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Censorship at the Collegium Hungaricum Vienna
On 27 June 2017, our work entitled [See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil] was removed from the Real Hungary exhibition, arranged in the building of the Collegium Hungaricum Vienna, before it opened. The triptych in question was the latest element of our series entitled Flags. Three Hungarian flags are represented so that each has one colour of the tricolour painted over with black enamel paint. Our first flag in the series was displayed in 2010 at the exhibition of Esterházy Prize recipients also arranged at the Collegium Hungaricum Vienna. For the current occasion, according to our agreement with the curator, and alongside other works, we produced new flags. With our works, our objective was to offer a critical response to the concept of the exhibition*, and not to incite a political scandal. With our selection, to present formally abstract works at a show engaged in Realist traditions, we wanted to reflect upon the problematics of categorization.
*Abstract Hungary (Künstlerhaus, Graz, 2017) / Real Hungary (Collegium Hungaricum, Vienna, 2017).
The facts, in brief:
- The exhibition of Esterházy Prize winners, entitled Real Hungary, was arranged in the Hungarian Institute on the invitation of the director of the Collegium Hungaricum Vienna, i.e., Mária Molnár
- The curator of the exhibition was Vitus Weh, contemporary art advisor to the Esterházy private foundation, and the works on view appeared with his approval, the ominous work in question, among others.
- While our work was meant to be installed on the wall on the day before the opening, we were in fact unable to arrive to the Institute during opening hours due to reasons outside our control. We notified the staff of the Institute, who did not indicate any problems in connection with this, and they arranged for our installation to take place the following day (the day of the opening); the staff was very helpful. Mária Molnár did not make any contact with us personally, nor did she advise either the artists or the curator that she would like to inspect the displayed works before the opening, nor did she ask for any further information about the new pictures, though we would have been more than happy to oblige. The place for the triptych was waiting empty on the wall when we arrived.
- The week before the opening, we had provided the information about the new work upon the request of the staff at the Institute, so that it could be included in the list of works and on the list for insurance, and no photos were requested beforehand.
- As we found out that day, when we installed the pictures, Mária Molnár was not even in Vienna; thus, she most likely was informed by telephone that the pictures had been installed, and that they were flags.
- The triptych was installed on the wall 6 hours before the opening, in the knowledge that (since this was what we had agreed upon) this would not be a problem. Nevertheless, during lunch, the staff member of the foundation and the curator received the directive from Mária Molnár to remove the work from the exhibition immediately. All of this likewise occurred by telephone, as Mária Molnár was still not in the building; i.e., she decided without seeing it, in an insupportable tone, referring to the fact that political work could not be shown in the Hungarian Institute, especially not when it concerned the desecration of national symbols. There was no mention of any sort of bureaucratic reasons or rules.
- For our part, after this, the best solution seemed to be to retract all of our works, but in consultation with the curator, and in consideration of the foundation, the exhibition, and all the other artists, we made a compromise and we accepted the removal of the triptych. By the time we returned to the exhibition space, the pictures had already been removed, but we insisted on documenting the event, and so we re-installed and then removed the pictures once again. Five minutes later, the place for the nails was already filled.
- After the opening, we were finally able to speak with the director of the Institute in person, who continued to refer to the desecration of national symbols as her reason, as well as mentioning its tastelessness. She did say, however, that now she would be willing to look at the work with her own eyes. This, however, has still not happened yet.
- The exhibition is now closed because of technical reasons. According to the contract between the Esterhazy Foundation and The Collegium Hungaricum Vienna it should be on view until the 10th of October.
Lőrinc Borsos
(Lilla Lőrinc, János Borsos)
Budapest, 07.05.2017
jano.borsos@gmail.com
borsoslorinc.com
Lőrinc Borsos
See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil
2017, triptychon, acrilyc, enamel on wood, 20x30x5 cm each
about flag series: http://borsoslorinc.com/index.php/works/flags/
An Open Letter to Sting from the Cc Group
An Open Letter to Sting,
As an Honorary Patron of BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and also as someone who was familiar with the Buddle Arts Centre in Wallsend we feel that you will share our concern that BALTIC has recently removed the only example of a Buddle AdHOC Gallery book from it’s archive.
The removal of this book from the BALTIC archive at this time is linked to a larger disputed archival narrative about how BALTIC acquired control of 39 High
Bridge.
Below is the back cover of the book with the Waygood 39 High Bridge
Studio floor plan:
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“Wall” is a Buddle exhibition catalogue that contains colour images by twentyfive Waygood artists who had studios in 39 High Bridge in the centre of Newcastle in 2001.
Ever since then, as part of the B4B programme, this book has been publicly available via the BALTIC Plus Archive.
Below is a screen shot of the BALTIC archive website site earlier this year…
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However this year, without warning, the book has been removed from the BALTIC archive.
http://balticplus.uk/wall-artists-from-waygood-gallery-and-studios-c2889/
The Cc group are keen to open an exchange with the BALTIC Trustees but have been unable to secure any response from them. Hence this letter.
We would like to thank you in advance, as an Honorary Patron of BALTIC, for showing this letter to BALTIC Chairman, Peter Buchan.
With your prompting we are confident that Mr Buchan will raise the matter of BALTIC 39’s High Bridge revisionist archival narrative with his Trustees.
This is the outcome we hope to achieve with this letter.
We are asking that the BALTIC Trustees contact Cc so we can resume this dialogue about the BALTIC archive in a more conventional manner.
The Cc group email is: cc.kontact@gmail.com
Thank you for your time and your interest in this matter.
Yours sincerely
Topsy
on behalf of the Cc group, June 2017
Cc consists of a group of changing people
ICE FLOE. The institutional issue. Crossroads between Eastern Europe and the River Plate region (Montevideo, Uruguay)
ICE FLOE
THE INSTITUTIONAL ISSUE
Crossroads between Eastern Europe and the River Plate region
ArtLeaks, Azra Akšamija, Aldo Baroffio y Soledad Bettoni, Carlos Capelán, Graciela Carnevale, Andreas Fogarasi, Liljana Gjuzelova y Sašo Stanojkovik, Hungry Artists Foundation, Jusuf Hadžifejzović, Lea Lublin, Dalibor Martinis, Paula Massarutti, Ivan Moudov, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Tadej Pogačar, Mariana Tellería, Pablo Uribe y Leonello Zambon.
National Museum for the Visual Arts, Montevideo (MNAV)
Tomas Giribaldi Av. 2283
Opening: 25th May, 2017
TÉMPANO. El problema de lo institucional. Cruces entre Europa del Este y el Río de la Plata [ICE FLOE. The institutional issue. Crossroads between Eastern Europe and the River Plate region] is a research project produced by Museum of Contemporary Art of Montevideo (MACMO). Its primary objective is to replicate, producing cross-regional dialogues and correspondences, the research and exhibition program Inside Out. Not So White Cube, a project focused on artists and artworks related to the institutional issue (institutional critique, art and institutions, instituent practices, institutionalisms) in Central and South-Eastern Europe led by Alenka Gregorič (artistic director of the City Art Gallery of Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Suzana Milevska (independent curator and theorist based in Macedonia, principle researcher at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy). Inside Out. Not so white cube was presented to the public through exhibitions, publications and open activities in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Belgrade (Serbia) in 2015 and 2016.
ICE FLOE. The institutional issue. Crossroads between Eastern Europe and the River Plate region builds bridges between some of those art practices analyzed by Gregorič and Milevska and similar ones (in their aims, methods or spirit) from the River Plate region of South America. MACMO’s research team (which also integrated students from the National School of Fine Arts from Montevideo) selected 10 artists and collectives from the Inside Out. Not so white cube show held at the City Art Gallery of Ljubljana (September-November, 2015) to be joined by 9 study cases addressing art works and art projects produced by artists from Uruguay and Argentina since the end of the sixties to the present day. Through this corpus, dialogues are established, similar symptoms are distinguished, and absences and differences are discerned, between two contexts of production which are very different in many aspects while sharing a series of common characteristics. The comparative analysis of this repertoire of artistic positions offers us some tools to put exotisms and isolations into question, to produce critical readings, and to construct contexts of interpretation that surpass local and national positions and terminologies.
It is well known that only a small fraction of the mass of an ice floe is visible over the surface of the water: most of it is hidden below. The art works and projects studied by MACMO’s research team deal with artistic institutions focusing on what they hide and conceal. These practices try to demonstrate, through a variety of strategies and methods, the contingency, historicity and calculated nature of what is taken for granted, immutable and non-ideological in art institutions and their behaviors.
Work team:
Curatorship and production: Francisco Tomsich, Eugenia González, Agustina Rodríguez
Montage design: Eugenia González, Agustina Rodríguez, Leonello Zambon
Translations: Francisco Tomsich
Collaboration: Laura Outeda, Mauricio Rodríguez, May Puchet, Cecilia Sánchez
ArtLeaks has prepared specially for the exhibition Ice Floe. The Institutional Issue, a new edition of the ArtLeaks Wall Newspaper where you can read a selection of ArtLeaks cases in ArtLeaks Wall Newspaper #3 (Spanish) and ArtLeaks Wall Newspaper #3 (English). You can also download ArtLeaks Wall Newspaper #2 (English) in PDF format.
Photographs of the installation:
Join the action ‘Countdown’ for a more socially responsible dance centre (Zagreb, Croatia)
Long-term attempts of the Zagreb dance scene to organise a public dance centre which would be managed transparently and responsibly once again became relevant a year ago. That was the moment when Milan Bandić, the mayor of Zagreb, put the Zagreb Dance Centre under the management of the Zagreb Youth Theatre “behind the closed doors”, based on political eligibility. With this decision, the city government privatised the only spatial and production resource for dance in Zagreb for the second time (the first time being in 2009), this time allegedly because of expense rationalisation.
Owing to this decision, today the management, staffing, programming and financing of dance in the Zagreb Dance Centre is carried out by a single person – the director of the Zagreb Youth Theatre – who runs both functions based on Mayor’s politics.
This politics favours corruption, clientelism and nepotism instead of transparent and responsible division of public resources. Unfortunately, the Zagreb Dance Centre is one of many examples of how the public resources in Zagreb are used to employ the politically eligible instead of using those resources for wider social interests based on the principle of equal opportunities.
It is our artistic and civic duty to point at socially irresponsible processes of managing public goods. In other words, it is our right and duty to defend the field of dance and artistic labour from this kind of politics by advocating different and more righteous relationships and means of governance. The more we keep silent, close our eyes and censor ourselves before this harmful policy, the more we destroy the future of dance, this city and this country.
That is why we have decided to organise the action Countdown before the upcoming local elections. With this action we wish to point to failures in the city governance once more, and at the same time continue to advocate the autonomy of dance by establishing a public dance institution which will be governed in a transparent and socially responsible way.
The action Countdown will begin with Tjelovanje (eng. Bodying), a 24-hour long protest action in St. Mark’s Square and continue with a workshop for the dance community and everybody interested, while for the final event we will have a round table focusing on the topics of the Zagreb Dance Centre and managing public spaces in the city.
We invite yout to join us and actively participate in all these events.
The dance community and citizens boycotting the Zagreb Dance Centre
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
02/05/2017 @ 10AM – 03/05/2017 @ 10h St. Mark’s Square
Tjelovanje, 24-hour long action
You think you’re not a dancer? Don’t worry, everybody is welcome and everybody’s dance is equally important!
+++ directions +++
We invite all dancers and those who wish to participate in any way to sign up in the calendar. Signing up for shifts (the time you can spend on the square) enables us to have an overview of the 24-hour rotation, or rather, the attempt to perform a 24-hour long, uninterrupted protest dance at the St. Mark’s Square.
One day before the action takes place we will define the exact rotation (the proposal is to be in the rotation for 60 minutes). You can perform the rotation alone, in pair or in a group, or you can join someone spontaneously. Count on the possibility of others joining you too. Also, keep in mind that you can sign up to be on duty for those who are performing. This means you are keeping an eye on those who are performing and you are ready to react in case reporters or the police show up. If you wish to document the action, please bring your own devices.
Before the action begins, we will address the reporters with a press release. In case the reporters ask for a statement during the action, those on duty will repeat the same press release.
09/05/2017 @ 5PM-8PM Ilica 10, courtyard of the Zagreb Dance Centre
What kind of dance centre do we want?
A workshop for the dance community and everybody interested.
11/05/2017 @ 11AM Tuškanac 1, Cinema Tuškanac
Round table with candidates for the mayor’s office and their representatives, moderated by Nataša Govedić and Zdravko Popović.
Press about the events (in Serbo-Croatian)
Prosvjedni ples ili plesni prosvjed na Markovom trgu:
24 sata plesa za javni plesni centar
http://tris.com.hr/2017/04/prosvjedni-ples-ili-plesni-prosvjed-na-markovom-trgu-24-sata-plesa-za-javni-plesni-centar/
Ništa bez repertoara: Umjetnost kazališta počinje od autorskog, a ne komercijalnog programa
http://www.novilist.hr/Kultura/Kazaliste/Nista-bez-repertoara-Umjetnost-kazalista-pocinje-od-autorskog-a-ne-komercijalnog-programa
Plesom protiv neodgovornog upravljanja javnim gradskim resursima
http://www.h-alter.org/vijesti/plesom-protiv-neodgovornog-upravljanja-javnim-gradskim-resursima
‘Oni koji danas upravljaju plesnim centrom ne odgovaraju nikome osim politici’
https://www.tportal.hr/kultura/clanak/oni-koji-danas-upravljaju-plesnim-centrom-ne-odgovaraju-nikome-osim-politici-20170502
Za društveno odgovorniji centar
http://www.kulturpunkt.hr/content/za-drustveno-odgovorniji-centar?quicktabs_abeceda_i_kinemaskop=1
Počeo 24-satni prosvjed plesnih umjetnika na Gornjem gradu
http://vijesti.hrt.hr/386184/poceo-24-satni-prosvjed-plesnih-umjetnika-na-gornjem-gradu
Protestna akcija „Tjelovanje”
https://www.teatar.hr/207636/protestna-akcija-tjelovanje/
GORNJI GRAD Počeo 24-satni prosvjed plesnih umjetnika
http://www.nacional.hr/gornji-grad-poceo-24-satni-prosvjed-plesnih-umjetnika/
Plesni prosvjed ispred Gradske skupštine
http://www.prvi.hr/antenazagreb-zagreb/vijesti-antena/plesni-prosvjed-ispred-gradske-skupstine
Tjelovanje – akcija za Zagrebački plesni centar
http://www.monitor.hr/vijesti/tjelovanje-akcija-za-zagrebacki-plesni-centar/375770/
Tjelovanje: Protiv neodgovornog upravljanja javnim gradskim resursima
https://www.libela.org/vijesti/8652-tjelovanje-protiv-neodgovornog-upravljanja-javnim-gradskim-resursima/
Sustavno zanemarivanje plesa
http://www.kulturpunkt.hr/content/sustavno-zanemarivanje-plesa
TELEVIsion:
HTV Vijesti iz kulture (2./3.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
HTV1, Hrvatska uživo (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
RTL vijesti (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Z1 televizija, Vijesti (5.5.) – snimka na linku (gledati od 3:57) https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Jabuka TV, Serbus Zagreb (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
RADIO:
Hrvatski radio 3, Na kraju tjedna s Anom Kreitmeyer, ZPC tema od 0:26:50, ali poslušajte sve, lijep je razgovor
http://radio.hrt.hr/ep/na-kraju-tjedna/207149/
Antena Zagreb, Antena 60 minuta (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Antena Zagreb, Zagrebačke vijesti (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Radio Sljeme, Zagrebački dnevnik (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Hrvatski radio, Dnevne novosti (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Prvi radio, Zg vijesti (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Enter Zagreb, Vijesti (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Radio Martin, Zagrebačke vijesti (2.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Radio Yammat, Selo moje mało (3.5.) – snimka na linku https://we.tl/pjwji4dwCE
Hrvatski radio 1, Katapultura (5.5.) – snimka na link
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