Interview with Uršula Cetinski
In the first interview, marking the 30th anniversary of the City of Women association, we explore various approaches to feminist curating. We spoke with the first president of the association and the first artistic director of the festival. In 1994, Uršula Cetinski was invited by the Office for Women’s Policy, directed by Vera Kozmik, to organize a multi-day gathering of women in culture. This gathering grew into the International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women, which was year later formally transformed into an association. Uršula Cetinski was interviewed by the City of Women team.
City of Women: How did you get involved in programming the first festival and what those early days were like?
Uršula Cetinski: Those early days began with me working in circumstances that I felt were violent towards me, and I no longer wanted to work in an environment with a male boss. Then a college friend who was already working at the Office for Women’s Policy called me and said that the director, Vera Kozmik, wanted to talk to me. This was in 1994 or maybe 1993. The Office was an independent governmental body, part of the Slovenian government at the time. I met with Vera Kozmik, and she told me they were planning a two-day international gathering of women, where women would socialize, play golf, and so on, and asked if I would participate in this idea. After some thought, I suggested that we should organize a whole festival instead. Initially, we thought the festival would be a one-time event. I was hired as a part-time collaborator, given a small room on Tomšičeva 4, where the governmental office was located. I started working completely alone. I was inspired by an experience a few months earlier in the UK, where I participated in the Magdalena Project, a festival dedicated to women. Everything at this festival, including the performances and technical work, was done by women, which was quite rare 30 years ago. The only men involved were the chefs cooking our meals. This inspired me to propose that the City of Women be a feminist festival, encouraging women to be confident and creative, and making them more visible. Thirty years ago, the situation was quite different from today, which I will discuss further. I felt it was important to showcase women, such as female directors in theater or choreographers in dance, while allowing men to be part of the performances as well if necessary, but ensuring that women were the authors of the works presented. Another aspect was the involvement of men in the organization, as I felt that the women's issue wasn't just a women's issue but also a men's issue. Back then, we didn’t talk about more than two genders, but we did consider the involvement of both men and women. That’s how we started. At first, I was entirely on my own and had to figure out how to secure funding for the first festival. We received no money from the Ministry of Culture for the first festival, but we did get funding from the Municipality of Ljubljana. At the time, the mayor was Dimitrij Rupel, whom I visited. He agreed to support the festival, mentioning his familiarity with feminism from his time as a professor in the US. There was a heated city council meeting where our project was initially excluded from the budget, but with the help of the Slovenian Christian Democrats, we managed to get back into the budget, which surprised everyone. It was quite surprising that they supported it.
I was very worried because we had already signed contracts with women artists for the first festival, but we didn’t yet have the money. I was constantly concerned about whether I would end up in trouble because I had signed contracts without the funds to fulfill them, as we still needed to order plane tickets and so on.
Soon, I was joined by my first collaborators. I happened to meet a woman on the street who had just married someone from Belgium, Koen Van Dael, and was unemployed. I invited him to join City of Women because I was overwhelmed by the project. Somehow, I gathered various people to join the project on a freelance basis. One was Melita Gabrič, who is now in diplomacy, and another was Vanda Straka, who now works at the Municipality of Ljubljana. This was our core organizing team. We worked in that small room at the Office for Women’s Policy, with Vera Kozmik officially directing the festival and signing all the contracts since we didn’t yet have legal status during the first festival. After the first festival, we realized the project had so much potential that we didn’t want it to be a one-time event, so we decided to establish an independent association to continue organizing the festival, which could no longer be part of a government office. Fortunately, we were allowed to keep a room on Tomšičeva 4 for free before the festival moved to Kersnikova Street.
As you can see from the catalogs, we had several curators, both women and men, for different artistic fields. The first exhibition, titled Stereotype, was hosted at the City Art Gallery Ljubljana . It was curated by Lilijana Stepančič and Helena Pivec, and I think it was so contemporary that it would still be relevant today, featuring names from the visual arts like Sanja Iveković. Looking back, the festival was exceptionally progressive in its early days, and even if it were organized the same way today, it would still be modern, not classical or outdated. We had many reflective events in the early festival editions, representing various feminist theories with scholars, professors, and theorists from different parts of the world. However, the first festival, despite being the most financially supported during my tenure, also faced the trauma of not being able to afford everything. For instance, we had to cancel certain performances by African artists because we lacked the funds.
After the first festival, we hit rock bottom, as we were left without money. Our budget was drastically reduced, akin to dropping from 50,000 euros to 5,000 euros. However, solidarity from other cultural institutions helped us survive. They offered their services for free, meaning we proposed an idea, and they implemented it at their expense. This is how the festival was saved. For example, Koen Van Dael and I traveled to Denmark, where we saw Shirin Neshat in the Louisiana Gallery in Copenhagen, who was relatively unknown at the time. We asked the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana if they could host her exhibition as part of their program. Some even volunteered themselves; for instance, the New Collectivism group called us, saying they heard about our financial troubles and offered to design the exhibition catalog for Shirin Neshat for free. The City of Women survived after we hit rock bottom, and once we were no longer part of the political establishment, it continued to thrive on the solidarity of others.
“The City of Women survived after we hit rock bottom, and once we were no longer part of the political establishment, it continued to thrive on the solidarity of others.”
City of Women: At the first festival, many of the artists were from English-speaking countries. We’re curious about how the international curatorial practice worked, how decisions were made?
Uršula Cetinski: This may have been influenced by my experience at the Magdalena Project in Cardiff before the first festival, where I saw things that inspired me, and I wanted to bring them to Ljubljana. There were also some funny situations, for example, I remember the performer Bobby Baker, who had a show where she cooked for only thirty people. I found her address and wrote to her—we were still communicating by fax at that time—asking if she would come to the women’s festival in Ljubljana and how much it would cost. I sent the fax, and she replied that all costs would be 7,000 pounds. I wrote back saying I didn’t have 7,000 pounds, only 700. And she replied, “OK.” So, there was a lot of this—when women knew it was for a women’s festival, they didn’t raise their prices. It was all less capitalistically harsh; we didn’t have to pay a high price for everything. Many women identified with the idea and were willing to contribute to it.
City of Women: During the curating process, were you consciously aware of what feminist curating meant? Did you focus primarily on feminist themes, or was it more important that the authors and artists were women? How did you navigate these aspects?
Uršula Cetinski: It was a combination of aspects. One aspect was excellence. For example, Meredith Monk performed at the first festival with a concert in the Gallus Hall. Cankarjev dom was involved from the beginning, but only after we ran out of money. For the first festival, we had to pay for the venue, but when we ran out of funds, and they saw us as promising, they became co-producers, allowing us to use their venues for free. Another aspect was feminist themes presented by some authors. A third aspect was neither the first nor the second but something entirely different. We curated based on the principle that the program should mean something to the communities living in Slovenia who aren’t Slovenians. So, we combined events that were well-received by communities like the Roma community, especially the concert in K4, or the Macedonian community, with concerts for Macedonians and people from Bosnia. We considered that.
“We curated based on the principle that the program should mean something to the communities living in Slovenia who aren’t Slovenians.”
City of Women: What does feminist curatorial practice mean to you personally? How did you view it then, and where do you see it today?
Uršula Cetinski: The conditions were completely different back then. Thirty years ago, for instance, in theater, which was my field, Meta Hočevar was the only well-known female director in Slovenia. In theater, it really bothered me, which is why I wrote a monodrama about Alma Karlin, which was presented at the first festival. It really bothered me that women were always stereotypically portrayed as young girls needed by men in stage stories for seduction, or as suffering mothers. It was very stereotypical, and it was very rare to see characters of confident, independent women and intellectuals. This was really, really rare. At that time, it was evident that women had access to cultural projects that were low-budget, meaning they had a hard time getting directing jobs in theater because those required larger budgets, but it was easier for them to get engagements in contemporary dance because those productions were cheaper, and because contemporary dance is a newer art form that isn’t as hierarchical and traditional. There were more women involved in video than in film because video productions were cheaper, so it was evident that women had access to low-budget projects and rarely to high-budget ones, where men dominated. So, one of the main ideas at the start of the festival was to show that women’s art is just as valuable as men’s art and that women have every right to be supported by society to the same extent, not just in a low-budget version.
“At that time, it was evident that women had access to cultural projects that were low-budget, meaning they had a hard time getting directing jobs in theater because those required larger budgets, but it was easier for them to get engagements in contemporary dance because those productions were cheaper, and because contemporary dance is a newer art form that isn’t as hierarchical and traditional.”
City of Women: How did you communicate this outwardly, to the media? And how did the public react to the first festival and the subsequent ones?
Uršula Cetinski: I think we communicated it outwardly in a deliberately mainstream way. In the sense that we didn’t want only feminists to come to the festival, but we wanted the general public to attend. That’s how we envisioned it. We wanted people who don’t engage with these topics to give it some thought. In that sense. So, we mostly did the promotion ourselves, especially me. I remember that the government information office, which was conducting some research at the time, found that I was the only person in October who was mentioned more often than Janez Drnovšek throughout the entire year. It was really everywhere, from firefighters’ newspapers, hunters’ newspapers, to mainstream media. During the first festival, RTV Slovenia dedicated 30 minutes of prime time to City of Women every day, with Majda Knap in charge of the show. We managed to break into the media. Of course, this didn’t mean that everyone was enthusiastic, of course not. There was a circle of enthusiastic people, and then there was a circle that was extremely hostile. On the second day of the festival, Lada Zei wrote an article on the third page of Delo under the political commentary section titled Ljubljana Is Wearing Pants Again, where she claimed that I had tricked the mayor of Ljubljana into giving us money for this stupid idea, that I had polluted Cankarjev dom with menstrual blood, and that she was very glad this project wouldn’t be continued. I remember this claim every time we have the festival. Simon Kardum wrote highly sexist, hostile, and mocking pieces for Slovenske novice. Both women and men strongly attacked us with comments like ‘Uršula Cetinski is a lesbian who writes feminist graffiti at night and has a mustache,’ and so on. I was surprised because, naively, I thought this would be a fun festival for everyone, but of course, this festival was made to highlight something in society that nobody wants to admit – that women and men do not have equal opportunities. These reactions were, of course, welcome, as they showed us the kind of society we live in. The reactions were very personal, going into my private life, and this marked me deeply. If you have a whole festival on your shoulders, it’s very difficult to endure it psychologically, especially if you don’t have as much experience as I do now. Even now, it’s very difficult when people attack you like that.
“I was surprised because, naively, I thought this would be a fun festival for everyone, but of course, this festival was made to highlight something in society that nobody wants to admit – that women and men do not have equal opportunities. These reactions were, of course, welcome, as they showed us the kind of society we live in.”
City of Women: Which events from past festival editions still resonate with you or remain memorable?
Uršula Cetinski: There were many wonderful events. I particularly enjoyed the concert of musician Xanthi Mavri from Greece at the jazz club Gajo on Beethovnova Street. This event sparked a scandal because representatives from North Macedonia and Greece were both there on the same day – there was a diplomatic dispute over how the countries should be named in the catalog. In the end, we decided to remove all countries from the catalog, and that year, only cities were listed. It was a wonderful concert of engaged songs. Another incredible event was a Roma concert at K4 with the singer Džansever, a lesbian with a male band, who had sold many records at home and in Turkey and had multiple sclerosis. K4 was packed, a mix of Roma attendees, entire families, grandfathers, grandmothers, parents, and Slovenian intellectuals. The concert was phenomenal. When she came on stage, she said: “How beautiful the girls in Ljubljana are.” And throughout the performance, concert-goers were jumping on stage to take pictures with her. The entire concert. One event that remains memorable was a roundtable on terrorism where we screened a film at the Kinoteka, documenting the testimonies of four women from the Red Brigades. The theme was not just women as victims but also as aggressors. We invited a photographer from Italy, who was also a protagonist in Loredana Bianconi’s film Do You Remember the Revolution, and had spent many years in prison. She was involved in a terrorist organization and was convicted for leaving her car at a dump after the assassination of Aldo Moro. It was crazy – hundreds of people came to listen to this roundtable at Cankarjev dom. There were many anecdotes related to this. I asked an older colleague from Cankarjev dom to pick up the photographer from Trieste airport. The borders were still closed then. He came to me, not knowing who she was, and said he was very embarrassed because they were searched for hours, thinking she must have assumed he was a criminal. But I told him, ‘No, Šime, that’s her past,’ and explained who she was. He couldn’t believe it; he was completely stunned. And then Koen said that Šime is truly the perfect driver, even for the mafia. All sorts of things happened with these people.
City of Women: How did you choose the festival’s themes?
Uršula Cetinski: We just came up with them. I came up with the name myself. In the beginning, we hired an agency, paid quite a bit, and they suggested the festival be called Feminale. But then, based on Fellini’s film and the book City of Ladies, I decided on the name City of Women. And it survived.
City of Women: How do you see City of Women today?
Uršula Cetinski: Today, I see City of Women as something that I’m surprised I didn’t realize was such a good idea. Now, when I go to the biennales, Documenta, and so on, you see that this is now a really hot topic. Thirty years ago, they laughed at us. We started all these topics about women’s status in society, lesbian art, and socially excluded people. These things weren’t part of the mainstream back then; they only entered the mainstream later. Everyone laughed at us at the time. I remember a woman at the Ministry of Culture telling me that I had so much potential, but now I’ve completely failed. Many people thought that if you dealt with this, there was something wrong with you. But it’s not like that anymore; now, it’s part of the mainstream. So, it was a very visionary idea that still has its purpose today. It might have helped us survive so long, given that we often struggled with whether we would survive or not. Back then, if someone had told me there would be a time when I could go to a bookstore with shelves of books about women and exhibitions about women, I would have thought it was completely impossible. That’s the kind of atmosphere it was back then.
“Thirty years ago, they laughed at us. We started all these topics about women’s status in society, lesbian art, and socially excluded people.”
City of Women: How did you decide on the participating artists? Was it a group decision?
Uršula Cetinski: No, not a group decision. Each person would suggest something. Everyone would say what they wanted...
City of Women: And would you then discuss it further?
Uršula Cetinski: No, they’d tell me, for example, ‘Oh, I think this woman sings great sevdalinka,’ and of course, you believe them. We didn’t argue much. I trusted the people around me.
City of Women: Society is changing a lot, and so is feminism. As a viewer and observer of City of Women, are there any themes you’d like to see addressed, or things that have changed over time that should be highlighted?
Uršula Cetinski: It’s hard to say what those themes would be. It’s always the same when you’re working on festival themes: you ask yourself, who am I making this festival for? For those who already think like I do, or do I want to do this to convince those who think the opposite or don't believe in it? This question always came up for me. At the beginning, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince politicians to give us funding for this festival. Sometimes, I would frame the festival as being about motherhood and maternal issues and didn't reveal everything because I saw that the people I was talking to were very inflexible. Those who found the topic distasteful couldn't be swayed or convinced. But I was much younger then and thought it was possible.
Then a professor from Salzburg told me to make a list when fundraising. On the left side, put those who are absolutely in favor, and write down, 'these decision-makers are for it,' he said. In the middle, put those who are undecided. And on the right, those who are completely against it. And don't even bother with those on the right, unless they attack you—then you attack back. But feed your idea to those who are in favor and, of course, those who haven't yet made up their minds. Try to gather as many people from the middle column as allies for your idea and the festival. That was really the right advice at the right time because I wasn’t so savvy back then.
So, who is the City of Women festival for? Is it to tell each other what we already think, or is it to try and convince those who are not yet sure? I think that’s an important question.
“Whenever you tackle these themes for a festival, you ask yourself, who is this festival for? For those who already think like I do, or do I want to do this to convince those who think the opposite or don’t believe in it?”
City fo Women: What about balancing between established, popular female artists and the emerging, DIY, grassroots artists? What was the approach?
Uršula Cetinski: We always combined them. If you have a woman who is a star, it gives legitimacy and reference to the festival, and it’s easier to break into the media. This also helps all the others, of whom there are more, and who are not yet known.
