Chances are that even if you fancy yourself to be pretty “up” on art and all that, then you could still do with learning a bit more about art in Romania. Tom Wilson and Milos Jovanovic have just released 100 To Watch, a sort of directory of the new wave of Romanian art. They made 1,000 limited-edition copies and an accompanying website. Tom sent us 20 copies of the book, so if you want one, email the UK office, but you must be able to come and pick it up because there’s no way we’re shipping it to you overseas. We had a chat with Tom about art, Romania, himself, and our ignorance.

Vice: So, Tom, tell us about the art scene in Romania. Being pig-headed and British, I hadn’t really thought about Romania as a hotbed of new art. Tom Wilson: Some fields, like film, have seen a massive boom in Romania recently. Directors like Cristian Mungiu, Radu Muntean, Cristi Puiu, etc. have been scooping top awards at film festivals all over the world, and features like The Death of Mr Lazarescu have been picked up by the global media. The idea behind the book was to try to show that the scene here in Romania is bigger than this, and spills across into all the artsy areas.

What is your background in the Romanian art scene? How did you get involved? Me and Milos Jovanovic, who ran the project, are both foreigners. I’m from the UK, Milos is Serbian, and we’ve both been here for far too long. I work as a journalist, screenwriter, and DJ, while Milos runs a small design boutique. He also publishes Hardcomics, Romania’s only real independent comics producers. Last year, the two of us got money from the Romanian Cultural Institute’s Cantemir program to do a monthly comic newspaper. This year we thought we’d do something more ambitious. As soon as we realized we’d actually got funding, we kind of wished we hadn’t – we had to do a 360-page book and website in four and a bit months. For those readers who know nothing about Romania or art, tell us about art in Romania. How is it different from art in the UK? The scene in Romania is close and compact for a very good reason – mainstream culture in Romania has become more and more unpleasant lately. The rush of new money during the boom since the start of the decade meant that the place started looking like the American dream gone wrong. Status starts to mean the size of the car you drive, and all the bars suddenly decided that what they really needed was a huge plasma screen on every wall. Most of the clubs look like Chinawhite on a bad LSD trip, full of fat mafia-looking guys and scantily clad girls listening to – rather inexplicably – minimal techno. The good thing to come out of this was to bring the arts scene together. When there are only a few places you can go, it brings people together. Plus, there’s a good chance that the man at the next table is a Cannes-winning director.

Did the fall of the Iron Curtain spark an explosion in young artistic efforts? Before the revolution, the arts were collectivized, rather like agriculture, and the Artists’ Union was the result of this. The Artists’ Union still has clout – they give out studio spaces and own all the big, central galleries in Bucharest. Think watercolor paintings by elderly ladies. Actually, watercolors would be OK by comparison. Their gallery spaces basically look like charity shops. So the resurgence of the arts has been entirely in spite of bodies like the Artists’ Union. That said, the Romanian Cultural Institute has been shockingly progressive: I mean, they funded two of our projects. Plus they did a show in New York last year, and invited over a bunch of graffiti kids – which is a pretty bold move out here. Needless to say that they got into loads of trouble in the press over the resulting scandal – especially as one of the exhibits was a My Little Pony with a swastika on it. That said, Linda Barkasz, the lady responsible is actually in our 100 To Watch. She’s great. The fall of the Iron Curtain – it didn’t really have much impact on the arts because the 90s were so unrelentingly grim for ordinary people. Lots of families were struggling to have enough to eat, so reinterpreting Joseph Beuys has to pretty low down on your list of priorities. The real explosion only started after the millennium.

The book focuses exclusively on current Romanian artists, right? Or is it the art scene in Romania? How did you start making this book, and why? How long did it take? Vice Vice Amateur Watercolours Monthly Vice