Submitted Papers 2010

Exhibit: Modern Artwork Honoring Hungarian Traditions

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
I recognize the disappearing yet rich heritage of Hungarian folk craftsmanship.
In a world swept-up in homogenization of culture and economy, I believe Hungarian folk art reflects positive aspects of traditional human societies the modern world often seems too busy to notice.

I turn to the old in order to create modern works which respect the deep values of regional cultures in historical and modern Hungary. I use mixed media, traditional printmaking and modern printmaking to share my love of these crafts. I hope to open the minds of those not familiar with Hungarian art and society through the large scope of some of my works. As well, I seek to re-energize Hungarians of all ages who I hope will notice the detail in my pieces.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
computer projection

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“There was once”

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
“There was once” is a feature-length documentary film in progress. Mrs. Gyöngyi Mago is a high school teacher in Kalocsa, Hungary. While looking for a subject for her dissertation she discovered a forgotten part of local history, the Jewish community that once thrived but is now non-existent in her city.
Engaging her students in her research, Mrs. Mago, who is not Jewish, teaches tolerance and fights prejudice in her classroom. Her quest is set against a background of renewed racial tensions, growing intolerance and the recurrence of neo Nazism in Hungary today. She has managed to persuade the City leadership to commemorate this extinct community on the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the local ghetto and deportation of the Jews to Auschwitz and other camps. The memorial was attended by a few survivors, many members of the second and third generations, students and current inhabitants of Kalocsa. The Mayor and the Archbishop also participated. In the middle of the service at the newly restored Jewish cemetery a young girl visiting from New York was injured by a missile from a sling shot. At the same time a neo-Nazi demonstration was taking place a few blocks away.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
DVD player that can accommodate US disks

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‘Image Architecture’ to Camouflage: Lajos Kassák and György Kepes

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Lajos Kassák’s contribution to the various Avant-Garde movements of the 1920s and ‘30s has received a wide scholarly attention. As a poet, writer, painter, and typographer Kassák’s name has been closely related to movements such as Dada, Constructivism, and the Bauhaus – just to mention a few. In this paper I would like to use Lajos Kassák’s concept of “image architecture” as a vantage point and trace out his influence on György Kepes’s investigations into human perception and, in an indirect way, on his innovations in urban camouflage during World War II.

Unlike Malevich and Tatlin, whose strength-lines, forms, and colors correlate with notions, Kassák used notions as platforms for his image-architecture so that they would serve as visual mappings to his poetic experiments, demonstrated by his his 1925 book entitled Tisztaság Könyve (Book of Cleanliness).

György Kepes participated in Kassák’s workshop (Munka-kör) in the late 1920s which would later inform his earlier carrier in the New Bauhaus in Chicago. World War II was already in full swing when he directed the Camouflage Program between 1941-1942 under the auspices of the National Defense Program. The Camouflage Program, which ensued from the Light and Color Workshop, involved all static and mobile aspects of vision in a holistic method, in line with Bauhaus principles. In 1944, when the first air raids against industrial targets in Budapest took place Kepes’s emblematic book, The Language of Vision was published, which incorporates his findings in the field of perception and camouflage.

Beyond highlighting Kassák’s influence on Kepes’s early work, my goal is to identify interrelations between Kepes’s breakthrough investigation into the dynamics of human perception (architectural space, light, shadow, color) and Kassák’s image architecture (textual space, typography). Through this comparative approach I hope to offer new a new context in which to discuss Kepes’s notions of perception and camouflage



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
László Munteán is a doctoral student in the American Studies Ph.D. program at Eötvös Loránd University, writing his dissertation on 9/11 in literature and the fine arts. Since 2004 he has been assistant professor at the Department of English at Pázmány Péter Catholic University. He teaches 20th Century American Literature and American Civilization, and Visual Culture. He also teaches Hungarian Architectural History to American students. His fields of interests include urban space and memorials, interrelations of text and image, modern and postmodern American literature, as well as architectural history and theory. Email: muntean@btk.ppke.hu

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Recent Hungarian Comic Cinema: Bridges to the World, Bridges to the Self

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The last fifty years of Hungarian cinema have seen serious directors shift preoccuptions. Early post-war films such as Somewhere in Europe (1947) emphasized finding a place for those damaged by war. Cinema of the sixties and seventies criticized and at times poked fun at entrenched bureaucracy and totalitarian regimes (films such as The Witness [1968]). Internationally prominent filmmakers such as Béla Tarr allude to the realities of Communist life in metaphorically dense, bleak portraits of stifling families and damned villages. It seems that in these decades, comedy was relegated to light period pieces on the margins of cinematic excellence.
The new millennium of Hungarian cinema has seen a resurgence of comedies, at times tributary of formulaic Hollywood products, but often still with enough depth to criticize established norms. In films such as Chico (2001), I Love Budapest (2001), Miracle in Kracow (2004), The District (2005), Just Sex and Nothing Else (2006), and Train Keeps a Rollin’ (2007), characters are searching for themselves as they desperately try to cement relationships with others. At times they travel to other, mainly ex- or post-Communist countries, encounter eccentric individuals both foreign and homegrown, and assert their desires for self-fulfillment. In recent comedies, it seems that self-exploration begins with building bridges to the Other.
In this presentation, I will look at some themes in recent comedies to explore this new direction in Hungarian cinema.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
computer projection

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Documentary film: Incubator

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This documentary film is about growing up in an exile community in the West, developing a double-identity, and becoming a hyphenated-somebody. It's about learning to have two homelands at the same time - one in real life, and the other imagined and maintained by parents who were forced to flee. It is about a first generation of children whose parents lived abroad longer than they originally expected to, and who never really assimilated. Neither here nor there, the children of this generation find themselves, adults, trying to decide where they belong, what their nationality is, where their allegiance lies.

The story is told through an unlikely, albeit dramatic reunion - one which involves a Hungarian rock opera performed in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California by a cast of 40-something Hungarian-Americans. They meet in the same exact spot they performed Stephen, the king 25 years ago, as
Hungarian scouts during summer camp in 1984. That summer the Soviets still had tanks stationed in Hungary, and the country was isolated behind the Iron Curtain. Many of these scouts had never been to Hungary, where their parents were born.

The reunion of this original cast, now living all over the world including Budapest, makes for an emotional and hilarious portrait of one of many 'incubators' operating in the U.S. over the years. They're meeting, not only to reminisce, but also to figure out just who they've become, twenty years after the 'Motherland' was liberated.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
HD film projector (Blue-ray)

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József Domján and Other Hungarian Graphic Artists in America

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Domján József fest? és grafikusm?vész és az Amerikában élt/alkotó magyar képz?m?vészekr?l

Domján József fest? és grafikus bizonyos értelemben elismertebb és ismertebb m?vész az Egyesült Államokban, mint Magyarországon. Annak ellenére, hogy egész életében ? is és felesége Evelyn is fontosnak tartották a kapcsolattartást hazájukkal, kevesek ismerték ?t. Rendszeresen küldték haza metszet-sorozataikat, tudva tudván, hogyha nem is rendeznek m?veib?l kiállításokat, olyan intézménynek, mint a Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, ?riznie kell munkáit. Kitartó szerelmesként küldték Amerikából az aktuális kiállítás meghívókat, újságcikkeket, saját kiadványokat, visszaemlékezéseket. Teljes életm? és adattári dokumentummal rendelkezik így a Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, illetve a sárospataki gy?jtemény.

Sorsa és életm?ve egyben szimbolizálja is a tengeren túlon, valamint a világ más tájain él? magyar képz?m?vészek életútját és hazai megítélését. Sajnos állíthatjuk, hogy amíg az ún. rendszerváltástól eltelt húsz év alatt az irodalomban „egységes” magyar irodalomról beszélhetünk, ez nem a folyamat történt meg a képz?m?vészet területén. Állampolgárságtól, és élettért?l, országtól függetlenül a kortárs irodalmunk részesei mindazok az írók, költ?k, irodalomtörténészek, teoretikusok, akik jelent?set alkotnak, akik ismerete nélkül szegényebb lenne irodalmunk és kultúránk. Akár hazai, akár nemzetközi viszonylatban – és akár az elmúlt évtizedekben született, akár jelen m?vek tekintetében. Akár a Magyarországgal szomszédos országokban– akár távolabb élt/él? alkotók tekintetében. Érezzük és olvassuk ezt a sajátos párbeszédet – ami az irodalom „építkezését” is jelenti egyben. Reflektálását a mindenkori korra; m?vészeti, kulturális, társadalmi és ideológia értelemben egyaránt. Valamint egymásra, a különböz? égtájakon és korokban élt/él? írók stílusbeli és eszmei, gondolati rendszerére.

A 20. századi magyar képz?m?vészetben életm?vek és egész korszakok „lebegnek”. Hatalmas ?r tátong az ismeretek hiánya miatt. Nem szervesülnek egymáshoz és egymásba a környez? országokban (Felvidéken, Erdélyben, a Vajdaságban, Kárpátalján) született m?vek – és ugyanígy jobbára ismeretlen az USA-ban, Nyugat-Európában és másutt keletkezett alkotások sokasága.
Domján József életm?ve kapcsán az Amerikában élt, alkotó grafikusokról és képz?m?vészekr?l,
valamint a fentebb vázolt problémák okairól és mibenlétér?l szeretnék b?vebben beszélni el?adásomban. Arról, hogy a Magyar Nemzeti Galéria munkatársaként milyen rálátásom van az általános helyzetképre és milyen fontos megoldási pontokra, tényez?kre kellene figyelnünk a 20. századi magyar képz?m?vészet egységes feldolgozása és értékelése érdekében. Annak sürget? szükségér?l, hogy ismeretlen értékeink valódi értékeinkké, a magyar és az egyetemes kultúra közkincseivé váljanak.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
computer projection

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