, but we knew something horrible would happen. And just to be clear: I believe it was a genocide.

We called this event What We Can Do. And of course, you could answer instead of me: Nothing, to stop the killing in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

So this kind of knowing—that you are desperate, that you cannot do anything—and that powerlessness does radicalize people in this network. And this disappointment is also a part of this energy, because you cann’t, right?

And then you still kind of ask yourself—and I think you always need to ask yourself—”What can I do?” And not to just say, Oh, we did a lot, we sent $10 to the Red Cross.

But just asking that question is something which comes, I think, through anybody for whom war was a formative experience. You ask yourself: “What can I do?” And for most people, the answer is not “nothing,” but just understanding that moment of being just a witness of something you cannot help with or stop.

And that understanding, that feeling, will help many people who are wondering why people are not looking for the middle ground, why people are not negotiating—because they went through so much of that God, this needs to be stopped now, and now, in this very moment!

And then—watching it—and being hopeless.

Asia Tsisar: I think you've raised an important question, because one of my confusions with the idea of solidarity—of course, the definition of that word is always an open question—but especially in the art world, when we enter the field of it, we kind of cross the line and step out of the safe zone of theory and abstract constructs.

We start to deal with something extremely real, like lives and stories of people. And then we kind of absorb or soak their reality into the rules of the art world. We invite artists from vulnerable zones and communities to literally exhibit their experience—to show others what the war is. And we call it the gesture of solidarity and support. But is solidarity the same as attention?

Like, maybe war made me a very emotionally empty person, but sometimes I ask myself: What’s the point of it? What exactly are we trying to reach with those actions?

You know, of course I'm not that naive to believe that any exhibition can stop war. But those acts and gestures—you know, this idea of important exhibitions dictated by the news leads actually perpetuates further stigmatization of communities and places affected by war.

Because suddenly, to visit the exhibition of Ukrainian art or Palestinian art becomes a political choice of some kind. And you enter those exhibitions with the predicated knowledge of what it is, what you will see, and how you should feel about it.

Ana Miljanić: Well, listen, there is a certain kind of cynical humor which comes from living through war, right? And then I always remember this phrase some of my friends in Bosnia used—when you would mention something, they would say, "Is that humanitarian something or cultural something?"

I'm not a cynical person, but I understand it’s funny. And of course, overhyping this inspirational side of solidarity—it's kind of ironic.

And the art market is just unbelievable. It’s a Ukrainian war, we need to have Ukrainian artists. Let's not even repeat those anecdotes of journalists seeking specific kinds of victims.

Still, after so many years, I think about two possible ways of thinking about it. One is that when everything goes—and unfortunately sometimes comes back—some of those people involved in solidarity gestures, involved in fighting not only for themselves but for others, trying to make bridges, being maybe absurdly wrong about what the effect of those things is, but still trying, will be important one day. Not as heroes, not necessarily to have a monument, but as a light through all of this mess.

And I wouldn't ever look down on this, because I saw it play out. They will be important for those coming after us, and they will be making sense to them.

And in a very important way, those voices and gestures do have some effect—because what would be worse off without them.

There is a lot of, you know, useless, formal, expensive festivals or programs dedicated to your well-being. You know, one of the things you start having a really hard time accepting are those kinds of formal gestures of empathy, because they irritate you and you’re like, I would rather not.

But then imagine the places, imagine the situations without any—and then you’re thinking, okay, this is not the worst.

There is project-based, unfortunately, art—but also work on art, right? I don’t know if you guys use that term, but we call project art, like art for the project, right? And then there is this massive production of something which is not necessarily in need of being produced.

And whenever I'm critical about all of that, I'm reminded by colleagues that yes, project-based art is horrible as a principle, not always as a result. But then there are living human beings who happen to be artists or cultural workers who do need to eat and continue. And those systems do still support the sheer existence of those producing, creating, and writing about art. And that happens to be true in situations of solidarity and war—you do stuff which also supports somebody's survival. And those are not easy questions.

It's also kind of—what is meaningful? What is provocative? Provocative in a good way, which helps us think or feel different things? Or something which is just a use or appropriation of the situation to make more political art of some such.

We did this research—actually long, long interviews with over 30 individuals.

The project is called—Dejan and Simona were kind of interviewers—but it's called Art After Crime [2], and we talked with the major artists, curators, and producers who did the major works during the war or after the war related to war crimes. I will not quote the name of the artist, even though they’re phenomenal, just for the purposes of this discussion.

One is this shame some of them feel about becoming successful on that topic. This kind of very young artist who came in the 90s—and of course, that was a subject for them, and nobody ordered it or told them this is your way forward—but they did art about what was their life, and it was war.

And then they did some really extraordinary pieces of art, which, of course, because there is this attention—which you know now in Ukraine—for the artists from the region became immediately part of the world art market.

And then they became very successful in major collections based on the art about crimes, or about the war, about their own experiences. And that creates very complex ways of thinking about your career.

And of course, those who are not comfortable with that are the best artists. Being uncomfortable with your own success is, of course, a good part of art.

And the second thing I learned is, of course, how those works of art are now being recognized as great.

And I want to tell you something about the word important, right? A lot of those formal gestures which make you emotionally empty are based on this word important. It’s important we do something for Ukraine. It’s important we do something about Palestine. It’s important—like, importance is an obligation, but it’s not a genuine motivation for things. And under this “important” umbrella a lot of bad things are happening.

But once you create work which is both good and recognized as important, then you become part of not only museum collections but of this kind of commemorative culture, which is very dominant in this part of the world—not because it's recognized by the states, and especially not the one I'm coming from—but just because culture is mandated to keep the memory and anniversaries alive, because courts and societies fail to do that.

So culture suddenly remembers and must produce those works, must produce the events and festivals. However, this work not only made you successful in this kind of uncomfortable way, but it also ties you into something which is not artwork anymore, but now is over and over interpreted as recognizably illustrative of that event.

And those are very interesting subjects for us to think about, because the answers to the question—are those acts of solidarity when we talk through art, right, and through culture—can those be evaluated? Can we say that something which is about the important subject is bad art or good art?

Are we still art critics? Are we still criticizing the market of trending wars and misery? And on the other hand, we do recognize, on the longer scale, what we have learned from artistic practices, from curatorial practices—how rare, of course, it is to see some work which is meaningful, how they create their own problems, and how you actually must stay a critic, because there will be something really good.

There will be something which will be changing not only the art world but our way of seeing the world, seeing that experience. Something good will be among those things. And if we are not engaged with this—if we just give up—they will be piled up with a lot of appropriative things. So that's my answer to your question.

Asia Tsisar: What you're saying is such a paradox, because I was curious to have this conversation also to understand if we've learned something from the past. Now I feel like we haven't learned anything!

Because all these questions are things I—and people of my generation—are constantly thinking about. You know, these artists who become important because they did important works and became famous because of the war. But also this illustrative thing—you know, there are places in the world where you can be an artist who makes art. And there are places where, as an artist, instead of art, you produce illustrations of historical events—and you will always be recognized for that. People will be interested in your art as commentary.

Ana Miljanić: Aesthetic judgment needs to stay alive. That’s what I mean when I talk about against this kind of formality of the market. Of course, cynical observations about the need for more artists from vulnerable zones in major exhibitions and all of that.

However, I think we did learn. tons of things I’ve learned from looking back at my experiences in the 90s. But not in the sense that I would ever sit with you and say, you should do this. I’d tell you, you should do this, if we’re talking about the ways of how we can still be fully engaged with what we do—and in that sense, we do art, right?

On the other hand, this idea of importance shouldn't take away our capacity to see things when they come to us as new. There are experiences we can recognize, events we can recognize. It’s always good to keep in mind that there are differences—there are things we will not understand.

And the institutions and big art funders, they tend to think they’re learning from the best examples. But there’s something unique about every model of solidarity, and about every form of political or anti-war art. The best examples aren’t replicable in the way funding institutions often want them to be—you know, how they say: “lessons learned and let’s apply this to some other situation”. It doesn’t work that way.

In a certain sense, Yugoslavia—along with some others — is a place where this idea “oh, we have a war, we need to support solidarity networks” was born. There's a big story, which is an interesting story, about how, especially in the cultural field—through the work of many, the Center just being one of them—independent institutions there was this way of learning from it for the future wars.

This process took a lot of interesting people looking at those - now you were becoming a case study - . and some people claimed a lot of successes and some people less.

This idea of applicability, that kind of learning from the past—it’s dangerous, of course, but it also shows that we cannot possibly re-applicate all the conditions. However, free and less formal or whatever those projects and applications are, we still all the time judge based on a certain kind of assumptions of the conditions under which good creative work is produced. As I always say: you can definitely call Picasso, but you can’t order Guernica, right? But cultural foundations think it’s the other way around. So, no, there is no such way. And they always want to have this kind of result.

What I'm talking about, it's not necessarily to spend any time guessing if that's true. It's that through those kind of existing structures of support of solidarity or working together, you could do different things based on all sorts of reasons, not necessarily predicted by those projects. You could think about projects as platforms for different kinds of things, or you could just do them.

One thing which I think Yugoslav case is very good platform from learning from is something else. We are now the last in Serbia permanently existing cultural institution formed in the 90s. Unfortunately, all others ceased to exist for all sorts of reasons. Of course, we think we survived because we were very self-critical and we always thought, should we exist? But it is bad that this kind of independent scene independence scene didn't survive all those post-war challenges.

But one thing which I think from war time and immediately after war time Yugoslavia is a good place - it's a difference between what we call exchange and influence. Seems at the first glance not to have anything to do with the war per se.

But there is this, especially in arts, overly discussed field of exchange, cultural exchange, and not that much written about or thought about the question of real influence, artistic influence, because it's a very hard question, and to kind of see how they don't always go together.

Why I think Yugoslavia is a very important part of this. It's that you saw with the sharp end of cultural exchange, artistic influences still work, right? Through friendships, through marriages, through collaborations - meaning I'm influenced by your work or we work together. Influence in a kind of broader sense.

Influence, not the permanent platform of exchange, it's what keeps real from not always convincing solidarity. And the exchange is what is emphasized in the state-based cultural production. We send you something, you get us something, exhibition.

So 90s I think are important in the sense that there was an effort to learn from independent institutions what they can do. This is all fine. I think we live in a different paradigm now. I think things have changed. I don't think this is so important.

But I think there are still things we could learn. Not learn in a sense that we could replicate them, but we could recognize them in what is happening now and the problems you have. And you could say, look, I understand exactly what you're talking about.

I will never give up on the idea that every war is thinkable. It's unthinkable as an experience, but it's thinkable, of course, and good historians could write books about it and explain it. But what art, I think, can do - is in a certain way create alliances and platforms of thinking which didn't exist in the world before. The same as war destroys things, art creates worlds which never existed before.

Art could do it just being puzzled, being moved by something you never thought you will be moved by, collaborating, sometimes in funny, workshoppy, donor-driven workshops in some who knows where place, right? Which suddenly has an opportunity. Or just by chance. Or in long, long collaborations. They could create things which didn't exist before faster and better than any other field of human production. I really believe in that.

So you could tell me you didn't learn anything from me, which is fine, because that was my goal. But you cannot tell me I'm not a believer in art.