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LUBLJANA
RAJKO BIZJAK

 

QUESTION: Maybe we’ll all walk around naked.

ANSWER: Maybe. The story of clothing is not just story of protecting our body against forces of nature, it is also the story of power against the personal, against people’s pleasure, because the people who ask for their own definition of pleasures don’t respect the government, because they don’t need the government, they have what they need. And because the sexual pleasure that is connected with our bodies, is one of the most powerful pleasure, control of the ‘taboo’ areas means control of human pleasure. Stepping over the border into taboo regions is allowed only for those who served the government well. Governments do not like individuals that try to remove that border.

QUESTION: Are you one of those people?


ANSWER: I think I am. Through my work I try to show how you can be one of those people too. I try to make people look at certain things in a way that they have not looked at them before. And my work simply shows you one option how to look between women’s legs. It’s not just ‘a place to put your penis,’ but could be something else. There’s a world that you can find and discover.


QUESTION: Let me ask you another question: Is religion important to you or your work? this is something I am trying to figure out a bit these days, Slovenian sex art and its relation religion/spirituality.

ANSWER: We can not deny our basic religious subconscious structures, because we all grow on the stories from bible, mostly old testament. As behaviorist I believe, that most our acts based on this structure imprinted in our minds. The bible’s old testament with its descriptive stories is easier to understand than the more philosophical new testament. It has built the unconscious structures for the whole western world - Europe, the Americas, part of Africa --with it's stories filled with hate, dead, blood and denial of ‘others’ making place for racism, intolerance and revenge. Understanding the violent and non-tolerant nature of old testament ‘god’ creates possibilities for artists to fight against these subconscious structures that are build into our brains. For instance, when people look at my pictures they can find out, that female sex and sexuality is not something immoral or worth to be hidden. I do not believe that wish to overcome these moral borders is unique in Slovenian culture. Also other people wish to do that and some of them succeed – it is just that they are more hidden from ‘public culture’ and it is harder to find them. In Slovenia we all know each other so it is much easier.

QUESTION: What about Slovenian pornography? Is there like prohibition in showing genitals? What is the rule here?

ANSWER: We recently had a funny controversy here, when one person from a village was up until midnight watching the cable channels, and he found a porno channel and complained about this to the director of telecommunications. There was a huge debate on the TV and in the newspapers. But in the end they decided that it is legal to brodacast porn after midnight.