COURAGE

Підключення Колекцій

The Reformatory School in Aszód has undergone many changes since its foundation in 1884, and a lot has happened between its walls. The institution is still in operation today, having survived two world wars, the communist dictatorship, and even a tragic homicide. In 1973, Tamás Urbán took around 500 touching, shocking, and honest pictures about the lives of the residents of the reformatory school as his graduation project.

He was able to take photographs in the institution because he was working together with Youth Magazine (Ifjúsági Magazin), and he did not have face any particular challenges or have to deal with unusual complications while working on the project, though he visited the institution several times a week for two or three months. As Urbán sees it, this was because of his discrete style, especially when he did reports. He consciously avoided splurge, he brought only the most necessary equipment with him, and he did not force anything. As he recalled in 2015, “Suddenly I was in the community and everything came naturally.” He spent days among the residents, closely observing their everyday lives, including how they worked, played, and took drugs. Urbán maintained contact with a number of the residents of the institution even after he had finished the project. These letters, however, had to be smuggled out.

In 1975, Urbán’s first exhibition was held at the Reformatory School, and it featured the pictures he had taken there. The event was opened by Éva Keleti, one of Urbán’s teachers, but the plan to exhibit the pictures to a larger audience could not be realized: the authorities did not allow the photos to be taken from the institution because of their content. A representative of the ministry who was present for the opening ceremony made this decision clear. The pictures were impounded and the remained at the Reformatory School. While Éva Keleti and others tried to prevail on the authorities to change their decision – (even going as far as György Aczél in the process), they were not successful. Nevertheless, in 1978, Urbán brought this photo series to the first display of the Studio of Young Photographers. Despite the prohibitions, the photos brought him success, both from the audiences and in the profession. As Urbán recalls, because of this photo report, he was accepted into the Association of Hungarian Journalists. The photos taken at the Reformatory School are also the direct antecedents to his major topics of the 1980s: the photo series about prisoners and people on the margins of society, such as drug users.

The photos were recently found again under a broken piano in the Reformatory School by the educators at the institution. After more than forty years, on November 23, 2017, Tamás Urbán’s photo report was again exhibited in Aszód, this time with photos taken by his son, Ádám Urbán. The exhibition, which was entitled “Then and Now,” was opened by Éva Keleti, but this time the photos were not kept under the control of the state, and soon they will be exhibited outside the institution so larger audiences can also see them. While many things have changed since the transition, Urbán’s photographs have not lost their significance.

The few dozen video cassettes rather accidentally preserved by Irina Margareta Nistor represent today remarkable featured items of this collection not because of the movies they contain, but because of the cultural phenomenon of disseminating Western movies in communist Romania that they epitomise. Few of these preserved movies stand out as masterpieces, but as a whole, these few dozens of video cassettes are the very last bearers of memory for a type of cultural activity which represented one of the most powerful societal reactions to the aberrant policies of Ceaușecu’s regime in the late 1980s. Before 1989, over 3,000 films were translated and dubbed in real time by Irina Margareta Nistor. All these films were recorded on video cassettes, multiplied, and then distributed throughout Romania by means of an informal network. The vast majority of the films were Western productions, and all came by clandestine channels from the West. As Irina Margareta Nistor says: “With each of these films, I brought a trickle of the West into the houses of people in Romania.” She was, however, a cog in the machine while translating and dubbing these films for individuals who earned good money from producing and distributing video cassettes. Thus, she neither had the means nor the interest to systematically collect the movies she had already seen while performing these tasks. The video cassettes which Irina Margareta Nistor has preserved until today were intended to be used as “presents” rather than to be collected for their intrinsic value. In fact, the majority of the films which were distributed through this scheme in the Romania of the 1980s were hardly classics of cinematography, films worth collecting. At the same time, the artistic value of the recorded movies is not significant, for individuals did not watch them for this. These Western films had an impact before 1989 because they testified then to a different way of life. Above all, people looked in these movies at houses and their interiors, at cars and their facilities, at clothes and their luxury. Thus, in 1989, all Romanians knew from such movies that people could live very differently than they had to in communist Romania.

These dozens of video cassettes also testify to the existence of an activity which stretched the limits of toleration under the communist regime. Today, there are still many things unclear about the functioning of the entire enterprise, for those directly involved in it are rather ambiguous. Irina Margareta Nistor, however, narrates her own experience and evaluates this phenomenon from her perspective. “I am convinced that there were people in high places who were controlling this business. They could have stopped it at any time; because it produced a lot of money. On economic grounds, as ‘ilicit’ [under Law no. 18 of 24 June 1958 regarding the checking of the provenance of certain goods of physical persons which have not been obtained in a licit manner – known for short as the Illicit Income Law]. What Mr Zamfir was doing came into that category. However there were a lot of people who were happy with the business – that’s why it prospered, why it wasn’t suppressed. In theory, they would ‘take your illicit’, as the saying was then. In practice, nothing of this sort happened. I’m convinced that Mr Zamfir was somehow being checked on. Perhaps it was an escape valve that was deliberately left open then. Only two hours of programmes on public television – it was clear that something had to be done… Probably it was what was called ‘allowed by the police.’ A sort of complicity, with benefits for both parties. In fact, you didn’t know explicitly that you were allowed; to be more exact, you didn’t know how far you were allowed…” Irina Margareta Nistor’s comments show that the boundaries between the tolerated and the forbidden were never clearly defined, and, consequently, they were not known by those who were involved in activities at the boundaries of communist legality. These boundaries, however, could be pushed further and further back when individuals belonging to the Party apparatus or the structures of the secret police were involved in the activities. How far up the hierarchy such (semi)clandestine activities were known about is very hard to estimate today.

On 30 May 1990, just a few months after Ceausescu’s tyranny was overthrown by desperate street fights, a severe earthquake hit the counties of Vrancea and Covasna (Háromszék) in central Romania. Among the losses were fifty heavily-damaged, older church buildings (many built before AD 1300) in Háromszék, the easternmost region of Transylvania with an 80% Hungarian majority. A group of volunteers formed among the activists of the relief organization, ETE-Transcar, and the architects of the National Historical Monuments Protection Authority. They made an overall survey of the damaged churches in order to inform the wider public and acquire the help needed for repairs. An international relief campaign was launched, and detailed documentation of the damages was published as “Pro Domo Dei”. It was edited by Budapest-based monument architect István Varga, with the collaboration of Hungarian co-authors and specialists: János Gyurkó, József Sebestyén, Béla Nóvé, László Nagy and others. The illustrated report contained a number of case studies, lists, maps and photo documentation of the damages, together with English and French summaries.

The aims and spirit of the relief campaign were much the same as those of Deadline Diaries – Transylvanian Monitor, ETE-Transcar, S.O.S Transylvania, and Hopes and Doubts by Bálint Homoród (Béla Nóvé); helping people in need and helping traditional cultural values survive. This profoundly humanitarian and democratic spirit is reflected in the forward to Pro Domo Dei:

Pro Domo Dei is a neutral project from the point of view of religious and ethnic groups. TRANSCAR relief organization will help both the Hungarian Catholic and Protestant parishes, in their grave situation, as well as the Orthodox Romanian parishes in Covasna (Háromszék) County. […] The ‘Pro Domo Dei’ project is organized first and foremost for monument protection. Our main focus of support is for the historical value; among the heavily damaged churches in the county there are some which are more than 700 years old. […] In addition to financial assistance, it is also important that, after the failure of communism, this region in Europe that has suffered so much has some moral support from the international community and readiness to help.

JANA ŽELIBSKÁ (*1941, Olomouc) Immediately upon entering the visual art scene at the end of the 1960s, Jana Želibská boldly rejected the limits of usual media.  Her new imagery of a “different” art disturbed the conventional world of ideas as it related to the traditional role of women.  Her work grew from inspirations from the Pop Art environment and the action synthesis of art and life; in the 1970s she participated in creating collective festivities and individual performances. Later she used various technical devices such as video, photography, and sound to develop her post-conceptual work, particularly in the area of installations and video-art. She explored themes close to feminist art such as carnality, erotica, the myth related to female beauty, and relations between men and women, to underline not only their spiritual and physical aspects, but also their natural, social, and civil dimensions. Ironic discourse is a characteristic feature of her work: she de-patheticises the traditional assignment of the life and social roles of men and women and their related false myths and pseudo-romantic fictions.
Jana ŽELIBSKÁ: Venus. 1967, Wood, mirror, plastic, golden pigment, 120x360cm.