“GastARTbeiter” (2000) is a digital print produced for the “Worthless” show early in 2000 in the Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana/Slovenia, curated by Carlos Basualdo. It is really a moderate retrospective of quite a lot of my works made over the last 9 years. And more so a “retrospective” type of re-evaluation about how much money (excluding the proceeds from the sales of my works…) and why (?) was spent on me as an artist travelling and working all over the world (please, refer to my CV included in the work…) for concrete shows and projects. That’s money spent by the organizers of an event for my plane tickets and hotels, per diems and catalogues, interpreters, framing, graphic designers, catalogue text writers, etc., etc. I tried to make an approximate calculation based on the documents I have saved over the years from approximately 25-30 projects. That’s not all by far but it is quite a lot considering that none of this money ended up in my pocket to be used for the benefit of my family back home, for instance. (I am tempted here to ask: Why didn’t I get all these thousands of $ on an annual basis of approximately $10,000 per year and NOT travel at all? I could have produced at peace and transported works to wherever and above all, I could have provided better for my family…). Rather, it turned out that it is like this: let’s say Austrian (or German) money which comes from Austrian (or German) taxpayers, are given by the state to some art institution in Austria (or Germany) for its budget to organize a show and it is then spent for my travel, accommodations, production costs, etc., etc. But guess what - at the end it goes back to Austrian (or German) pockets via Austrian Airlines (or Lufthansa) ticket, a hotel in Vienna (or Berlin), Salzburg or Innsbruck (Munich or Cologne), a pizza place in Graz (or Frankfurt), a print shop in Gars-am-Kamp (or Dessau) and so on and so forth…
Please, make a note! I am not at all complaining because of this!!! I can’t even say that I am like an alibi to transfer money from one pocket to the other… Because I actually enjoy very much travelling and working, meeting people and knowing places, etc.!
I am just wondering if somebody is really benefiting in a meaningful way from my projects so that the spending thus incurred is justified. I need to know if there is indeed communication going on or not.
Biographies of the artists and the groups:
Luchezar Boyadjiev is an artist living and working in Sofia, Bulgaria (born 1957). Among his recent exhibitions are: “Liquid Frontiers”, “Europe XXL / Lille 3000”,” Tri Postal”, Lille, France; “Bad Times / Good Times”, Futura – Center for Contemporary Art, Prague in 2009. Some exhibitions in 2008 were: “Art, Price and Value” in Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy; “Wonder”, the 2nd Biennial in Singapore; “The Jerusalem Show “with Al-Ma’mal Foundation, the Old City of Jerusalem; “Eurasia in MART”, Rovereto, Italy; “Lucky Number Seven”, the 7th SITE Biennial, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the USA. His 2007 exhibitions are: the 3rd Prague Biennial, Prague, the Czech Republic; “Attitude “2007, in CAMK, Kumamoto, Japan; “Footnotes: On Geopolitics, Markets and Amnesia”, the 2nd Biennial, Moscow, Russia; and “5 Views to Mecca (and other scapes)”, Feinkost Gallery, Berlin (solo).
