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Regime Change - An Incomplete Project

talk series

First event:
Time: 12th March 2012, 18:00-21:00
Venue: tranzit .hu, Budapest 1068, Király St. 102., 1st floor
Invited speakers: Ágnes Gagyi, social researcher and János Sugár, artist
Moderators: Zsuzsa László (tranzit .hu), Kristóf Nagy (TEK), Bálint Németh (TEK)
Visuals
: AMPBA (Association of Mouth and Brain Painters of the World)


tranzit .hu launches a series of talks in its new space, KIRÁLY102. By creating a dialogue between the representatives of different countries, disciplines and generations, we wish to realize a community space where curatorial and artistic thinking can serve the discussion of current public issues and the articulation of community-forming statements.

The theme of the first year - developed in collaboration with the College of Social Theory (TEK, Corvinus University of Budapest) is the political transition of '89, the role of intellectuals and artistic thinking in the dissident or alternative social movements from the crisis perspective of the 2010s.
The framework of this programme is a long-term international collaboration that intends to explore interconnections between the post-communist and post-colonial discourses.

We wish to recall:
- the collective power of those events with which the critical activity of dissident intellectuals was transformed into political actions;
- the historical turn when the underground stepped forward to the mainstream public sphere
- the historical zero point when the utopia of "anything is possible" and "everyone has a say" became a momentary reality
- and to trace how the consensus-based social reorganisation went awry, why the institutionalization of the self-organized initiatives and that of the critical intellectuals did not happen.

We also wish to find out how the new generations' archaeological or activist viewpoint can process the utopias, failures, illusions, traumas, nostalgia and crisis of the previous generations. Is it necessary, is it possible to complete or rearticulate the program of the political transition or a new regime change?

To prepare the series we have launched an email-inquiry that we sent to the leading representatives of different fields and generations. Our aim is to create a network of common-references, arching through various circles of intellectuals, and to get into contact with similar projects and researches. We publish the answers and reactions on the project's website

During the first talk, we discuss, on the basis of viewing documents together, the crisis of the intellectual and dissident roles and the opportunities of educational and critical initiatives organized from below before and after the regime change. We will talk about dissident positions, the artist group Indigo Csoport (1976-1988), the discussion series Gyorskultúra (Fast Culture) organized between 1984-1988, ‘flying universities’- informal lecture series of dissident intellectuals held in private flats, the Hungarian October Party (active between 1989-1991), student revolutions, visions of cultural politics, interconnections of civil activism, political role-taking, and cultural industry.


Image: János Sugár: Gyorskultúra (Fast Culture) flyer, 1985, back side, paper, ink, pencil, 21,5 x 30 cm