DD: As one of the selectors of the exhibition Art in the Age of (Non) emotionality at Danube Dialogues 2015 edition, do you think that the persona of the artist as a source of emotions remains important or crucial in the flow of contemporary art?
VB: The artist still remains a basic cell, particle, but also a free radical in the art business system. Tasks and a mission of the artist do not change a lot. Nowadays the contemporary visual art might have occurred on the periphery of society and so the artists themselves more and more try to define a field where, with rational and manipulative approaches, it is important to bring a strong dose of emotions and sensibility. I hope it will not be a fatal dose for the unprepared spectator deadened by mass media.
DD: How do artists come to grips with a depersonalized world that merely pays lip service to individuality?
VB: One of answers can be the creating of one´s own autonomous zones with shared values and models of “personal” transferrable language in which we communicate – creating of one´s own visual INTELNET – intellectual network. Then it is important to intensify communication, to prepre common happenings, meetings, gatherings or personal overspilling information (like at the Danube festival) that helps us survive and balance out with the current situation.
DD: Does the nature of society mean that their work tends to become non-emotional, or perhaps more emotional?
VB: It is more a question of our “western” world of an American-European model of the art market. In recent decades, there have existed predominant conceptual and post-conceptual tendencies which prefer rational and analytical approaches and ways of thinking. The situation, however, is gradually, but slowly changed – by entering and accepting other cultures, traditions and coding, by greater language diversity, which reflects the present day with a clear emotional charge in already a different way.