ARTISTS AT RISK

Asia Tsisar: How and when did you decide to found Artists at Risk [1]?

Marita Muukkonen: We started our work in 2013, so we have worked now 12 years with Artists at Risk, but our curatorial practice kind of led us to start Artists at Risk, so it grew out of real need.

We have an organization called Perpetuum Mobile [2], which we started already in 2007. We worked basically with dissident artists, artists who were in political opposition to the government.

We first worked with dissidents from the Soviet Union from a historical perspective, but also with living artists. And that led us to another project, which was called The Re-Aligned Art [3].

There was the wave of square movements, which started in Tunisia and spread to Northern Africa, to Egypt, to Tahrir Square, and later on also to Turkey, to the US, to Spain, and so on. And activists and dissidents were gathering on the squares around the globe, demanding for political and social justice.

People had similar kind of values they were defending in many cities and many countries at that time. But then there was a big backlash. It happened gradually that those people who gathered, for example, to Tahrir Square in Egypt were tortured, they were prosecuted for their opinions. And we were doing this research quite widely in Northern Africa, especially in Egypt at that time.

Starting from 2011 we were working with artists, with art practitioners who were part of these movements, and they were in the situation that they needed a breather, they had to get out. They had prison sentences, they had gone through torture. We were making research of an institutional organization who is organizing kind of ways for artists at risk to have a breather, to get away from a difficult situation. But at that time there was nobody doing the work.

So quite concretely we invited artists to our art project. We were based in Helsinki and our organization, and we are still partly based there. And we invited them for artist-in-residences to have a breather. It was very concrete act as a human being. You had a colleague, we had colleagues, we had peers who had to get out. So what do you do? You want to support them in an artistic context. Give them a possibility to have a break and think about what the next step could be. And it’s very important that it’s basically the starting point.

When Ivor mentioned that we work with human beings, that 's kind of, what do you do if you have a peer, friend, colleague who has to get out, who is going to be in prison for 10 years, who is going to be tortured? You try to support the person as a human being, as a colleague, and bring him or her to a context to have a rest, have a breather, think what is the next step? Can I go back? Do I need to stay? What will I do? So it was a very kind of, yeah, natural way which grew out of our curatorial practice to start to host artists at risk.

Asia Tsisar: And how do you work now? So basically, if I'm an artist at risk and I submit the application at your webpage, what will happen next?

Ivor Stodolsy: Well, I mean, that's part of the larger system that we've developed. So now it's been over a decade that we've developed a systematic program for Artists at Risk. And so we have quite elaborate procedures and practices. First of all, there has to be what we call a public call. Rather than an open call, it's not just open for a certain time. It's public. It's always open.

And we work and filter applications and process them as fast as we can. But we have certain, you know, emergency forms that we sometimes open. For example, in the case of Afghanistan, we opened a specific form only for Afghans. And in the case of Ukraine, we also had to, and rightfully did so open a Ukrainian application form because the volume and the volume of applicants was enormous, thousands and thousands. I think we have had over almost 7,000 applicants, and that's only what we call the principal applicants. That's not with the children or the spouses or the pets or others. And so that's kind of the initial step. But of course, before that is a lot of research and knowledge that has to go into knowing how the country people are coming from or the region has been affected, who could be eligible.

And then we basically do background checks. We do risk assessment. Do they have legitimate grounds for being considered at risk? And that has to be, you know, not just I feel afraid or something, but it has to be legitimate. We have very specific criteria. And then we have to check that they are cultural professionals of some kind. It doesn't mean that they have to be, you know, they don't need a degree. It's just that their life has to center around making art of something, a cultural process. And then, and it can be a scholar, it can be the director of a museum, it can be an opera director or administrator.

Then once those background checks and risk assessment have been done, we try to prioritize those who are at highest risk so that because there are so many applicants, we need to deal with the ones that we can try to help as fast as possible, who need the help as fast as possible, so we don't just waste resources on those that can wait.

Then there's also an element where we have to admit that there are cases where we cannot help, even if the risk is extremely high, such as when they're already in prison, they're unable to leave their place where they are captured in, you know, like Yemen, for example, is very hard to get out of. At some points in time, there were problems even getting out of the UNHCR camps that were dedicated to Yemenis people leaving Yemen.

And so once that procedure has been done, they've been prioritized, then we have so-called matchmaking teams that basically usually involve somebody from the field of that art and that region that knows that language from the place where they're coming from and knows the art scene to some extent so that they can make sure that this is not a fake or somebody from the oppressing side. And then at the same time, somebody who knows the field of institutional hosts in the place we would consider bringing them to.

So let's say they're coming from one part of Africa to another part of Africa, then we would like to have somebody from the first part where they're coming from who knows that situation well enough to know that the person is a bona fide candidate and eligible.

And secondly, somebody who knows the hosting organizations where they're coming to, which might be also in Africa. We do regional relocations. So they go from one part of Africa to another. And so those two matchmaking curators, as we call them, then decide where they're going to go and they try to bring that candidate to become a resident in the designated host institution, which is specialized to some extent in the field of art that that person is from, which is a very important condition that they can continue their art because the host institution has some degree of, you know, knowledge and specialty and facilities for hosting that kind of art form.

And secondly, that maybe they have facilities to host children if they have children, you know, they have a school nearby, the apartment is big enough and so on, and that they maybe have the health facilities if somebody needs health care.

And so there's a whole set of conditions and matchmaking criteria, which allow us to determine the ideal host and then, of course, visas. Can you actually get there? Do we have the funding to get there? And how long could they stay? And then what would happen afterwards? And so that whole procedure, I'm making it as short as possible, is quite elaborate. And we can go into greater detail.

But we think about the holistic future of that possible candidate, where they're going and whether they could continue from there in a kind of way that makes them independent in the long term.

So, because we can't support them forever. These are short-term or temporary residencies from three to six, sometimes to 12 months, rarely to two years. And so we need to think about what happens after the residency. And so all of that is part of the consideration in these matchmaking operations.

Asia Tsisar: Because one of my questions was about this, let's say, long-term perspective. So you can provide help in the short term, but how can you sustain this solution so that after three months the person does not return to the situation they escaped?

Marita Muukkonen: This kind of process of thinking about it usually starts before the relocation. Of course, not always. If it's a very urgent situation, as Ivor said, we do regional relocations.

Sometimes we have to just first get the person out. And that means that you don't necessarily have an ideal solution because, for example, if you want to be relocated to the EU area, you have to wait for a Schengen visa. Nowadays it takes a long time. Of course, some like Ukrainians and Georgians can come for 90 days without a visa. So we make the first relocation. In some cases, people can stay in this country.

I mean, it's not always even the best solution to come to the Schengen area. For example, we have several residents who have stayed in Tunisia or in other neighboring countries like Zambia and so on, and found the next steps.

But what is important in Artists-at-Risk residences, as Ivor said, is that we'll find an artistic context where people land. So there's no expectation to do anything, but in that context, there are peers who can also help to find opportunities, to practice art, find grants, find next steps. Quite surprisingly, in certain period of time, many former Artists-at-Risk residents return.

And often dissidents especially, they want to return. We even have residents who have returned to places like Aleppo in Syria already in 2014. Because it's not easy to be a dissident if you stay in Norway, if you are Syrian. Or somebody who is from Zimbabwe stays in Finland and kind of wants to do politically engaged art.

So there are many paths, every case is individual, but if people can't go back then it's very important that basically the hosting organization together with our matchmaking curators start to think how they can stay in the country independently. Sometimes people move on to the next country. It's not always possible to find a kind of the next step, which is good for the future. So there are very many different types of stories we have. And artists have found their footsteps.

There are beautiful examples that we have. An artist from Iraq, Kholod Hawash, who came to Finland six years ago with her husband, great painter Saddam Jumaily [4]. They have stayed in Finland as independent artists and Kholod was in the Nordic Pavilion in Venice its last time.

And her husband has been showing in Sharjah Biennale and so on. So it's very important that you are introduced to new artistic context, not only in the country where you arrive, but also internationally and in Europe.

And that, of course, takes lots of effort and also staff effort from our side that people will find new beginnings and they are introduced to the curatorial context when they arrive.

Ivor Stodolsky: Just to add, we have a name for these things. I mean, basically because we call it the Helsinki model because this idea that, you know, it's pretty much common sense, but after all, it's not always done by many other kind of emergency programs because they are not really from the field of art so much, but they come from human rights.

So because we're curators, we know that artists need artistic support. And so we often bring in people who are specialized in that way. So we work in Helsinki with over 20 or maybe 25 different organizations, depending on the field of art they're in. Plus, of course, the LGBTQI kind of community or the hospital and the maternity ward or whatever. But aside from the kind of life basics and needs, there's the artistic context of the national theater, the radio programs and so on that we've connected with.

And we try to encourage that in every Artists-at-Risk residence. So we want other cities and other localities to have that dense network of local ecosystems where they can really find new careers in that new context. And as Marita said, because you can often not exist today as a contemporary artist in any discipline without being international, because you need to find work in many countries in order to survive, it really needs also our support as a kind of super-national organization that has multiple fields of art in which we work with colleagues and artists.

And it's important that our colleagues from all the fields of arts also support artists who arrive anywhere and really take time to look at their artworks and think about the possibilities where they could exhibit or where they could organize a concert and so on.

Marita Muukkonen: And just to give an example, we have a good cooperation with the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. And now this is the fourth time there's a prize called State of ART(ist).

There's an open call, not only for Artists at Risk residence, but for any artist or ecologist at risk. And that's a great thing and great context because artists receive the prize and also the possibility to make their works visible in a very established kind of media art context.

We have worked with a museum like ZKM or CCCB for years and years. And any museum, music house, who wants to work with Artists at Risk residents, it's basically we welcome people to join the network and offer these opportunities.

Same for curators, it's always possible to ask: I'm working on this, do you have any ideas who I could invite? And these are these concrete acts, and therefore Artists at Risk has grown as a peer organization. We have had more than 300 hosting organizations.

And these are these acts of solidarity and kind of giving your time as a peer for people who are newcomers and often very strong artists, because dissident artists are often good artists also.

Asia Tsisar: I believe this topic has come up in many conversations, but perhaps you've also noticed that we have this kind of system in arts, specifically in culture more generally, that funding is often framed as a response to whatever we might call a crisis. And usually, when something new appears, the funding for the previous project simply stops. Yet it doesn't mean that the previous crisis is solved, but rather that our attention now is focused on the new crisis. So, how do you deal with this? Do you have any observations or ideas of how this could be changed? But also, do you see the problem in general?

Ivor Stodolsky: Yeah, very much. It's also a similar problem to the problem of media attention. The crisis in certain kinds of minds is always what the media happens to be focusing on. So there are many, many crises which never even started getting any funding at all.

Sudan being probably the most important of them, because it is the biggest humanitarian crisis today. There's over 12 million people displaced in Sudan, 3 million of them outside Sudan and the rest inside Sudan. There's 150,000 people and civilians dead.

There's genocide being committed by two armies, both funded by different Arab groups against Black non-Arab populations for the second time in one decade. The genocide in Darfur is the second time in about a decade.

But there's no funding whatsoever for the arts from Sudan, or let alone, I mean, there are programs that are dedicated to UNHCR or something like that, but the media has not put this on the agenda.

And there's so many other conflicts that are like this. So there's Goma, which has been in the media a little bit, but not quite. And it's, you know, I mean, the actual framing is always just like there's another random problem somewhere in the world. And well, you can never do anything about it. Africa will always have war.

Well, no. I mean, this is an Islamic fundamentalist group called M23 that invaded Congo and has taken over many cities and raped and pillaged and taken people, you know, people hostage and so on. And there are many artists who fled. So there's no funding for that either. It's not in the media.

So there is a big question: why it's not in the media, right? Why are we not interested when it's not something that is somehow related to us? Even though we are very much complicit. I mean, all of those crises I just mentioned involve countries that we're very close to.

So the UAE, for example, which is funding the rebels in Sudan, is a very close partner of the West. We get in Europe most of our natural gas from the UAE. And they're using this money that they're making from us to fund a genocidal war in Sudan.

But we don't see it on our screens. They're making lots of gold out of the gold mines in Sudan and committing genocide. But this is not a topic. The Left is also not interested in this. Well, I think it's a bigger question as to why not.

But I just would like to address your point. What happens when attention shifts? So for example, in Afghanistan, there was a moment when there was a lot of attention because the West had put so much time and energy and resources into Afghanistan and then basically pulled out with absolutely no responsibility and no systems in place to guard those people that had spent their lives and their resources and everything trying to establish democratic kind of principles in Afghanistan.

And these people were under threat. And there was about, what, maybe six months of interest, and then it pretty much dropped.

And there's been an ongoing fight to keep that on the agenda in places like Germany, but the funding is extremely limited. And only in our case, we've only managed to secure specific funding for Afghan artists from a private foundation, Crespo Foundation in Germany.

So there is no justice at all when it comes to dealing with crises from different parts of the world. All of which we have been involved in. You can't say that we're more involved in Gaza or something than we are in Sudan. We're very much involved in Sudan, and we're profiting from it.

Same with the, at the time, Afghanistan with the pipelines that, you know, the major oil companies were building there. But because it's far away and we can just conveniently forget about it, it's not on our agenda. And that's a problem. And to change it, I don't know, that would be a bigger discussion.

Marita Muukkonen: Just kind of very shortly about this funding. It's, from our point of view, the most worrying tendency is that with many right-wing governments and tendencies, generally the funding is being cut for any kind of human rights, humanitarian work, and also for arts and culture.

So it's basically in the organization like Artist at Risk, we are, of course, facing these challenges at the same time. And of course, for us, the amount of applications is growing and resources are diminishing. So in certain areas, kind of when we relocate people, we only rely on donations. That's what we had to do.

Of course, when something is in people's eyes, we had lots of donations with the Russian total invasion in Ukraine, and now the donations have been dropping drastically. So it's a very challenging situation, because we have to, should be able to work with those human rights defenders and artists who are most at risk, and not according to the funding which we try to do.

Asia Tsisar: I think you made it very clear that funding is directly related to the presence of a topic in the media and the level of attention it receives. But when we had the brief conversation in Amsterdam, you mentioned that you are working with certain museums to establish some kind of long-term, sustainable policies to support artists and cultural professionals in situations of risk.

Could you tell a little bit more about it?

Ivor Stodolsky: Okay. I mean, the work we're doing at the moment is more about not how to help artists at risk. With this network of museums we're developing a kind of white paper.

It's actually something we've developed a long time ago as a kind of response, in a way, to the problems that we saw our colleagues face. Not so much us. We've been pretty lucky in this respect,

but the conflicts that we've seen on stage in many big institutions, where, let's say, there's a Ukrainian person who kind of grew up and made their career in Moscow, and then a Ukrainian person who's grew up and they've made their career in Kyiv, and then one, they're fighting each other and they're criticizing the other for being too pro, kind of like, you're just, you know, making it so universal, you're not understanding our Ukrainian perspective.

But it's even worse, of course, if there's an open platform and anyone is welcome, because that has to be this way. But then if a Ukrainian and a Russian win at the same time, the Ukrainian will say, I will not be on the same stage with this person.

And so we wanted to develop a set of policies, like a protocol, that would allow the artists who apply to a certain platform to know in advance what could happen. And so they can be sure, okay, well, this could happen and then I have to accept the result, or no, this won't happen.

And so this is the idea, to create a kind of common agreement on what the principles of participation are. So everyone knows in advance, and then it's kind of crystal clear. And then, well, you can decide not to participate, or you can decide to participate in a certain project.

And we have kind of tested in some of our events, and the good sid, so if you have this kind of protocol, it creates also discussion ahead of time, also between the participants, and you can kind of agree that, okay, well, I'll be on stage with you, but I don't want to, for example, discuss on these topics, and that's totally fine.

Marita Muukkonen: Just to give you an example, we had a discussion, I think it was a bit more than a year ago, in the Schpielhaus in Zürich. And we had on stage somebody from Palestine. Then we had on stage somebody who is a Russian dissident. Then we had a Ukrainian music band Fo Sho from Kharkiv. They are Ukrainians who are now in Germany, but they are also Ethiopian and Jewish, or their parents are.

So we had quite a diverse artist on the stage. It was a really good, strong discussion, but everybody knew and agreed ahead of time that they are fine being on the stage with each other.

Fo Sho from Ukraine said it's okay that there's a Russian dissident, who was at that time a resident at ZKM, and the Palestinian artist, who was in Switzerland and still is, agreed that he can be on the stage with Fo Sho.

Ivor Stodolsky: They are Jewish, you know, also in favor of peace in all three conflicts, because they face three different wars at the same time. In Ethiopia, Tigray conflict, one of the bloodiest in the world, which we also don't see at all on our screens. And then one in Ukraine, which they themselves experienced in their own lives. They were born in Ukraine and speak Ukrainian and they were runners up to the European Song Contest for Ukraine, Fo Sho, amazing band, and at the same time they, you know, they're Jewish and they would love to have peace in Israel-Palestine.

So it was a beautiful moment and they just, we just agreed, look, let's not talk about the actual conflict directly. Let's just talk about peace and let's talk about, you know, music and art, how it can bring us together. So it was very strong.

Marita Muukkonen: Yeah.

Ivor Stodolsky: It was very strong. And people really appreciated how all of these different, you know, people from different sides of lethal conflicts could communicate. It was very strong. Very good.

Marita Muukkonen: But everybody's kind of, everybody knew ahead of time who is going to be there. And we had a pre-conversation and so on. And that's really important that nobody's of course not forced to be in the same platform if they don't agree to that.

Asia Tsisar: Yeah, but I also think that many Ukrainians, if they hear something like that, would interpret it as an attempt to further limit their already limited opportunities.

For example, most Russian artists would probably agree and even benefit from participation in the same event with Ukrainians, but most Ukrainians would refuse such a proposal.

And basically, by designing something like this, you end up cutting off many opportunities for Ukrainians to present their art and work, don't you think so.

Ivor Stodolsky: No. I mean, because you can imagine that there are platforms where Ukrainians are invited first. So it depends on how the protocol is applied.

So the protocol involves saying, well, if you invited the Ukrainian first, then if you invite a Russian, let's say, right, or Belarusian, then the Ukrainian has the right to say, look, I looked at the profile in the bio and I don't want to be together with this person. And according to the protocol, they can say no, they can't join if you follow this particular version of the protocol. There's different versions. So that would mean that then no, they wouldn't have to leave the platform. They would stay.

But if the organizer chooses to invite the Russian first, the Ukrainian cannot say, okay, I'll join, but you have to kick out the Russian, which is also a problem because according to United Nations conventions, European conventions, and so on, which Ukraine has signed, right? These are conventions which Ukraine is party to. You cannot exclude somebody on the basis of their passport or their ethnic background and so on.

So then they say, okay, I would love to join, but I don't want to see the Russian on the stage. You say, sorry, but that's not, you know, the protocol says you can't do that. So you can structure this in a different way. So it just gives everybody clarity about what's happening. And it's up to the organizer to start here or there or another place.

And that's happening already anyway, you know. I mean, no matter what, there will be organizers that do an event with a Palestinian. And there will be organizers that also do an event where there's an Israeli. And that's fine and good,

but it's important for both sides to know, okay, this is what I'm getting into, this is the bio of the person, this is how it's going to work out, this is the rules, and so everybody knows in advance and they can make a decision in advance what they want to see happen.

So it doesn't necessarily exclude, you know, Ukrainians from all platforms that have Russians on them because it could be that, you know, the Russian would be invited later and they can say no.

Marita Muukkonen: And also, we’re talking here about dissidents. If we look at the conventions we refer to in our work at Artists at Risk, it’s clear that we operate at the intersection of arts and human rights.

When it comes to human rights, we follow the United Nations Human Rights Convention, the conventions of the Council of Europe, and so on. That’s the basis of our work, so this is really just a logical continuation of that.

Of course, there are sensitivities. For example, when we host Ukrainians and Russian dissidents, we don’t place them in the same residency at the same time. But that doesn’t mean the same host can’t host both.

It’s simply about sensitivity—people need space and time to breathe and recover, so it makes sense not to overlap. But the same institution can host both at different times. These are practices that take into account the trauma and sensitivities of people we work with. Of course, you have to consider that.

Asia Tsisar: Yeah, I believe I just need to say that because probably the main idea behind the call to cancel Russia or suspend the presence of Russian culture in the international art field was about this symbolic weight of names.

So, when you are a Russian artist, there is a certain kind of renome that comes with this word. When you are a Ukrainian artist, currently—you are probably seen as a commentator of war. And before the full-scale invasion, you were literally no one from some place people barely had ever heard about.

So what I'm trying to say is that when the Ukrainian Institute launched this call, it was an attempt to relocate resources and attention. It was basically a move to force institutions to listen to Ukrainian artists and give them more space in the field. And this is already a very different topic. It wasn't really my plan to go here.

But I just need to say that, because a lot of very talented Ukrainian artists would refuse such a format. And this carries a risk to return to the situation before the full-scale invasion, when Russian artists, simply by being Russian, capitalized on the soft power of this country, while far fewer Ukrainians had the chance and opportunity to present their perspective. This is what I'm trying to say.

Marita Muukkonen: But maybe it's important to repeat that in this protocol, if we use this example, it evolves as it was in different steps. That is basically, since it's clear who the aggressor was, then in the case of Ukrainians, Ukrainians are asked first, and they have the right to say that they don't want to be on the same platform with Russian dissidents, and then Russian dissidents won't be invited. So it has different kinds of variations.

Just to repeat also that the organization, like Artists at Risk, we are an intersection of arts and human rights, and we always have to follow human rights conventions. So our position is very clear.

The same we talked earlier about Afghanistan, of course, we help Afghan artists at risk.

Ivor Stodolsky: We don't help Taliban artists.

Marita Muukkonen: We don't help artists who support the Taliban. I mean, of course not. And there, for example, artists who are musicians, actors, or visual artists—they are targeted as a social group. That's very clear.

Ivor Stodolsky: I mean, there was a minister of culture of Afghanistan who applied to our program. And then some people said, you have to work with this guy, and, you know, this is important. And then one of our staff, our risk assessment staff, which is not always the same as people on our website—we have different specialists—said, well, no, this is a person that's involved in the genocide of the Hazara people. So we don't work with anybody, right?

So there's, of course, a very clear distinction between those that are the aggressors and those that are just not the bystanders in the conflict and have nothing—they're civilian people who haven't been involved in aggression.

But yeah, no, I mean, what you were saying before, of course, it's understandable. And, you know, in terms of culture, power and dominance in the international art field are a perpetual problem.

I mean, it's not just Ukraine, of course. You can imagine what it's like to be, I don't know, a Latvian artist or something. You know, it's a tiny little country. Or if you're from Bulgaria, there are not that many international Bulgarian artists either.

And then, let alone the fact that most of the time we're talking about Europeans, right, and North Americans. And even Mexicans are not very present at all in the international art world. So these imbalances are a product of historical developments, and, you know, you can exclude one side or the other.

You cannot artificially suddenly boost one thing over another. You can work together, yeah, but to ban one side, I think, might actually create the opposite effect. You end up somehow giving them more attention. But this is another question of kind of strategy.

Asia Tsisar: From my conversations with the other professionals in the field, the cultural community's response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was truly unprecedented. So the amount of support, the number of solutions that were invented in such a short time were just incomparable to anything that they had seen before. And I wanted to ask you to comment on this, as you were also part of this big wave of support.

What infrastructures existed before the invasion? What was invented during the first wave of influx, and what has lasted until now?

Marita Muukkonen: We as Artists at Risk had the infrastructure in place because we worked, as mentioned, with Afghanistan, and we also had thousands of applications. The crucial difference was that when the Russian total invasion of Ukraine started, hosting organizations from Europe started to contact us and ask, "What can we do?" That had never happened before.

When Afghanistan happened, there were no European art institutions and residences contacting us and saying, "How can we help Afghan artists at risk?" That didn't happen.

But with Ukraine, there was an amazing wave of solidarity from hosting sites. Of course, we received lots of applications from Ukraine. And then maybe the difference with us was that from early on, we started to also relocate Ukrainian artists within Ukraine.

In 2022 already, we started to organize Ukrainian artists in residencies who could host Ukrainians within Ukraine in safer areas. That was also based on our experience that you don't always need to leave the country. You can also be regionally relocated, and sometimes there are people who can't leave, like in the case of Ukraine—male artists couldn't leave, or not everybody wants to leave the country if it's possible to stay.

And we were working on that parallel to relocating Ukrainian artists outside of Ukraine.

Ivor Stodolsky: This was remarkable. I mean, suddenly we had so many people writing to us, "Can we help somehow?" And we had, you know, individuals offering the back room of their apartment, and I think in total 800 different applications for hosting.

We didn't actually work with more than 300 because we work with professional hosting organizations for security reasons, you know, they have to be up to par and it can't be a dodgy situation.

So we have to be very careful, but the solidarity was incredible. So funding-wise, we had the first funding ever from the United States for actions in Europe: the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and the Tiger Foundation both funded us for two years. In the case of the Andy Warhol Foundation, that was the first time they funded anything outside of the United States.

Plus we had UNESCO funding. I mean, the UNESCO funding came through the Ashberg Program and the Heritage Emergency Fund. And again, this was the first time they ever funded living artists. And that's a phenomenal thing, that UNESCO had never funded directly artists who are still active, rather than heritage sites and objects and programs and education and things like that.

And so it was important also that in the UNESCO conferences we attended with all kinds of organizations—from the Met, you know, in the US, to, you know, satellite programs mapping the destruction of museums and all this kind of thing—

we also met the ministries of culture of various countries, including Ukraine. And as Marita mentioned, we had already started this internal relocation program inside Ukraine, and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine found this very important and actually encouraged us to do that more.

And so that's why it's now called the Artists at Risk Ukraine Internal Residency Network. It's the first Ukrainian residency network, and we're lucky to have a bit of funding since then. We managed to relocate many more artists even after the funding stopped from the West, more or less, except for a few Nordic grants and Finnish grants, that we're able to continue that network.

Marita Muukkonen: But about this funding question, last year we didn't have funding to work on that internal network because that funding also dried out, but we managed to get funding now that we can continue that kind of, of course, smaller scale, but it's this referring to your earlier question.

Asia Tsisar: Do you have an answer why this was the response to the war in Ukraine, but nothing like this happened before?

Marita Muukkonen: I mean, it's clear that Ukraine is basically a part of Europe. So it is clear that it was so close that people feel this solidarity for areas which, when it's happening kind of within Europe, but when it's further away, there's not similar kind of solidarity, media attention, political engagement, and so on. So it's kind of happening in the European area. And that's why there was this engagement.

Of course, from the point of view of Artists at Risk, it's not one or another. We really hope that there would be the same kind of solidarity wherever it's happening, and that that should be the way. We tried to use this wave of solidarity and encourage all those colleagues and hosting organizations to continue to host artists at risk from everywhere. Some of them have continued, and many of them haven't, I mean, that's the reality.

But we kind of tried to think in a positive way and think that, okay, well, maybe you kind of woke up and please continue hosting, please continue to try to find funding locally to do what you did with Ukrainian colleagues and peers.

But of course, that's not the case, but we hope that people will do it. It doesn't matter if it's happening in Sudan or Myanmar or the Philippines or anywhere: the persecuted artists, artists who are human rights defenders. There are wars more and more, so the solidarity is needed.

Ivor Stodolsky: Absolutely. I mean, that's really the reason. It's a European question, and it's understandable.

You know, as much as we ourselves always criticize the lack of solidarity for other conflicts and people at risk on other continents, the same goes for people on other continents. You know, they care about people who are nearby. So, I mean, Turkey took millions of Syrian refugees. Egypt has taken many from Sudan, and so on and so forth. So it's not unique.

I wouldn't say Europe is uniquely racist or something like that. All over the world is equally racist and equally horrible or equally good and equally wonderful. So, you know, I think we should not single out Europe alone.

Of course, Europe or the North has a lot more money, and that's a big difference: there's a lot more potential funding and also a lot more responsibility for a lot of the conflicts happening throughout the world because of colonial history.

And so we feel that, especially with the closing kind of the European and North American space through the rise of the right wing, and also for other reasons, that it's not a bad thing to have regional relocations. And it's not because we want to encourage the fascists and say, keep them out of the North.

But it's because it's sometimes better for artists to relocate in a place which speaks their language, knows their culture. You know, they can come back easily. They can continue their causes. So if you're coming from an African conflict in Goma, it might actually be better for you to be in Tanzania for a few months or maybe a year and then come back, because it's easier than fighting for your survival in Europe, where it's really hard to keep enough money coming to be able to have your visa. And then basically, you know, have to go back eventually anyway, unless you go illegal, which we don't encourage anyone to do. So these are all the considerations we have. But we feel that this is tragic.

And then if I can continue for a moment, in the middle of all this, when everyone's saying we have to, you know, kind of reduce the immigration flows and la la la, we're against all that. But we say, OK, well, why don't you then strengthen democracies in the global south?

Because that's why they're fleeing. Because exactly, they don't have jobs, they don't have democracies, they don't have an open society in which they feel free and able to express themselves. And they're being faced with all kinds of terror, attacks, and poverty. That means that they don't have anything to look forward to in their own countries. So why don't we increase the amount of development money?

But the exact opposite is happening. The right wing is cutting development money drastically. And that means that we're going to just see even more conflicts, especially with ecological and climate issues. So the world is not moving in the right direction. And so there are things that could be done that would benefit everyone, but they're not being done. And that's something we could advocate for.

But this is, this is maybe the right time to say it. And, like we said, and Marita said at the beginning, it's like, we are kind of an operational organization. We do things. And most of the advocacy is done by advocacy groups.

So we don't do that many statements. We try to avoid them because if we make a statement about this, why didn't we make one about that, and so on and so forth. We'd spend our whole time making statements. But we're doing things. We're actually getting people out of trouble, giving them the opportunity to restart their lives.

Marita Muukkonen: And it's important that, basically, as you mentioned at the beginning, for us, we still work with Afghan artists at risk, we still work with Ukrainians. We work with artists coming from Palestine, from Sudan, from Congo, and so on.

It doesn't stop for us when it's out of the eyes of others and there's a more trendy thing coming—you see social media feeds and so on.

And as Ivor mentioned, we also now work with ecologists at risk, because there are more and more artists, council workers, and colleagues who are at high risk because they defend the globe. They are working with the most burning issues of our times, and their lives are really at high risk because multinational companies are targeting them, and there's no mercy in that field.

So there are so many fields of solidarity—we really need peers and people on the ground to come together, join forces, and try to work together despite differences.

That's what we need, and this is the meaning of solidarity. We can't be divided by some kind of smaller issues. We have to find common ground, common values, and be able to find a common direction, because there are so many burning issues at the moment. We have to be capable of finding that kind of togetherness in order to find solutions.

Ivor Stodolsky: We think in these terms of solidarity, and at the same time, we want people to understand that solidarity sounds like something that you have to do a lot of work for, for something, and it's for other people. But solidarity, in the kind of widest possible sense, is also thinking about everyone together, and it is a kind of global self-interest, right?

I mean, if we do not defend our planet, we're all going to be underwater, right? If we don't stop the war, then we're all going to be bombed, and so on and so forth. If we can't stop fascism rising, be it in Russia, Gaza, or Israel, we're all going to be doomed to endless wars.

So these are the things that we need to kind of understand: by solving problems together, we can actually increase everyone's happiness or everyone's futures. So it's not just the act of giving selflessly—it's an act of improving our lives.

Asia Tsisar: My final question also probably comes from the conversation with colleagues. And we often discuss this recurring problem of funding, the lack of structures, and the absence of sustainable solutions. So basically, it all ends up with the conclusion that we are unprepared, and we only respond to crises as they come. So, like, one of the ideas that was born during those conversations is that probably, maybe, every art institution could secure some emergency fund in their budgets to cover urgent needs when they arrive. But it's more like an imaginary idea.

For people like you who have been working systematically on this for many years, what changes would you suggest? On the everyday level, or in terms of strategic planning, what could make emergency situations feel less like emergencies?

Marita Muukkonen: Yeah, I mean, I think the reference we often use is that we had a conference at ZKM before the Russian total invasion of Ukraine, and Peter Weipel had a very concrete proposal. He said that every art institution should have an Artist at Risk Department.

We’re not saying it needs to be called that exactly, but the idea is that if everybody is even a little prepared, that small effort can create a huge movement. It doesn’t require much—even in the art field. If you think about the number of institutions out there, if each dedicated a bit of working time and budget—whether for artists at risk, ecologists at risk, or similar work—it could all be done in a more planned and strategic way.

Another issue is that at Artists at Risk, we are now creating more networks to work and prepare for both ecological crises and war situations, and to enable more regional planning.

But of course, this requires resources. What you’re suggesting—that all actors dedicate something and create networks—could generate a huge movement.

Ivor Stodolsky: I mean, I think Peter Weipel is very right. If you have one resident per medium-sized or larger art organization, you can absorb thousands of people. At least in the short term, you can address quite large emergencies. We very much recommend following his advice.