******http://trashcalendar.blogspot.com/******** Local municipality of the 8th district(Józsefváros, which is one of the poorest districts) of Budapest criminalizes poverty by prohibiting dumpster diving in that district.
From the 1st of January, 2011 if you take trash in this district you are oblliged to pay the fine of 50.000 HUF (ca. 185 euro). Everybody knows those chocolate-filled advent calendars, which are flooding the supermarkets from October, every year. You open one window and you can find a Santa shaped candy inside. Inspired by this, during the advent period, every day we opened one numbered trash bin and put a present into it. Than we took a picture of the content. These pictures (as gif animations) were sent by emails every day to all of our contacts. Linked to each email we also sent some web links which were all somehow connected to the actual object in the bin.
We also made some printed calendars, which ones were spread by homeless and poor people of the street.
Our work 'Obscene', already exhibited in Budapest before, was sent to Bukarest, to take part in theZilele Strambe, organised by the Caminul Cultural. Considering, that the most important part of this work is definitely the story itself, we invited Dan Perjovschi, the only romanian artist, we had heard about, to help us communicating this complex story, in a new context. We asked Dan to make drawings about our experiences around this exhibition in Budapest, by not spending more than one hour to implement them and we have offered the same amount of money for his work, as a cheap hungarian prostitute would get for the same amount of time. But he donated back the money for our group and contributed this exhibiton with his work for free. The drawings of Perjovschi were copied on the walls of atelier35 by Gyula Muskovics, the curator of the exhibitions 'Exposed', member of Pax Romana group.
"The mayor of Budapest’s 8th district (one of the most economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods of the city) declared a war against the homeless in March of 2011. An edict was published at that time which made dumpster-diving an illegal act punishable by fines. Kocsis’ fight against this most vulnerable layer of society was only an amplification of policies already put in place in Budapest by Budapest’s mayor, István Tarlós (both mayors represent Fidesz, Hungary’s leading party). Tarlós’ law targets homelessness per se: anyone found guilty of “having a life-style of living on the streets” – i.e. not only “being” on the street, but being on the streets for life – is punishable by a fine of up to 50,000 Hungarian forints. Currently that is the equivalent of 225 USD or 167 Euros." Source:The Contrarian Hungarian A three year suspended sentence was passed down by the Pest Central District Court for Norbert Ferencz, a social worker who urged others to reach into trash-cans in protest of the prohibition, in Budapest’s 8th district, against dumpster-diving. Source:The Contrarian Hungarian
It seems, then: only the size, the color and the owner of the dumpster is important...
/Protest against the criminalization of homelessness, november 11, 2011, Budapest, 8th district./ Original video: here, from the 14th min.
Szobart was a temporary open studio and gallery, led by artists. It took part in Sept 2011, in Budapest Gozsdu B Garden. Organizers: Teresa Szepes, Charlotte Schmid, Eike Harder.
1st week
BUCA-REST sign with a large piece of coal (originally from Visegrád, found by Csilla)
ARMWRESTLING at the entrance, for the entrance on the opening of the 1st exhibition. One of us (Csilla) was the right, the other was the left hand (Virág). This performance was a game of course, but also a kind of gender experiment too. It was very interesting to observe the reactions mostly of the males. Many of them didn't wanted to play with us, because we are girls…etc. It would be interesting to repeat this performance in different societies or cultures, for example in Germany too...
Unsuccessful emBROIDERY workshop with Eleonóra (A woman from Tordas, who is an autodidact artist and makes beautiful embroideries, but without publicity. We wanted her to come and teach us, but in the end she changed her mind and didn't come). Finally we exhibited drawings of the planned embroideries stuck on clothes, like broken line infinity sign and three teeth.
VEGETABLE SCULPTURES inTordas. It was a travelling project of the Szobart. We went together (Matthi, Jefferson, Connor, Jannis, Csilla, Virág) and built vegetable and fruit sculptures on the Festival, where they celebrated the Ant Days. So we made small bugs with the help of the native people. On the second opening we exhibited the chutney, what Csilla made out of the fruits and vegetables. On the opening everyone was free to taste it.
2nd week
CENSORING THE CENSUS workshop. In October it will be obligatory to answer the questionnaire of the census, made by the government. We will be counters on the census. So we created an event and invited people to check the formular, and change the questions or even write new ones together. For the exhibition, we made a new questionnaire of these new questions and asked the people on the opening to fill them. Participants: Fischer Judit, Fischer Bence, Nhancale Zsuzsi, Horváth Olivér, Bartha Máté, Ferenczy Dóri, Bóra Andris.
STENOGRAPHY workshop with Virág's grandmother. The board, as the documentation of the lecture and two notebook and pictures of the lesson were exhibited. Participants: Fischer Judit, Esze Gabi, Popella Dóra
TURUL-FOLDING workshop with Marcsi (a very kind woman who taught us how to make these beautiful recycled-paper birds). Invitation from Facebook: "One thousand paper turul-bird satisfies one collective wish. By re-experiencing the japan-hungarian common origins one big hungarian dream comes true. But which one?" The Turul is the most important bird in the origin myth of Hungarians. In the past years with the strengthening of the Nationalism, newer and newer turul statues were built all over Hungary. So the quantity of the birds is growing day by day. We mixed this fact with the Japanese tradition: if you fold one thousand crane bird, one wish comes true. On the workshop we learned the technique (special weaving-folding technique) of Marcsi and started produce the birds. On the opening we exhibited the finished 7-8 birds "standing" before mirrors, so they number has multiplied, increased to infinity. Participants: Follárd Barbara, Tóth Betti, Gál Zoltán Zozó
FREE SHOP is a well-known phenomena in the left-wing underground culture. You can bring clothes, electrical machines, books, etc. to the free shop, and even can take items, what you want. However there is no existing free shop in this days in Budapest, our goal was to build one, and also introduce this system to people with different backgrounds. The location, the touristy, gentrificated downtown was perfect for this.
On the second exhibition we presented a photo documentation of these actions. They were printed out in black and white, and the visitors could color them.
We finished with the concert of our girl pop trash band, STRASSZ. We introduced the newest song, called Runaway cat, which was inspired by the lost cats and the Soul Asylum.
Saint Stephen was the first Hungarian king, also known as state founder. He estabilished the Christianity as a state religion and execute all the pagan believers, including his uncle, Koppány. His body was cut in four pieces, which were sent to the four major strongholds of the Kingdom...
In 1038 Stephen died, without any heir. So he offered the state to Holy Mary. He was canonized in 1083, as the first confessor king. His right hand, known as the Holy Right, is kept as a relic. With which he had held the Holy Crown aloft from his deathbed when asking our Lady to be the Queen of the Hungarians...
After many researches, we decided to build his life-size sculpture from bread. Why bread?
In the past centuries, the myth of Stephen was always modified by the actual authorities. Maria Theresa after the long process how she could get back the Holy Right, she made a National Holiday of 20th of August (Stephen died on 15th of August, and offered the state to the Holy Virgin on the same day). In the following 150 years the church and the politics built a serious cult around this day. In 1949 the Russian influence changed a bit on the rituals. The Catholic Church stepped out of the picture, the Holy Right stayed in the Basilica. But the Hungarian folk with unbroken enthusiasm celebrated the Constitution, the New Bread, and of course the newly formed People's Republic of Hungary.
And nowadays?
With the strengthening of the right wing, many-many "national emotional" citizen (how they call themselves) open their new shops like Hun Karate Club, Koppány butcher, etc. Some of them shows a complete chaos in mind, like a tradition-cocktail of the past 1011 or 2011 (if Jesus was Hungarian) of the Hungarian history...
And also we are so happy that we can celebrate a new Constitution sitting at the “THE CONSTITUTION’S TABLE” in every local government office, while we are waiting for our passport, or new ID card....
So we just made a human-sized body bread of the first Hungarian murderer-martyr king, and we ritually sliced him and eat his parts with fat and onion, together with many happy people on the central celebration of the small village, Tordas. An important part of the bread was the genital, which's size was concluded by the only remaining body part of the big king.
Bogyó Rezsőné, Hódi Csilla, Bogyó Virág, Annika Högner, Teresa Szepes, Orbán Veronika, Le Thanh Huyen, Kovács Zsófi, Nosek Mimma, Szabó Ágnes Anna, Lukács Viola, Fodor Emese
C-print, postcards, joy-fanzine, made for an exhibition about prostitution in Demo Gallery Budapest
Obscene is a latin expression, means, behind the scenes. We have chosen this title for a work which is a documentation of our co-operation with a madame, to show all the struggles we faced during the communication with people who has basic different values and strategies in life, people who are ones of the poorest workers of sex industry.
We wanted to borrow and exhibit a property of this madame, a painting, which represents Virgin Mary. But we did not get financial support from the organisers activists and curators of the exhibition: finally only the photographic reproduction of the painting was put on the wall of the gallery. We've also made postcards of the painting, that we were selling in the non-profit gallery. The form of the commercialised picture market visualized the cash flow, the only way of communication of the parties in this story. Additionally we have hacked a Joy magazine with our ideas, main sentences, and most important moments of the nearly one month working process.
