Speakers include Doina Anghel, László Beke, Mark Boswell, Paolo Cirio, Anthony Downey, Catherine Fraise, Kata Krasznahorkai, Nina Levitt, Łukasz Ronduda, Kädi Talvoja, Raluca Voinea and Franciska Zólyom. 

The seminar takes place from 1.15 – 7.00pm, Friday 27 February 2009, at the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN. For further information, click here (pdf).

The seminar will be accompanied by an issue of Third Text, guest edited by Dr Reuben Fowkes, and including essays by leading theoreticians dealing with the problematic of how to rewrite the art history of Europe after the Cold War to take into account the multiple histories of the countries of Eastern Europe.

At the age of 62, Déry was imprisoned in 1957 for his activities prior to and during the 1956 Uprising, and was released in 1960 in the first post-1956 amnesty, when he wrote ‘Két asszony’, based on the letters Déry’s wife wrote to his mother during his imprisonment. Like the old lady in Szerelem, Déry’s mother was of Austrian origin, and after he was allowed to publish again in 1962, he published their correspondence under the title Liebe Mutter! Younger followers of writers who, like Déry, were deemed polgári or individualista, also found it difficult to publish in the 1950s, and essentially stayed on the margins until the 1970s.

Makk

Makk gathered the unparalleled ensemble of Lili Darvas as the elderly lady, Mari Törőcsik as Luca, and Iván Darvas as János; and chose János Tóth as cinematographer. Tóth’s method of blending past and present (in Makk’s words, ‘múlt és jelen külön is legyen, de együtt is szóljon’) was to use flashbacks which, as our guest Dr Cesar Ballaster noted, was a popular technique throughout the Eastern Bloc in the 1970s. Flashbacks demystify collective memory by means of individual memory, and introduce uncertainty as a counter to the monologic narratives of the Party-state. Such an emphasis on subjectivity, and the juxtaposition of shots reminiscent of black and white photographs, create a dreamlike, timeless quality which, as the old lady tires, becomes further and further removed from reality. Luca is fired from her teaching job because of her husband’s incarceration, while the old lady dreams of her son’s life in a French castle on the highest mountain in New York. After her death János, who has until now been present largely in his absence, is released from prison and returns to the flat, which his wife now shares with co-tenants.

When Szerelem was awarded the Cannes Jury Prize in 1971, one of the jurors apparently told Makk that although the film, and in particular the actors’ virtuoso performances, had greatly moved him, János’s incarceration required explanation, for it was highly unlikely that such an individual would have committed a serious crime. It is precisely the pointlessness of the prison sentence which constitutes one of the major narratives of the film: János’s release is never explained, neither to him, nor the viewer. In the taxi on his way home, the driver asks, ‘Politikai?‘ , a question János need not answer.

Discussion included the ways in which cinema placed broader historical concerns within ensemble dramas of individual lives, beginning with Szerelem and continuing throughout the 70s and 80s, and whether the viewer can pinpoint the era depicted in the film. Our conclusion was that, despite the use of terms such as kitelepítés (forced relocation, usually from cities to the countryside) and társbérlők (co-tenants), which would suggest the early 1950s, one cannot say for certain that Szerelem was not a contemporaneous document of Hungary in the late 1960s. Indeed, the trauma suffered by the characters could easily have taken place at any point in the interwar years. In any case, Makk and Tóth’s deliberate transpositions of past and present undermine any attempts to tie the film to any specific point in time.

The next film we shall watch will, naturally, be Makk’s Egy hét Pesten és Budán.

Further reading:

Déry Tibor, Szerelem és más elbészélések, Budapest, Szépirodalmi, 1963;
— ‘Szerelem’ in Irodalmi forgatókönyv. Filmkultúra, 3, 1967, 4, pp. 102-29;
Bikácsy Gergely, ‘Szerelem’, Filmtörténet online

Remake

Opening tomorrow at the Kiscelli Museum in Budapest is Csaba Nemes’s REMAKE I-X, a series of ten animated sequences dealing with the riots in Hungary last year. The following is an excerpt from Maja and Reuben Fowkes’s ‘Sooner or Later the Tanks Will Appear’:

The work features ten animated sequences that originated in media coverage, video clips and personal experience of the violent disruptions: from the storming of the Hungarian Television Building by masked youths and the commandeering of an antique tank by veterans, to a staged television discussion on the causes of the riots and an unlikely love story between a skinhead and an art historian. Csaba Nemes is interested in the reuse of old scenarios, attempts to appropriate political symbols and languages and the exploitation of popular memories, while his work offers a critique of the crudeness of everyday political manipulation.

REMAKE already has a certain fame in Hungary, due to the scandal surrounding the way the project was first chosen for the Hungarian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennial, but then deselected in controversial circumstances. The artist succeeded nevertheless in realising all ten films, which will be shown together for the first time at the Kiscelli Museum in Budapest. The project is well documented on the REMAKE website, which includes excerpts from the films, the catchy ‘Combino’ song and critical discussion of the work and its reception.

For more information, see the REMAKE website and our earlier post.

Revolution is not a Garden Party has already exhibited at the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest and Manchester Metropolitan University’s Holden Gallery, and will move to Galerija Miroslav Kraljević in Zagreb in mid-June.

The exhibition consists of new and recent works that examine the global economic and political context against which revolutions take place, as well as the intersection between personal and artistic heritages of revolution. It expresses the sorrow of failed political struggles in the past and the future, and considers the shared experience of a communist past and the post-communist reality. Other concerns include the experience of revolutionary literature, the gendered images of resistance fighters in contemporary media, and the legacy of 1956 for the relationship of art and revolution.

The exhibition features videos, installations and and photography by artists from Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and the UK. Admission is free.

A conference took place in September last year at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, organised by Professor Martyn Rady and Emeritus Professor László Péter, which explored the history of resistance, rebellion and revolution in Central Europe, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, although with an emphasis on the modern period and, appropriate to the fiftieth anniversary, on the 1956 Revolution and its legacy.

Curated by Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Nemes’s presentation for the Hungarian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale

is conceived as a series of animation films entitled Remake, which takes as their subject the dramatic public events in Budapest that gripped the world in autumn 2006. These ten short films focus on intensive media coverage of the disturbances, individual experiences through personal narratives and the emancipatory power of nascent urban myths. On a more general level, Remake as a contemporary art project creates a space to investigate the modalities of disorder, and the possibilities and problems inherent in it.

The reason given for the last-minute rejection of Nemes’s piece was that it had been curated by two individuals, rather than one. A selection of press commentaries translated into English is available here, the artist’s statement can be read here.

The disturbances on the streets of Budapest and other cities and towns last year put Hungarian current affairs on newspaper front pages around the world. Ostensibly a reaction to Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s speech leaked on 17 September, demonstrators demanded Gyurcsány’s resignation on the basis that he had lied to the electorate.

Nemes engages with the claim to re-enact history fifty years on from the 1956 Uprising, the theatricality of protest, and the mediation of such imagery in the press. The 2006 disturbances may not have constituted a revolution, but they certainly were televised: a picture gallery is available here on the Index news site; a selection of videos is here. More recently, the barrier around Kossuth Square was dismantled in what was described by participants as a repeat performance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, and further demonstrations have been planned for 15 March, the anniversary of the start of the 1848 revolution.

Amrita Sher-Gil’s vibrant canvasses and her short but dynamic life have established her as one of India’s most celebrated modern artists. Born in Budapest in 1913, to a Hungarian mother [opera singer Marie Antoinette Gottesman-Baktay] and Sikh father [Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Majithia, a Sanskrit scholar], she trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where she became influenced by Realism. Upon returning to India, she adopted this modernist approach to portray the poor and yet colourful lives of local people, making her art a true fusion of east and west. This eye-opening display presents several of her vivid paintings, alongside revealing photomontages by her nephew, Vivan Sundaram.

Amrita Sher-Gil

A brief note on the Hungarian connection: after the family returned to Simla in 1921, Amrita’s uncle Ervin Baktay, Indologist and former student of Hungarian painter Simon Hollosy, encouraged her to pursue painting, which she studied in Paris from 1929 to 1934, before returning to India. She married her first cousin, Egan Victor, in Budapest in July 1938, but they returned to India a year later, following the introduction of the third ‘Jewish Law’, which was based on the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.

Further information on Amrita’s life and works is available on the Sikh Heritage site, and from this artist’s site.