art as fitting more comfortably with mainstream culture, and how do you view this?

My answer regarding erotic art will be blunt. In my opinion, we live in a very hypocritical society that hides behind false masks. Do I regard my non-erotic art as fit-
ting more comfortably with main-
stream culture? Yes and no.

Yes, because my erotic art seems to endlessly create that itch you can’t scratch for all those hypo-
crites out there who love to ex-
press their outrage about this sort of creativity while in some cases secretly admiring it. I’m quite sure many artists, editors, photographers, models, etc. out there are going through the same experiences. Sadly, we are far from seeing the end of this cru-
sade against creative freedom, especially with anything related to erotic art. Intolerance will be the next problem in the near fut-
ure; actually it’s already here – just look at the censorship camp-
aigns that lack any sense of social understanding.

No, because in a way no matter what you do or how you create your work, when you follow your heart and passion it always shows up in what you do. What I mean is that even if I painted a nice little house with a nice little

prairie with a family sitting in the grass eating lunch, people will still find something to complain about because either the colours are too rich or the lady on the grass looks too much like Bettie Page.

Your orientation as a person seems to embrace an inter-
national community conscious-
ness based on creativity and uninhibited expression in all artistic and cultural endeavours, and you appear to be doing all you can to promote this comm-
unity consciousness. Is this the case? If so, what are your short-
term goals and what are your long-term ambitions? What have been your achievements and your disappointments?

You are absolutely right, the Ventcour project is the starting point where I want to mix un-
known authors and artists in all styles and create various artistic projects. I first gave myself a two-
year goal to create, with the help of our friends, writers and artists from Austria, a website where we can all be united. Then, with this done, start selling limited editions of our quality artistic books on
the ’net.

But before continuing let me ex-
plain what is Stroff-Arts. Stroff-
Arts was created in 1996 and was registered in 1999 when we pub-

lished our first book. It was a small book of dark poetry called Paul Stroff, written by Jean-
François Turgeon and illustrated by myself. This full-colour book was intended to be simple in every way, no glamour or comp-
licated text, or complex drawings; the subject was a classic love-
and-death story. When this 55-
page book came out, it was rec-
eived mostly positively by youth, but it also met with a lot of neg-
ative criticism and accusations against us; for example, we were “deranged drug addicts”; our book should be burned (this was said by the father of a librarian I knew); one local community radio station said it was violent and weird; and then there had to be a feminist who added that the book was degrading for women (I had a laugh there); and so on…

In 1997 no publisher wanted to hear us out or give us the chance to express ourselves, even those organisations and people that clearly advertise support for local and original work. The classic excuse was: “You don’t fit in”. After two years of that we de-
cided to become our own pub-
lishers. We worked hard to pay off everything ourselves to create something strong that would not only publish our own work, but also quality work from other

writers who are going through similar problems. Being reduced to silence is unacceptable to us, and publishing original work without “castration” is our goal.

Everybody involved is excited and will help make this work; I’m more than pleased at how things are going. On the other hand, and in keeping with my past experience, every and I mean every so-called public body – including those gov-
ernment ones that say “We help” – never supported us or took the time to understand our goals and how they can help emerging art-
ists. Instead, they help out friends and artistic cliques with generous grants – they nourish