A conversation with Petra Varl and Zora Stančič

Your joint creative beginnings go back to 1986 when you established a special working atmosphere in the workshops of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. With a sense of homeliness you created conditions for communication, friendship and critical debate. Why did you decide on such an approach to work? Was this atmosphere also reflected in your first prints?

PV:
At the academy Zora and I worked in the lithography technique. That's a time consuming old technique in which only the preparation of the stone takes several hours. We spent a lot of time together in the printmaking workshop and became friends. We developed a similar relationship to art, we both loved printmaking and our lithographs from this period really are very similar. In terms of design as well as content, since we both used our intimate environment as a source. I drew what I had experienced and then what I wished would happen … well, and then some of it did actually happen.

ZS:
It would be hard to say that we exchanged experiences since we were both at the beginning of the path. We spoke a lot, we searched for ourselves through one another’s gaze. Lots of things go on at the academy, theoretically that’s a place for the freedom of thoughts and ideas, but in reality you have to make the creative atmosphere yourself. The atmosphere in the printmaking workshops was cold: metal plates, lithograph stones, printing machines, it was cold in the afternoons when the heating was switched off, there was no hot water ... A totally unstimulating environment for two spoilt Ljubljana girls. Since printmaking is so time-consuming and we were hanging around from morning to night, we moved in with our stories, energy, and sorted out a thing or two that hadn’t been possible before, for example suddenly hot began to trickle out of the taps. In this sense we humanised the space.

Was this a different approach to work and printmaking at that time?

ZS:
Printmaking at first served as a medium through which we wished to tell stories in our own way. We didn’t get to the graphics studio with drawings and paintings which we wanted to transfer into the printmaking technique, but used it as a starting point in itself. We were in the workshop which offered innumerable possibilities for making artwork, for research and play.
At that time there were quite a few foreign students doing postgraduate studies who had an influence on the workshop atmosphere with their use colours and different viewpoints: a Japanese guy, a Spanish woman with whom we exhibited together at the Faculty of Arts, a Finn, a Dutchman, an English woman of Indian descent, two students from Kosovo ... The printmaking workshop was always open, anyone could walk in, look at the work process and make art. It seems to me that the sculptors were the first to understand that printmaking was a special medium and did not try to translate their sculptures into it. I think printmaking was losing its popularity a bit at that time. We had our peace and quiet because we weren’t really a threat to anyone. We didn’t think we were anything special.

PV:
Zora was doing her specialist Graphic Arts course, whereas I was doing my degree in Painting, but liked the graphic arts better. And so I brought my tutor, professor Metka Krašovec to the printmaking workshop one day and told her: “Look what I'm doing, I like it here, this is what I'm interested in at the moment, and my painting’s not going well”. She understood and allowed me to further focus on printmaking and find my way.

The disintegration of Yugoslavia and independence of Slovenia represent a period of radical social and political change. How did you experience this? Did these changes have an impact on your relationship towards art and artmaking?

ZS:
Given that I came to the specialist Graphic Arts study after my studies at the Sarajevo Academy of Art, the period of carefree student life was behind me. The collaboration with Mladina, Tribuna and Radio Študent, and other alternative movements, also ended, where I was an observer, I played the crowd, but couldn’t become one with it. I missed Roška because I was head over heels in love at the time.
During the period of our intense friendship we used to go dancing in Turist. When Petra’s boyfriend was doing National Service, our main song was In the Army Now.

PV:
Girls Just Want to have Fun and In the Army Now. And then I made prints with the same titles. And threw them away because they were rubbish.

ZS:
I didn’t have a need for direct political action, to go into the first ranks of battle or comment on the daily political situation. I never lived that, I don’t know it, and it doesn’t interest me. I believe that art talks to eternity and not the moment, even though it can choose it and make sense of it.

PV:
Our subject matter was not political, nevertheless we were not indifferent to the time in which we lived. As the followers of the NSK group, and the like-minded, literally identified with black at the end of the eighties, we opted for colours. We used black exclusively in prints. That was our rebellion. We did not bow to the stance of the group. We dressed in colourful Benetton sweaters and moccasins, and adored Swatch watches. The goods of the west were unattainably attractive to us. Now we of course have all of that so it’s no longer important.

Printmaking was at that time understood as laborious work, almost like a trade. How did you regard the image of the muscular male body behind a printing press?

PV:
We began with printmaking at a time that was full of machismo. Laborious work was part of the creative process. Printing is a ritual in which you are at the end awarded with a print. But you had to really suffer in order to get to that print. And it didn’t necessary turn out … and if it didn’t, you just did it again.
But then a miracle happened, first in the form of the photocopier machine and then the computer. Technology was a real helping hand to us, two fragile women, as you’d say. At last we were free from arduous physical labour.
Now technology doesn’t fascinate me as much as it did then, but I do still use it as an aid in my work. But just as an aid, I trust my hand for the lion’s share of my creative work and also wish to highlight this appropriately. With all human deficiencies, far from perfection and technological capabilities.

Your graphic works of the first half of the nineties are quite similar formally. What stands out is a rich, broad drawing and distinctive black and white contrasts. Whereas most have tried to get closer to, or at least retain a connection to, the memory of the “Ljubljana Graphics School”, both of you, at least it seems so, tried to avoid it with a youthful rebellious stance. How did you see your graphic expression in the context of the graphics production in Slovenia and in the world at the time?

ZS:
The tradition of the Ljubljana Graphics School seems important to me, I have a respect for all that I have been taught, but don't dwell on it too much. Mostly artists belonging to the world art scene have had an influence on the formation of my creative expression, as well as other branches of the arts, film, theatre, music... I'm glad I know how graphic prints are made, that I have conquered the manual and mechanical processes, the knowledge of which helps me in my creative work. I know how to explain to contractors how the formal side of the project should appear so that it best ties in with the content. I want the work to appear as if it was made today, in the 21st century.

PV:
I was involved with myself really. What I was doing even seemed strange to me. But Zora and I encouraged one another. I showed my Motorcyclist lithograph (which I drew upon my return from a holiday in Greece where I had been driving around in a borrowed vespa) to professor Apolonijo Zvest and he said that he had no objections if I could back it up. So I took his words as fact and carried on.

It is twenty years since your first joint exhibition at Bežigrajska galerija. A much noted exhibition at Škuc followed and then various projects at Metelkova. Did you have any special strategies for your joint appearances?

PV:
Not only that it was easier to begin exhibiting together, we were stronger together and more persuasive. After some years we began to feel that we had to go our separate ways. That wasn't a sharp cut, but rather a slow process of gaining distance and independence. We had enough creative self-confidence for each of us to focus on her own work and its presentation.

ZS:
We never had the wish to be bound together formally, we were aware of the fact that we were different, but that we can nevertheless work together and talk to each other. We were not prepared to commit to one idea, one concept. There is a tradition of artists in Slovenia who got together, and several art groups and duos formed during the time of our working friendship, which still work together and for whom I have a lot of respect.

And Metelkova?

ZS:
Metelkova was one of the rare campaigns that I took part in and was in the first battle ranks. We climbed over the fence and occupied the army barracks.

PV:
I was at the seaside and wanted to return to Ljubljana in the middle of the holiday just to join the others.

ZS:
I thought that the occupation would bring new homes to various art practices, that we would share out the spaces and work there. It was all too complicated for me. We couldn’t come to an agreement, a total chaos. You got a room to work in, the next day you got there, there was someone else in it. That was the first time I went for the barricades but I was so disappointed that I went home and said: that's not for me.

PV:
Even though I didn’t take part in the actual occupation of Metelkova, I got an art space there. In a kind of activitic atmosphere I took on the pose of the painter/alter painter, and also painted the cover for M’ ZIN  as part of this “mission”. In a utopian way I imagined that this would be the type of place, similar to the academy, where different artists work and exchange ideas, but it wasn't like that. When some drawings and materials went missing from my studio, I didn’t feel safe anymore and so my activistic enthusiasm for Metelkova quickly went up in thin air. So I went and left the studio (which really was big) to the others.

What kind of public and media responses did you receive to your first exhibitions?

PV:
Our work was usually defined as Slovenian pop art with a twist of humour.

ZS:
Some liked us both, while others chose one of us. It was fun ... Sometimes someone tells me they have my print except it’s really Petra’s, but I can’t be bothered to explain anymore … In some aspects our thinking came together and then drifted apart ... Simply put – we didn't want to copy off each other, things happened because of the similar approach that we were developing.

In your works you create an intimate space, or rather a relationship between the intimate and the public. In your first prints this can be seen in the relation of the pattern as background and motif. The later work that followed into staged installations and enlargements of smaller prints was a continuation towards a thinking about the space and the accessibility of your works. How did you get on with searching for spaces for your art in the nineties?

PV:
Repetition and patterns were often present in one shape or form: as background, an addition to the story, or record of a certain subject. In the portrait of my mother at Mala galerija I used the apple as a repeating element, which is the basic ingredient of my mum's strudel, and in my mind personifies the female principle. In the Everyday project I followed life’s rhythm of very everyday tasks using drawing: give–take, draw–erase, dress–undress.
I made the first really big enlargement in 1994 for Nose to Nose. I enlarged a very little drawing to the length of 3 x 30 m. I presented the project in two connected but complete units: a more homely set up at the DSLU gallery and the second part in the car park of Metelkova. The first part addressed the viewer in a classical gallery space, whereas the second part, which took place outdoors, established a contact with the passer by. The photocopy of the drawing was long so that the best way to see it was from a car.
I find that the set up is really important to me, how you place the work in the space and what comes next to it. At the U3 show at Moderna galerija I made a conscious decision that my work Young Ladies would be in the role of a wallpaper, as a background, a decoration to the sculpture of Marjetica Potrč. Women often play side roles, their mission is to stay in the background. The project also had a second part, its other male part, on the other side of town, in a cell of the prison, where I assigned three of the Young Ladies a complete, solo installation. That’s when Star and Odeon first “saw” each other and even I didn't know that they would be so in love and exposed so soon. While at the same time, the established and alternative art scene flirted with each other.

ZS:
In the mid nineties I enlarged some small linocuts several times by using a photocopier and obtained interesting results in yet another graphic art technique. Even though that was  screen-print, the power of the cut in the linoleum became even more visible, dramatic and persuasive with the enlargement. So I passed from the intimate into the public space, and observed what was happening.

I’d like to mention three exhibitions which proceeded one after another in three years and acted as preparation for new research and farewell from the analogue mode of thinking. Now, when I look back, it seems crazy to me that I showed three different projects in three different galleries in three years. That illustrates a distress and an obsessive search for one’s self and one’s own space within the art scene. It began at Mala galerija when I placed my role models on view. At the exhibition entitled Sciaroscuro I presented nine portraits (Rauschenberg, Picabia, Bourgeois, Warhol, Jakac …) in the expantex on canvas graphic technique, which is actually  screen-print that expands with heat, a technique used by designers in the T-shirt production. The portraits of my role models were visually manipulated in a similar way to the portraits of our idols: Che Gevara, Tito, Jim Morrison … Next year I presented myself at Anonimus with a new series of prints produced using the flock screen-print technique that has a velvet surface and a sexy feel to the touch, which reflected the subject matter. The exhibition also constituted of a book made from fabric entitled Self-Censorship, 50 x 35 cm in size, which is part of the permanent collection at Moderna galerija.
In 1988, I presented my project with the bombastic title XX Century at Obala gallery in Sarajevo, where I plastered a whole wall with screen-prints containing redesigned symbols of brand labels. That was the beginning of reflecting on the images of the media which define us so unequivocally with their violent subject matter.

PV:
We both began to feel in a certain moment that the gallery space wasn’t enough, Zora found her expression in artist’s books, whereas I produced some projects in the urban environment: on the advertising column, with billboards … The figures Star and Odeon were moving into various locations at the same time, travelling in space and time, transforming into all manners of possible forms: they appeared on a column, on postcards, in galleries in different cities, even on a box of chocolates, on sugar packets, everywhere was full of them.
The story of Star and Odeon then culminated in 1995, since they’d appeared everywhere that I’d been invited, and when I got bored of them, or their time was up, they simply vanished. What I really liked about my projects in public spaces was the fact that they were transient. I couldn’t imagine that I’d have to look at my stuff for over ten years or more.
My projects from the nineties address the general public. They invite and sweet-talk the public. They demand the least effort possible. My Mum’s Pie was in first line intended for those that stroll or drive along Slovenska cesta past Mala galerija. Anyway, the best view was from the bus. Those that stepped inside were awarded with my mum’s strudel. I always thought it was right for the visitor to feel good, that's why I place a comfy sofa in the gallery (Nose to Nose at DSLU), I offer him a strudel (My Mum’s Pie), I even invite him to draw something himself (Everyday). I felt uneasy in museums where the guards’ strict watchful gazes accompanied me along and I just wanted to do this differently.

In 2000 you had solo shows at Galerija Equrna. In both of the exhibitions it was possible to note a change in your visual expression, which took form with the use of computer technology. Petra focused on producing portraits, she made a series of portraits, whereas Zora published a magazine entitled Magazine after her successful book Album.

PV:
After my divorce I had a crises for a bit, my personal story which I had been celebrating had ended. And I was left creatively mute. I felt as if I had nothing else to say. And then I fell in love again and decided that I’d rather live for a change. But clearly I couldn’t just stop forever.
Zora and I were invited to collaborate in furnishing the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, while at the same time a friend of mine also asked me to do her family portraits. It often happens that the solutions to which I finally get to because of a commission, I then also use for my own artwork. I liked the laminated tables which I’d made for the Chamber’s refectory so much that I decided to make the portraits in the same technique. My work was made up of basic drawings which I reworked on the computer, the rest was done by others. A joiner added a wooden ground and I had a laser engraving made into the surface with the name of the depicted, the year and my signature. I took my friend's commission quite seriously and when I get into something no one can stop me. I churned out some more portraits of friends and acquaintances so that the technique and material suited their apartments and my visual image of a certain family. I often heard opinions on how horrible it was when people buy paintings that go with the colour of the sofa. But I was thinking just the opposite, that it was right if the image suited the space where it would be hung.
And so the Family Portraits, which I actually first exhibited at Equrna, worked much better in the homes of the depicted. By placing the portraits into apartments I moved the space of my work from public to private.

ZS:
It’s interesting when things interweave and overtwine. That’s layers, that we’re talking about. It’s impossible to draw a sharp line between art and life. Commissions are just as challenging and I try to give them my one hundred percent. In contemporary times of multi-functionality we work in several professions. My way of life, which revolved around the media, film, collaborations with architects, designers and advertisers, had an influence on the development of the Magazine. My intimate reflections and stories interlaced with the logic of contemporary magazines and printed matter. Why do I like magazines? Because in a visual way they talk about people, and the things that define these people. We’ve got to have things, that’s why there’s loads of adverts everywhere. The decision to introduce photography into my visual world was simple. In any case it’s our constant companion and one of the important elements in decoding memory. Another layer that can be remodelled and played with.

The Album book and Magazine magazine represent two different spaces intended for different circles of viewers. The book has a more intimate nature than the magazine, which flirts with popular culture and the general public. The book is normally tidied up carefully, whereas the magazine is carelessly discarded.

ZS:
I don’t know whether the Album was intended for a different circle, I don't think so. It was made at a time when I was searching for a place and context for printmaking, since the naked image on the wall just wasn't enough for me. I placed my graphic prints into a different medium, gave them a sense of meaning, together with other elements of the book: literary texts, essay, design, material, in order to form a new whole. I didn't have a clue what would happen, I followed my vision and drew from my desire for the book as an object. Although we’ve bee talking for years about how the book is going to disappear, it’s still here. It’s true that you tidy up a book, put it on the shelf, whereas you throw the magazine away without any qualms. Still, the Album and Magazine have the same weight to me, they were made in a different time and using a different approach. Their space is intimate, but can reach a wider circle of people, even though I wasn’t thinking like that at the time. It’s a fact that few people understand that an artist’s book is artwork and stands for itself. The books produced by the OHO group are equivalent to the group’s other actions to me. The problem arose when I wanted to connect these two segments in my exhibition at Equrna, the prints and the Magazine, which was an important part of the project. At first I had the idea to make out of the space a mechanical atmosphere, a room in a working man’s hostel, or a prison, or a teenager’s room, where the walls are plastered with magazine posters, but the gallery space didn’t allow for this. I positioned graphic prints, prints on canvas and plastic foil, and match prints linearly. I liked the mass of images printed onto various materials which co-habited in the space.

By using the computer you have managed to create an expression in which it is still possible to see your beginnings in printmaking.

ZS:
The linocut is my constant companion. Just drawing is not enough for me. I need an intermediary as well, something in between, which gives me total control.

PV:
Well, it seems to me that I can control the print, but I can’t say the same about hand drawing, as the hand is just a hand, not a machine.

ZS:
After finishing at the academy, the linocut offered itself as a technique, which could also be made in guerrilla conditions, that’s to say, at home in the kitchen, and that's how my part of the exhibition Izlog jeftinih slatkiša was made, just there. I wanted to express myself in a traditional technique using a contemporary manner which is interesting to today's times. I’m also interested in intertwining and incorporating traditional and contemporary techniques. Over the years a huge amount of cut linoleums, matrices, which I keep in metal biscuit boxes have collected, and I call them “linocuttings”. What I like about the linocut is that I can print it again and I sometimes use the same motif differently.

PV:
I see a difference between us here as well. I like Zora's stuff, when she makes a print from a linocut on some background. Prints in magazines are great, but prints as artwork are too flat, single-layered for my liking. That’s why Zora says that I’m a painter.

ZS:
I think about space a bit more fluidly. I don't care if something is flat or raised. By working in the artistic sphere – also at that time when you’re wrong, or when others make mistakes – by making work or any kind of statement you are creating a space, which is complex and difficult to control. The film director can be persuasive with one film, whereas it’s hard to be a visual artist if you’ve created just one piece of work and produced just one single statement with that.

Petra, after 2000 you dedicated yourself to teaching. What influence has this had on your continued artwork?

PV:
Samuel Grajfoner who invited me to Maribor to the Faculty of Education told me that he had spent a long time deliberating whether to invite Zora or me. Well, he chose me because I had a bit more teaching experience, and my boyfriend is from Maribor as well, so everything was fine in the end. I thought that I’d be teaching printmaking but they decided on drawing. At first I was in a bit of a shock, I had spent a lot of time doing preparations for lectures and naturally I had to recap on certain practical skills myself, which I had in the meantime neglected somewhat. During all of this, drawing completely overwhelmed me. I would certainly not be doing what I’m doing now if it hadn’t been for that experience. I mean drawings.
Usually when I dedicate myself to one thing more intensely, this happens at the cost of another. The first three years at the faculty were quite hard-going, but now I’ve got the hang of it and I can dedicate myself to my creative work. Zora is more continuous in her work, whereas I'm stopping and starting.
That’s always been my problem, I'm able to work a lot, almost incessantly, until I give up or get bored with one thing, and then I have a period when I’m just out of it. Each time I want to reinvent myself, and that always takes a lot of time.

Zora, you’ve prepared two much noticed projects, In the mood for art and, after your further study in New York in 2005, Long play. In these projects you present the advertising industry and its strategies in a humorous and cynical way.

ZS:
Every project is a new challenge. I can recycle myself but I can’t repeat myself. The project In the mood for art foresees that the viewer lives in the media world, that the real and the imagined world complement each other. I united them into a whole with personal stories and the biggest complement came from a friend of mine from Sarajevo who had a walk around the Cankarjev dom gallery and cried her eyes out. It’s hard to cry in front of a painting, no-one cries in front of paintings.
It's true, travelling has a positive effect on me. It feels me with energy, while I get a distance from my home environment at the same time. During my stay in New York I made some contacts with galleries and so I returned a little more that a year later with a suitcase full of small round objects made of plexiglas.
I felt like a travelling saleswoman. America offers infinite possibilities and I really like that feeling that everything is possible and anything goes.

Petra, in 2005 you again exhibited some of your new works, doing so in a different manner than we are used to. What happened?

PV:
During this time I did a lot of drawing with pencil and then printed my drawings onto canvas. I didn’t like the prints in themselves enough and I was thinking about enhancing them with  screen-printing or something similar. Then, I was invited by artist Edward Lesjak to participate in the Crossover Austrian/Slovenian project. We decided to combine the prints of my realistic drawings and his abstract stitch. This helping hand gave my work an added dimension. I'd always liked sewing and I tried it out, too. And in my own way stitched some prints on the canvas. I found the sewing process really liberating, and I was pleased with the outcome, too.

But the portraits changed as well – they are more part of a living environment. Today the drawing is clear; is the sewing still present?

PV:
Sewing holds a great significance for me. I felt that my work was missing a sense of touch, a hand quality. When I sewed over the print I finally did something myself and even dared to show it. The line was improvised, the trace of my hand as an extension of the sewing machine. Like an in-between stage which brought me to the basics, even closer, to the pencil in the hand. Now, I look for all the content in the drawing. I use pencils, whereas I place colour planes on tracing paper with crayons. The effect of several layers is similar to the “blurred” image on the computer.

Both your work has often intertwined with collaborations with other people ...

ZS:
We have been working together with Tanja Radež for several years now on several levels. We help each other with autonomous artistic projects, and then there’s also our joint project entitled Andy would have been proud of me, which has been going on since 2000. With the series of graphic prints we are presenting a selection of local images of socio-political products and brand names, and redesigning them. They are deeply ingrained in our collective memory and they were being produced at the same time as Warhol’s famous cans and boxes. In this way we paid homage to Slovenian visual history and Andy Warhol, since it's the 80th anniversary of his birth, which we celebrated with an exhibition at the Slovenian embassy in Washington.

PV:
I met Maja Gspan in 1994 when she called me because she wanted to give her sweetheart my Chocolate Box (that was pictures, similar to chocolate boxes, wrapped in plastic foil reminiscent of cellophane). Since she was a designer we agreed to do an exchange in kind. In exchange for the painting, Maja designed the invite for the Nose to Nose project, which I was preparing just at that time. We became friends and as co-authors embarked on the City Calendar in Zvezda park in Ljubljana the following year. We invited a good number of artists to participate, who helped in the realisation of the year-long project. The creative process in a dialogue with designers, writers of texts, actors seemed like a fun contrast to the working day of the bohemian artist, working away all alone in his studio. And I went a long way to practise this. That type of working approach has its advantages as well as disadvantages of course. Currently I'm really enjoying the time drawing in my studio, all alone. On the door to my studio, which you get to through the living room, there’s a sign saying: “Do not enter unless totally necessary.”

Zora, your latest book Nothing special and billboards are the two biggest projects that were presented at the 27th Graphic Arts Biennale. Here you present yourself in various everyday roles as well as in the context of the art system.

ZS:
On the billboards entitled A tout prix, besides two photographs by Jane Štravs where he took pictures of me in the before-after style, I placed a warning to parents to be vigilant if their child began to show an inclination for art. When the billboard was up I realized its hugeness in all respects, not only physical. It also contained huge white areas which just seemed to call out for the comments of passers-by. I expected that someone would write something, draw me a moustache, glasses, boobs ... but nothing happened, for over a month all three billboards in three different locations across Ljubljana remained virginal. When making the Nothing special book I had all the possible freedom in terms of technology and content. In view of its subject matter and title, I made it like a precious art object, 40 signed and numbered issues, printed in inkjet in combination with  screen-print on art paper, and bound by hand by a special method. The basic idea was to make a book that arose from my dairy notes and visuals, where I would elevate the small, unimportant thoughts and images to reflections on the woman. Namely I’m asking myself how many roles each one of us has, and how many are played out day after day. That’s why the title Nothing special addresses everyone, while at the same time it promises nothing, a kind of discrepancy between the embodied media image and the real picture.

PV:
I also have a constant obsession on how to get to grips with all my roles, how to present them and how to reconcile with them. That’s also why I make self-portraits. One is called Self-Portrait with Curlers in Hair.
Since this is my “project” I took the time for the hairdresser and the whole procedure that goes along with it during the “creative process” without feeling guilty; putting curlers in, drying hair under the hood, etc. It was all like a performance really, and not real life. At the end I even liked myself with curled hair.
Today the stereotype of a woman is no longer her image with curlers and a vacuum cleaner in hand. I don't curl my hair and I leave vacuuming to others, but still I often find that I don’t have enough time. Sometimes I literally steal time to nip to the studio. And then there’s periods when I treat myself and stay there for longer. It’s one of those periods again and that’s why it often happens at home that we just have a salad for lunch.

ZS:
It seems to me that we’re still searching for – not just a space – but also ourselves in that space. Petra and I often complain about all the things that we’ve got to do at home and at work, but at the same time what also brings us together is the fact that we didn’t want to give up anything because of art: we didn’t want to be without a husband, without children, without money.

Božidar Zrinski, 2008

First published in Zora Stančič & Petra Varl " The Past Twenty Years" (pp. 144 - 157). Ljubljana: Mglc