IGOR

I work with art, photo, video, installation,
performance, etc., male, Zagreb, active
since: 1996

PRODUCTION COSTS
For production I mostly request from the gallery. I also invest my own money, the galleries never pay for everything, for the last exhibition apart from what they put in, I gave 1.000 € of my money. I also work for an socially active association (fade-in) as a producer and journalist, before as journalist, now as a producer. 10 years ago I worked as a photographer and bookseller (akviziter).
This year I bought a laptop, camera and then I put money into one exhibiton, last year I spent about 5.000 € on equipment, before I didn’t but anything for four years. I’m registered as an artist, so I have the status and all, through that the artist association pays for the social security insurance. I work within these communities, the studio is activist in its essence and these communities are very important to me. Actually I don’t separate my work from the studio which is very important to me.

PRIVATE LIFE
Appartment, food, gas is about 4.000-5.000 kuna (550-700 €)

WORKING TIME
In principle I work constantly, I am a workoholic, I work non-stop, no weekends.. With me everything is mixed, either I work in art or business, shooting, cutting also on weekends, if there are deadlines you need to finish. Maybe on average it’s 10-11 hours a day. Hollidays, last year I didn’t take and I payed with my health, I’m not doing that again. I didn’t take a vacation because I was working for an exhibition. Even if this is supposed to be food for the soul it turns out as pressure. You can’t live off art, there’s no market here.
Usually during the day I work on the job and at night on art, be it conceiving, be it working on photographs, be it writing texts.
INCOME is mostly working for TV and Fade-in, this association. Two years we founded another studio, deals with animation and commercial business. Some awards but little
money from that.

GENDER SPECIFICS
It doesn’t seem there is a division. It is a fact that an artist can not live off art and because of that a mass of people stop working, few people persist and even fewer are women, especially if they have a familly and all. They are more sensitive, the men are more aggressive..

FINANCIAL SITUATION SECURE?
Partly, it’s constant uncertainty. What the studio is concerned you apply non-stop for projects at the fundations, ministries..
I don’t know now what else I would do, I had offers as a producer but it seemed to me then everything would be like a mill, that everything would be in commercial,
agency sense and that is no food for my soul.
I don’t have anxieties but I work too much and this shows itself phisically on my stomach and heart.

SALEABLE WORK?
I don’t think about that, it is not my guiding motto. Even if I am conscious that some works could be saleable but that was not my guiding motto while making it. On the other hand aesthetics is important to me, recently I decided to go away from the cold conceptual. That’s how I got attracted to art in the first place as a kid. It seems to me aesthetics can also be a hook for a normal viewer, in that sense it is useful in my work although there are also actions not aestheticised at all. It is important to me to express emotion in my work and in some sense I connect that to aesthetics.

ARE YOU CONTENT WITH YOUR LIFE?
I am, absolutely. To consider myself a fighter is important to me. I am conscious I create my own life and that’s important, holding your life in your own hands.

Zagreb, July 10, 2007