Kultur und Freizeit

Andreas Fogarasi

2 May 2007

Video installation. Courtesy: Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Viena

A Machine for (2006) 8 min 
Workers’ Club (2006) 4 min 
Arbeiter verlassen das Kulturhaus (2006) 5,20 min 
Periphery (2006) 6 min 
Fun Palace (2007) 5,30 min 
Ikarus (2007) 8 min 

Video DV 
Music in Workers’ Club: Európa Kiadó, 1982 
Narration in Arbeiter verlassen das Kulturhaus: Mark Dion 
Narration in Periphery: Noemi Fischer

This collection of videos mines the nature of cultural centres in certain social and political contexts heavily connoted by their past and influenced by the transformations desired in the present. Apparently documentary, though not narrative, these moving images deal with different cultural and social centres in Budapest, founded during the Communist regime as spaces for the emancipation and teaching of the working class. Besides this initial utopian character, there was also a desire for collective control. Currently, now in a capitalist context, having completely forgotten the utopian purpose for which they were created, they reveal the contradictions of the persistence of the past in the present, while, at the same time, they point out the long and winding path, full of ambiguities, which leads from the transforming utopian concept to its materialisation.