Eleonora Angiolini: How would you describe the spirit behind Pina and the choice of its name?

Bruno Mokross & Edin Zenun: The name Pina originally derives from Pinacoteca, which was the name of another project space that had been residing in the same location for four years prior. We have advanced from this idea and contrary to the name “pinacoteca”, we don’t only exhibit paintings, but different kinds of works by emerging artists with international backgrounds, focusing on mainly solo exhibitions in close collaboration with young artists and curators. We are trying to close the gap between off-site and commercial gallery exhibitions and internationally connecting the City of Vienna while supporting our collaborators in their early careers. It’s important to us to not only think about the content of exhibitions, but also the structural questions surrounding the art world and what it means to be running a non-commercial, self-organized initiative.

EA: Could you introduce us to the last show “Stunted” by Sofie Fatouretchi & Luna Mae Heflin? Tell us a bit about what happened at the backstage of this exhibition.

BM & EZ: The exhibition “Stunted” by Sofie Fatouretchi and Luna Mae Heflin opened on March 23 and closed just a few days ago, on April 24th.
The spontaneous nature of an independent programme, in comparison to the interests of a commercial gallery or institution allows for flexibility in structuring our programme as we proceed through the year, and we were happy to have the opportunity to be able to do the non-scheduled exhibition with Sofie and Luna, who we both have known for a while and followed their progress. We all were excited about the opportunity of exhibiting their works in the given environment and in a series of quick decisions we developed a framing for the show. The works resonated well with us because of Sofie and Luna’s intuitive and production-driven process, working with which felt very natural after having had a series of more established and conceptual approaches exhibited in the space, such as the past show “Staged Stairs” by Emanuel Rossetti.

EA: What is the role of non-profit spaces nowadays in the art world and in particular in the Austrian art scene? Do you think it has changed over the years since you started this project?

BM & EZ: We feel like the Austrian scene is very open to initiatives that propose an alternative to large singular institutions. There have always been fantastic project spaces and independent initiatives coming and going, like Kevin Space (www.kevinspace.org), the now-closed-down HHDM (www.hhdm.eu), school (www.weloveschool.info), Gärtnergasse (www.gaertnergasse.com) or the recently reopened Ve.Sch (www.vesch.org) but in the recent years, around 2016/17 there’s been a sudden blast of new spaces, which I guess we were also a part of – and which is fascinating to witness. There’s also the project Independent Space Index, as part of which a comprehensive list of spaces in Vienna can be found at www.independentspaceindex.at and which will be hosting a second edition of a festival of the same name in Autumn 2019.
And while of course notoriously underfunded, project spaces in general can, from our perception, work more freely and intuitively than institutions or spaces with a commercial interest which attracts very different people for very different reasons.
The scene is large, growing and very heterogeneous, but simultaneously welcoming and non-exclusive, and naturally these factors attract more people to the local communities and help shape their surroundings. attract more people to the local communities and help shape their surroundings.

EA: What are the challenges you are facing and your strategies to overcome them? 

BM & EZ: Minor discomforts naturally include Viennese neighbors’ complaints if the opening doesn’t end at 10 pm sharp… But indeed obviously and primarily monetary issues and the bureaucratic hurdles that come with being a state-funded initiative, especially after the governmental change – although we cannot currently complain about a lack of support from their side. What we are most concerned with right now is the question of how to sustainably position ourselves in the local and international structures and continue with a programme that is compelling and pleasurable to our visitors as well as ourselves. Repetitiveness is not necessarily a bad thing, and we obviously can’t tell what the future will bring, but we are aiming to break the loop of just carrying out exhibition after exhibition until we burn out.

EA: What’s next? What do you see in Pina’s future?

BM & EZ: Of course we are going to continue with our regular programming, but as hinted at before, it is our main focus at the moment to develop strategies to prevent exhausting ourselves. We like what we are doing and we want to keep doing it! But maybe now is the moment to take a step back and focus on whichever of all the different aspects of running a space are actually relevant to us. So we are currently working on developing sustainable strategies that break out of the regular programming. We want to get more people with different backgrounds involved in organization and curatorship, like we did more often in the early days, and are working on upcoming collaborations with international spaces.

1,2,3,  Stunted, Sofie Fatouretchi & Luna Mae Heflin

4, 5  Jane Fonda – Oscar Enberg, Barbara Kapusta, Sydney Shen. Photography: Maximilian Anelli-Monti

6,7 ZAHN–AUGE–FUSS–Kindheit–Teenager–Baby–Senior–Junior–Dame–Herr–KNIE–BRUST–ARSCH–ARSCHLOCH–DARM–UTERUS–Mutter–Vater–Haare, Lucia Elena Prusa. Photography: Raphael Reichl

8,9,10 Pas’ auf dich auf Schwester, Sarah Księska – Photography: JKG, courtesy the artist and Pina