Zugl.: Wien, Univ. für Angewandte Kunst, Diss., 2001

The Slovenian painters’ collective IRWIN, founded in 1983 in Ljubljana and co-founder of the NSK (i.e. Neue Slowenische Kunst) organization, has been engaged in a series of projects of active and concrete intervention in social and historical contexts in the decade that redefined the status of art in Eastern Europe. Ever since IRWIN confronts the art world with the EAST ART MAP (EAM), a map of artworks from Eastern Europe between 1945 and 2000, various provocative questions come up: regarding the selection within curatorial practice, the intrusion of artists in the field of art theory and historiography, the gap between the apparent dominant Western and assumed backward Eastern art market or – not least – the challenge of the participative integration of art observers and users. The interview with Miran Mohar and Borut Vogelnik focuses on the issues raised within the EAM project that are surfacing in current projects like the NSK State in Time (since 1992) and its diversifications, questioning the challenge of participation back to the 1990ies till now.