Giancarlo Politi: As an artist who is today also a cultural manager, what do you think of globalism in art and culture?
Milan Knízák : Globalism in art is nothing new. Actually the entire so-called civilized world adopted the European manner of perceiving and operating art. Wherever you go (whether Sydney, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, or Prague), they are playing European music, putting on European plays, and painting European paintings. Local cultures, even if they were once very powerful, survive in the sphere of art only as folklore. This means that global art originated quite naturally and without problems long before economic and political globalization began to be considered.
With this there of course emerged the very dangerous division of art practiced by some theorists into “mainstream” and “residual” tendencies. The designation of a part of art as residual tendencies is something I consider to be dangerously segregational. On the contrary, I see a great opportunity in the emphasis on regional gestures. It shows, after all, that works of art which resemble one another are becoming boring and therefore, naturally enough, the museums where such art is displayed are also boring. Today many people around art realize that it is necessary to find some other, different point of view with regard to the modern and postmodern art scene. So far only a few really have the courage to do this. I am convinced that exactly these trends will be favored in the future.

GP: Could Fluxus — the transnational movement of which you were an influential protagonist, and in which artists from many different cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities participated — be considered a precursor to globalism?
MK: Almost the entire action scene of the ‘60s is now included under the heading of Fluxus, even though this was not the case at the time. Fluxus was truly international, but on the other hand I do not think that it was unique in this. In exactly the same way we can find traces of, for instance, Cubism, almost all over the world of that time, or later Surrealism or abstract art. Action art was possibly more visible because it was separated from the art sphere because of its non-material, to some extent provocative, and undoubtedly intellectual nature. The members or the supporters of Fluxus formed a kind of sect.
Fluxus is undoubtedly a model of globalism in the wider sense of the word. It linked artists not only of different nationalities and ethnic groups, but also of almost diametrically opposed artistic and human standpoints. They were linked by one thing alone — a dislike of official art. From history (and not only that of art) we know quite well that dislike of anything is a good element for unity. I am not really sure, however, that possible globalism should be based on dislike.