CUKR Magazine #7
A magazine about Art and Life
The seventh, fairytale-like issue of the magazine CUKR is dedicated to friendship.
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The seventh, fairytale-like issue of the magazine CUKR is dedicated to friendship. How could it be otherwise—friendship is the magical dust of life, about which we know even less than about romantic love, which fairy tales so often place in the foreground. Yet, as history teaches us, friendship is also romantic in its essence: if we were to read the letters of men from the Renaissance today, we would hardly believe that these were purely platonic-intellectual relationships. The passions and words that permeate the letters of scholars of that time are today used only for grand declarations of love.
On the other hand, there are far fewer legacies that would testify to women’s friendships, and they are usually more practical in nature: they are hidden in tax documents showing that living together eased expenses and other hardships, and in legends remembering women who cared for the dying or the sick. Perhaps there was not much room for grand words in the everyday struggles for survival. Historian of emotions Tiffany Watt Smith speaks about all this, as well as about the importance of friendships and communities in queer relationships.
Italian writer Olga Campofreda writes about women’s friendships in the literary canon; Veronika Zakonjšek and Slavoj Žižek touch on certain friendships that we can observe on our screens; Mladen Dolar explores gossip as the connective tissue of friendship; and Maks Valenčič attempts to define friendship from a psychoanalytic perspective. Marina Abramović and Lena Pislak talk about the past that connects them, while Alenka Ambrož investigates the contemporary tendency to set boundaries in relationships. Is it possible to maintain both friendship and boundaries?
Of course, we also write about personal friendships and how they have cut into us: through growing up and through losses (Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti and Eva Taja Cimerman), as well as about how friendships build artistic spaces and collectives, about which Maša Žekš writes.
— excerpt from the editorial by editor-in-chief Dr. Manca G. Renko.
Essays and columns were contributed by: Olga Campofreda, Veronika Zakonjšek, Maks Valenčič, Mladen Dolar, Eva Taja Cimerman, Manca G. Renko, Alenka Ambrož, Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti, Klara Katarina Rupert, Peter Klepec, Aljoša Kravanja, Ana Makuc, Marko Kržan, Tiffany Watt Smith, and Slavoj Žižek.
Manca G. Renko spoke with writer Tiffany Watt Smith, and the magazine also publishes an excerpt from a conversation between Marina Abramović and Lena Pislak about Abramović’s relationship with Ulay. Portraits of artistic collectives (Študio, Kela, Kolektiv Arhiv, Sreda v sredo, and Nonument Group) were prepared by Maša Žekš.
Visual interventions were created by Anja Smaka, Jaka Teršek, Lucija Rosc, Matic Pandel, and Nik Erik Neubauer (all members of the Študio collective), as well as by the collective Sreda v sredo.
The magazine was created at the initiative of Cukrarna.
Editor-in-chief: Dr. Manca G. Renko
Editorial board: Dr. Jela Krečič, Alenka Gregorič, Blaž Peršin
Art director: Ajdin Bašić
Publisher: Muzej in galerije mesta Ljubljane
Ljubljana, winter 2026.