The Ministry of Culture has terminated financial support for MoTA and many other organisations

Eight years ago we formed an informal group, together with other Slovene cultural organisations, to protest the disproportionate cuts in culture. Those were the times of economic crisis, and culture suffered the hardest blow. This time around, the Ministry of Culture decided to cut off many important producers and professional cultural programmes, vital for Slovenian cultural landscape.

Among them is MoTA – Museum of Transitory Art, which was cut off completely. Last week, the Slovenian Ministry of Culture has informed us of their decision not to co-finance MoTA’s programmes in the next 4 years. Even though the Ministry evaluated MoTA’s programme in the past 4 years as outstanding, we have been denied financial support for our program, that includes: Sonica Festival, concert series SONICA, SONICA Classics and Sonica X, asonic label, Arcade Gallery, Radical Ear series of workshops, Nonument, MAPS, Cyanometer, Moonolith, and other projects in development. This decision also poses a serious threat in our involvement in the SHAPE platform and Artecitya network, both important for promotion of Slovene artists abroad.

Ministry of Culture decided not to co-finance many other important programmes, such as Maska, Carmina Slovenica, SloWind, Emanat, Sevicq Brežice and Delak, and reduce their support for Mini Teater and Bunker. The final results of the call
have not been published yet, but it is already becoming clear that the Slovenian cultural and artistic scene will be severely affected.

The majority of Slovenians entered the new year 2018 with the awareness that our country is out of economic crisis, that the times of austerity measures and cutbacks are behind us. We thought this will be clearly visible in our country’s cultural policies. If not now, when?

To our utmost surprise, the Slovenian Ministry of Culture decided to cutback on their support for cultural programmes, and cut off several important organisations and producers. The ministry’s behaviour is utterly bureaucratical, non-transparent and unprofessional. MoTA’s application for its programmes’ co-financing in the next 4 years was fully rejected. Even though the call for co-financing states that its aim is to support organisations which demonstrated excellence in their past work, and the commission evaluated MoTA’s programmes in the past 4 years as outstanding, our organisation was cut off.

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Without the support from the Ministry of Culture, our involvement in several successful EACEA co-funded projects is at risk, while our audiences and the Slovenian cultural scene in general will be left without several of our important programs. To list just a few:

SONICA FESTIVAL

SONICA Festival and SONICA Concert Series Classics/X/Series
Sonica is an attempt to transform a classical exhibition space into a field of events, performances, workshops, and lectures. It is a temporary laboratory established on the crossing of visual art, media and sound art and research, consisting of production and research residencies, exhibitions, performances, and public interventions, with a special focus on intersections of music, sound and other art forms.

In the past, Sonica has presented artists like Tim Hecker, Rashad Becker, Emptyset, Marina Rosenfeld, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Plaid, Byetone, Transforma, Herman Kolgen, Zimoun, SND, Nik Nowak, Nonotak, Flanger, AtomTM, Jan Jelinek, MachineWoman and many others. Sonica Classics series presents creators working on diverse crossroads between electronic music and contemporary classical music, that open new musical spaces, attract new public and introduce unexpected sounds to both classical and club venues. Artists presented so far: Hildur Guðnadóttir, Charlemagne Palestine, Jozef van Wissem, Masayoshi Fujita, Resina.

SONICA Festival is part of SHAPE platform, which consists of 16 festivals and art centres and aims to support, promote and exchange innovative and aspiring musicians and interdisciplinary artists with an interest in sound. SHAPE attempts to present a variety of idiosyncratic music and sonic art from all over Europe, and provide audiences and professionals with insightful lectures, talks and workshops by experts in various fields related to sound and performance.

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MAPS – Mapping and Archiving Public Spaces

MoTA is the lead partner of a new cooperation project, MAPS – Mapping & Archiving Public Spaces, a project devoted to a deeper understanding of architecture, public spaces and monuments of the 20th century. It deals with spaces that have gone through a process of transformation within which they have acquired a new meaning. MAPS builds a digital landscape with in-depth research on Nonuments, including 3D scans and oral histories, collected within the community. MAPS develops an interdisciplinary methodology for preserving Nonuments and builds open-source tools for community engagement in the inclusive online database and map.

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ARTECITYA (Nagrada TESLA / CYANOMETER / MOONOLITH)

MoTA is an active member of Artecitya Network, a Europe‐wide project bringing together artists, architects, town planners and citizens to re-‐create the cities we all want to live in. Artecitya groups 9 partner cities from around Europe devoted to planning and developing towns and cities particularly regarding their architectural and artistic content. Working side by side for several years on a vast programme of activity, they have obtained practical experience and methods of intervening in urban development directly involving. The priority has been, and remains, to stimulate a vigorously innovative approach to the whole concept of urban life taking into account the sociological evolution and needs of the inhabitants. Some of the projects we’ve developed in the frame of Artecitya:

– Cyanometer, part of the Green Capital of Europe 2016, and was awarded the Art Magazine Editors and Critics award at the WRO Media Art Biennial in Wroclaw

– The award-winning installation Moonolith, seen by more than a million of visitors and was so far presented at the Square of Republic in Ljubljana, Ljubljana Castle, Governmental Palace in Chihuahua – Mexico, Town Hall in Metz – France, and GLOW Festival in Eindhoven – the Netherlands

Ministry of Culture’s decision to cut off MoTA also poses a threat to our involvement in several other important organisations, networks and platforms, such as ICAS / ECAS (International Cities of Advanced Sound), SHAPE, ARTECITYA, GALA (Green Art Lab Allience), ENCAC (evropska mreža za avdiovizualno ustvarjanje) …