017 Issue # 18/13 social curating and its public: curators from eastern europe report on their practises
Another important point of reference in the history of Hungarian social curating is the exhibition Service curated by Judit Angel in 2001 in Kunsthalle — Budapest.5 In the curatorial call Angel requested the participating artists to address the audience through services and create a link between art and society. As she writes in the call, "by bringing services into the art sphere, this exhibition resorts to a model which has the social feedback inscribed in its very structure."6 The project entitled Manamana7 (by Miklós Erhardt and Tibor Várnagy) is worth mentioning in regards to the exhibition. The two artists published a socially critical magazine, which reported about various anti-globalization movements as well as translated texts of leftist intellectuals such as Slavoj Zizek among others. Even though the majority of the works did not engage with socio-political concerns — except for Manamana — the exhibition was a slight shift towards the political in comparison with the autonomous artistic practices of the age. The exhibition DEMO,8 curated by Hajnalka Somogyi in 2003, marked a significant shift in the history of social curating. The regular annual exhibition of FKSE (Association of Young Artists) took place in the both historically and sociologically specific city of Dunaújváros. Mainly young artists were asked to provide works that reflected upon the changes taking place in the former Stalinist industrial city in the "post-transition" era. Besides the fact that the exhibition can be considered relevant per se, it is also significant because it was the first community-based project after 1989 in which not only the curator, but also the artists intended to shape the local socio-political discourse.
The New Spectator was a community development programme ran by Krétakör in 2010. The aim of the project was to create a public forum for social dialogue between Roma and non-Roma people in two villages (Ároktö, Szomolya) in Hungary. Photograph taken from the website www.ujnezo.hu. Photo: Máté Tóth-Ridovics Propaganda Barricade by Tamás Kaszás, at DEMO (curated by Hajnalka Somogyi), ICA-D, Dunaújváros, Hungary, 2003. Photograph taken from the website www.balkon.hu.
5 Service, curated by Judit Angel, Kunsthalle — Budapest, Hungary. September 6th – October 7th, 2001. 6 http://www.c3. hu/~ligal/szerviz STATEMENT.html 7 http://www.c3. hu/~ligal/Manamana FO.htm 8 DEMO, issue-based group exhibition of Studio, ICA-D, Dunaújváros, Hungary. March 7th – 30th 2003.