HG60 – Aesthetic Disobedience
- The opening of the exhibition is on March 29th which is at the same time00:00:15.000
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- the collector, Gabor Hunya's 60th birthday.00:00:21.500
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- He has a special significance for the show00:00:26.000
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- since the works seen here are all from his private collection.00:00:30.500
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- It's got to be remembered that this private collection is much larger,00:00:37.000
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- the number of works is about 150 to 200 pieces. We combed the collection through00:00:43.500
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- to try to put together a selection that reacts to current political events in the last 30-40 years.00:00:50.000
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- It was important amongst the selection criteria that works were to reflect00:00:56.500
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- their own current political events and not look or think back at past historical events.00:01:03.000
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- But given that, one finds works from the 70ies such as the documentation of Pinczehelyi's performance00:01:08.500
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- and also works from 2013.00:01:14.250
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- In this picture Tibor Horvath is standing, holding up a board on Heroes' Square,00:01:17.000
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- a demonstrator's board with an image of the trees from Varosliget pasted on00:01:23.500
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- and the board covers the building of the Kunsthalle as if it were not there.00:01:30.000
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- This work is documentation, a photo documentation of an action that reflects on00:01:36.500
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- the cultural policy skirmishes that the institution is presently sunken into.00:01:42.500
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- It was also a point while organizing this exhibition to try to show works made in different media00:01:49.000
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- so it was our good fortune that in recent years the collector's attention focused on public works00:01:55.500
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- thus allowing works to find their way into the show that would not suit a collector's living room,00:02:02.000
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- they wouldn't resonate so well there they are exhibition pieces.00:02:08.500
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- Here I think of this street sign by Janos Sugar that on one side says "excuse me" in Hungarian00:02:15.000
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- and "scuze" in Romanian on the other and was originally installed in Tirgu Mures.00:02:21.500
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- What is perhaps even more interesting in this context is "National Kneeling" by Janos Borsos,00:02:28.000
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- which was a private action staged in front of the House of Parliament.00:02:34.500
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- In a dress specially dedicated to this action with signs and symbols00:02:41.000
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- representing different minorities ethnic or religious groups that were00:02:46.500
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- in some way excommunicated the artist's action is a gesture toward them00:02:53.000
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- by kneeling on some of the signs while showing off others. Only to start a flame war with desultory00:03:03.500
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- racist and excommunicatory comments both for the artist and the his piece.00:03:10.000
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- The presentation today is made up by the video, the dress on a dummy, plus an info board00:03:15.500
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- explaining the signs on the dress,00:03:21.000
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- as well as another info board with a summary of comments from kuruc.info00:03:25.000
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- It has become in this form as a result of a dialogue between the collector and the artist.00:03:28.500
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- I am an economist and I was busy with the economical and the political events00:03:35.250
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- of the era of the system change. And I came to realize that I couldn't formulate well00:03:42.500
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- what was happening than,00:03:50.000
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- that the societal changes are more complex than could be described by a dry economical analysis.00:03:53.500
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- And then I started to follow what artists were doing, how they reacted, if they reacted at all.00:03:59.500
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- Contemporary art, art reflecting contemporary politics is getting made everyday, we live in it,00:04:06.000
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- so I think one cannot wait till that gets into an exhibition or a gallery,00:04:12.500
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- so I've got to be up to date in communicating with the artists.00:04:18.000