COURAGE

connecting collections

Gábor Altorjay’s Fluxus object entitled Chess Preserve was realized as part of the action Chess!! In 1967 (Írószövetség, Budapest, April 12, 1967) – evoking Marcel Duchamp’s passion for chess. The action was accompanied by the following poem:

1.         Preserve a set of chess!

2.         Put on a dark suit, a white shirt and a tie!

3.         Use 250 ml of perfume!

4.         Put the chess set on a table in front of you!

5.         Put on 3 pairs of rubber gloves!

6.         Open the chess set and say out loud: “Chess!” and pour the chess pieces on your own head!

7.         Point at the door and shout: “There he goes!”

Around this time, Altorjay was working on other similar “anti-artworks” which recontextualized everyday objects, for instance Short Circuit Instrument (1968) and Uncomfortable (1968). The reconstruction of the Chess Preserve was made by Artpool for the exhibition 3×4 (1993), and it was exhibited in other shows, as well (Impossible Realism, Artpool P60, 2001; Dada and Surrealism / Rearranged Reality, Hungarian National Gallery, 2014).

The sound-play by Gábor Altorjay is a real cabaret piece: a police parody, which employs holophrastic means and adopts and tweaks the police lingo of the time to grasp the situation, the identity check, interwoven with the overbearing attitude, misconceptions, and primitive interpretations. One distinctive feature of the eleven and a half minute scene (performed with Antal Dúl) lies in the fact that at the time of the recording the author was only sixteen years old.

An émigré Hungarian scouting diary of peloton "Raven," section "Hunyadi,", N9 "Pál Teleki" troop, Passau-Waldwerke, Germany 1947–1949.

This handwritten, illustrated diary of a hardcover school exercise book, a special item of the HSAE collection, is a typical memento of the early Hungarian émigré scouting movement from 1947–1949. The former holders of this diary were the members of scout peloton "Raven," all young Hungarian schoolboys recruited from the Passau refugee camp in Germany following the Second World War.

The names of the scout organizational references all speak for themselves with their symbolic meanings. The "Raven," an element from the Hunyadi family’s medieval coat of arms, plus two Hungarian national heroes—Regent János Hunyadi and Count Pál Teleki—as symbols of courage, resistance and high-spirited patriotism.

A symbolic object can nevertheless be found in the diary: a badge made of copper in which an anchor is combined with a scout lily as the emblem of the special troops of scouts. According to the handwritten subtitle, peloton Raven founded this as a "wandering prize" to be awarded annually to its member exhibiting the highest standard of behavior. The list of members also appears with telling changes and corrections.

This analysis is part of the more extensive material that was sent to the Central Committee of the People's Youth of Croatia (PYC) by the Presidium of the Main Committee of the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Croatia (SAWPC) on the forthcoming conference on problems of film releases and the columns of weekly and daily newspapers. The document analyses in detail the writing of the magazine Film News, published by Croatia-film, based on categories of articles, from June to December 1956. The opinion on the magazine was not good, and it was suggested that the paper did not contribute to "expanding of the film culture" but rather "meets the bourgeois taste of the audience" and also completely excludes film criticism. The negative role of the magazine was emphasized, as well as the erroneous formation of the public's cinematic education because of the preference for American productions, sensationalism and writing about movie stars, "spreading an atmosphere unsuited to our reality", publishing articles ideologically contrary to "our perceptions" and neglecting domestic film themes. Since the magazine was intended for young people, it was suggested that it should thoroughly change its writing style or cease to exist in this form. The content of the analysis argues in large part that the writing of the magazine was inappropriate to the authorities and therefore changing or abolishing the magazine was proposed.

This PYC document, along with the records of other so-called socio-political organizations, was until 1995 a part of the Archives of the Institute of History of the Croatian Workers' Movement/Institute of Contemporary History. In July of that year, the archives were handed over to the Croatian State Archives (CSA), where they are kept today. It is not known whether this document has been used by researchers.

The Anarchist Intercity (MA – Międzymiastówka  Anarchistyczna) was a Polish net of anti-authoritarian groups and milieus. It was initiated in 1988 by members of The Alternative Society Movement and Freedom and Peace movement, that exhisted before. Among MA’s members were also activists of Totart, Orange Alternative, and other collectives and youth organizations of alternative-anarchistic leanings. Soon, in 1989, most of the members decided to transform this loose communication network into a structured organization. The decision was also made to change the name: initially to the Federation of Anarchist Intercity, and later to the Anarchist Federation (the latter is still active).

The poster, hanging on the wall of the office of prof. Barbara Fatyga, is a testimony to the beginning of the integration of dispersed anarchist environments. It is a collage of photographs, sketches and text. Collage technique was very popular in the third-circuit publications as a gesture of artistic freedom, aimed to startle the readers accustomed to linear reading of text. The poster’s slogan “Anarchists of the world, unite!” connotes revolutionary ambitions of the movement. Textual parts refer to the critical definition of the state but also the existential, rather than strictly political dimension of freedom. That is another reason why the poster is characteristic to the Polish anarchism of the 1980s as it combined political, cultural, and philosophical issues.