Hungarian selection

“Obviously, art must emerge from the light and easy atmosphere of lifestyle, in order to be in critical opposition to the totally mediatised world; and this can be thematised in numerous ways in an era in which everything is fundamentally changing,” wrote Janos Sugar, the Hungarian curator of the 1st Biennale Kvadrilaterale (Quadrilateral Biennial) who choose “relativism” as the theme for the event in 2006. “Relativism is a concept," continued Sugar, "that, if I may put it thus, has an enormous career ahead of it in common parlance.” While, as he predicted, the concept of relativism remains pertinent to this day, our contextual references have changed as to be expected, and we thus investigate the manipulated world from different perspectives in the Angles and Intersections exhibition. The Hungarian selection embraces artists of diverse backgrounds at different points in their career who employ a variety of contemporary approaches in their artwork. Due to the small sample of artists included the range of installations may not be fully representative of the Hungarian media art landscape; nevertheless, in order to appreciate the context of this compact selection it is essential to briefly examine the roots of media art in Hungary while relating it to the installations shown in the current edition of the Quadrilateral Biennial.

Butterfly effect, a 1996 exhibition of media works and series of events by national and international artists, is considered a primary contemporary manifestation of media art in Hungary, with the most far-reaching outcome. It is beyond the scope of this text to chronicle Butterfly effect or the full history of related Hungarian initiatives in detail, and consequently it might suffice to describe pertinent developments correlated with the exhibits.

On August 31, 2000, at six in the evening, the exhibition Media Model, a showcase of Hungarian media art, opened in the Mucsarnok / Kunsthalle in Budapest. “For the first time in Hungary, media artists were considered equal partners in a significant cultural event,” said Zoltan Szegedy Maszak, one of the exhibitors and organizers of the show. “Only two years ago it would have been impossible to find enough Hungarian works, yet today there is more than can be accommodated in the show," stated Miklos Peternak, exhibition co-curator (with Laszlo Beke), in an interview. Peternak remains one of the important figures in the Hungarian mediascape as the director of C3, Center for Culture and Communication, and Chair of the Intermedia Department of the Academy of Fine Arts. The participation of nearly 80 artists in Medial Model might have deflected tight curatorial concepts, but the plethora of events that complemented the exhibition, including performances, video screenings, presentations and public lectures provided a much needed comprehensive perspective and the first opportunity for local audiences to view the state of Hungarian media art created during the 90s. I reported on these aspects of the benchmark event for the Canadian CIAC magazine a few months after the exhibition.
Media Model was focused on the presentation of important early media works; specific invited projects; educational collaborations; and works developed at C3, one of the first medialabs in Central Europe. Szegedy-Maszak, today a professor at the Intermedia Department (Academy of Fine Arts), worked at C3 and, two decades ago, was among the students who promoted the initialization of the Intermedia department, the only graduate media art program in the country at the time. By now, the global emergence of new media education programs has had an effect on several Hungarian academic institutions, which are producing a new generation of media artists and designers. Two of the works from this emerging and gifted generation are included in this exhibition. Despite these educational developments, and the slowly growing number of exhibition venues, we observe a fragmented media art scene in Hungary, perhaps due to a gap between academic and applied experimentation. Hands-on training is provided by new organizations such as the kitchen.hu medialab, lauded as one of the most exciting of its kind in Europe, where research of digital and physical sources, testing, and collaboration are fundamental, and reports are produced in Hungarian and English. Many of the lab’s products are based on the notion of hacking.

In the early 80s, when the distinction between hard- and software was still blurry, the concept of hacking captivated numerous young people, some of whom would later become well-known artists. Szegedy Maszak started to program on primitive computers in his high school days, building installations that utilized the very capability of those early tools. He is credited with using a computer for the first time in an installation exhibited in 1991 in the show Ostmodern in Munich. The physical computing that takes place today at the kitchen.hu medialab, where Marton Andras Juhasz—-whose project iGarden is exhibitedin the Biennale—is one of the leaders, in certain ways harks back to those early days of hacking, transferring the practice to a more complex contemporary mode. Juhasz, educated as a biochemist, feels that his systematic and complex early training provides him with a particular viewpoint. His work strikes a careful balance between poetic expression and scientific experimentation. The junctions between scientific disciplines have always fascinated him, and, moving on from there, he is now investigating the borders between science and art, attempting to illuminate the unseen and unquantifiable relationships between humans, technology, and nature. Juhasz finds this to be an all-consuming activity, since this multifaceted approach requires a combination of intuition, in-depth analysis, and creation. iGarden has been described as a musical instrument, or an interesting installation, a living ornament, a computer input device, and a sensitive toy. Some people might consider iGarden a utopian fantasy, yet itrepresents spaces where electromagnetic energy fields, humans, plants, and technologies collide. The seemingly uncomplicatedinstallation examines issues of space and time, highlighting the relationship between a man-made technical product and the organic growth of grass and revealing unknown interactions in the process. 

Between 1980-1986, while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, Janos Sugar became actively involved in the performances and exhibitions of the Indigo group led by Miklos Erdely, a leading avant-garde interdisciplinary artist. A multidisciplinary approach infused with irony has remained a significant mark of Sugar’s work. He is a recipient of prestigious awards and participated in numerous international and national exhibitions and events, including Media Model. There frequently is a curious edge to his projects, as his works graffiti saving or Mute, included in the Quadrilateral Biennial, illustrate. Janos Sugar’s work has been characterized by “context shifting” experiments. Sugar has linked private and public spaces for most of his distinguished career, be it by using “ready made” materials for his early sculptures or re-contextualizing texts (of uncommon origins) and images in videos, installations, and public art works. The unusual grafitti saving project is aimed at preserving the transient time-traces of (global) urban landmarks. “Writing text on the wall has a tremendous tradition in the folklore of big cities. It is one of the simplest ways to create freedom … the creators communicate with every citizen of the city in principle. They make an intrinsic town legible,” commented Sugar. Grafitti saving re-contextualizes street art, while Mute—one of Sugar’s ongoing projects since 2005—is shifting the focus to the public political arena by presenting soundless televised pre-election political debates between major candidates in various countries. The mute button on the TV remote control, as applied to the video clips, transforms the actual political debate from a precisely managed, meticulously detailed stage routine into an altered, intriguing context for a silent political performance with ironic subtitles.

Interdisciplinary collaboration has an episodic history in Hungary. Apart from some ongoing ventures, such as Vision, an art & science project initiated by C3 in 2002, a record remains difficult to trace. However, this is all changing now. Lately, interdisciplinary groups have formed and started to collaborate on production and exhibit both at home and abroad in galleries, public spaces, and commercial venues.  According to his biography, Adam Somlai-Fischer—trained as an architect—is “interested in the cultural qualities of new technologies, and to explore these […] creates installations, software and experiments that blend spaces, technologies and interactivity.” Somlai-Fischer, one of the founders of the kitchen.hu medialab, frequently collaborates with software designers, engineers and artists on his networked projects—in his own words he is a “team worker.” Accordingly, his project Wifi camera was developed and produced in collaboration with Bengt Sjölén, a Swedish software and hardware designer who has been programming games since he was ten years old. Since 2006, Wifi Camera has been shown internationally in numerous international exhibitions. “I like building and tinkering with technology as much as thinking and sketching. Although these methods are deviant, with lots of hacking / breaking, the motivations are pure; I believe it’s important that we can all write, not only read. One might claim that in this century, to gain your own freedom, you need to develop at least some degree of technological literacy,” states Somlai-Fischer. The visualization of the electromagnetic environment has fascinated artists for decades. Wifi Camera is an excellent illustration of this investigation and easily accessible by exhibition visitors. The Wifi Camera snaps pictures of "landscapes" illuminated by wifi similar to the way in which a traditional camera takes pictures of spaces illuminated by visible light. We tend to forget the invisible and often inaudible structure of the electromagnetic environment, which actually permeates our daily lives (in the form of programmed, computerized everyday tools). The Wifi Camera apparatus reminds us of this condition by revealing the electromagnetic space of the tools, traces, shadows and backdrops that we create within our surroundings.

Back in the 70s, artists increasingly became interested in new technologies beyond photography and film. Gabor Body, who produced his first video in 1976, was the first person in Hungary to work in this medium in an artistic context. Ever since the late 70s experimentation with video has had a strong tradition in Hungary, which continues with the emerging generation of artists, among them many women. Using computer animation combined with video, Julia Vecsei, a graduate of the Intermedia Department, Hungarian University of Fine Arts, investigates every day life—including her own—in busy urban settings. In Juliagraph, one of her earlier on-line Flash-based projects, the visitor could rearrange the artist’s material surroundings. Vecsei recorded her project Rendez-vous á seconde in six time intervals from the same camera position during a single day. The six sections on the screen of the edited video are composed into a harmonized picture showing the same place at different periods in time. The alternating components of the six sections provide an intriguing fluidity, contrasting yet complementing the fixed viewpoint of the camera. Due to the shifts of the sections we are constantly challenged by a new image arrangement on the screen. The artist (and others) has compared the shifting compositions to waves modulated by odd rhythms. In several of her other projects that are not included in this exhibition, Vecsei has worked with drawings and watercolors, exploring environmental themes through a variety of metaphors.

In conclusion, it is fascinating to consider now, in 2009, how the “relativism” of a few years ago correlates with the contemporary media art world in general and the Angles and Intersections exhibition, in particular. Sugar considered relativism a new concept, “which we have loaded of late with all the content that we view as problematic.” Did we find solutions for all he problems or notice a change in that condition since this remark? On the contrary. It seems that, in an age of tough and tricky tribulations, the enduring elucidation and active intervention by artists remains vital, as demonstrated by Angles and Intersections.

Nina Czegledy