magyar

Can you sum up the comprehensive work you have done in Artpool over the past few years? What collections have you built and what research projects are under way at the moment?

Artpool Art research Center is a unique and most comprehensive archive and research venue for the progressive, unofficial Hungarian artistic ambitions and trends that started in the 1970s, including the underground art events, venues and groups between 1970 and 1990, underground and contemporary music, samizdat publications, etc. It is also the only documentation centre and research venue in Hungary and an outstanding one in the world of the new artistic movements and trends emerging from the 1960s, such as Fluxus, performance art, conceptual art, visual poetry, radio- and sound art, the electronic arts, the genres of the artist’s book and the artistamp, as well as computer graphics, multimedia, Mail Art, public art, etc. Scholars coming to Artpool from all four corners of the globe typically research these cultural/artistic areas and subjects. The documents available to them are: artworks, source publications, study volumes, catalogues, artists’ publications, manuscripts, press materials, photographic, audio and film/video footage, as well as invitations and posters.

When did the funds run dry and how much would your centre need to operate successfully and prosper? In your communiqué you write that you would need two million forints per month to maintain the basic-level operation of Artpool, but this would practically only be enough to not go under. If our information is correct, you (the founders) are sponsoring the centre from your own funds. But how long can this go on for?

In 2005 it became clear that in Hungary an institution like ours would not be able to operate in a non-profit form in the long term. In that year we only managed to save the centre from collapse with great difficulty: it was thanks to the highly successful Aid Concept Festival we organised.
From then onwards, we have been working to find a solution that would enable Artpool’s integration into the state system of art institutions. We offered to donate the Hungarian state the entire material of the thousends of items of our library, archive and collections, worth several hundred millions of forints, which we had built up during the official operation of Artpool Art Research Center from 1992 based on the Artpool Active Archive concept on condition that the material would continue to be made available for research. There was a willingness on the part of the state but somehow things were not going forward. We understand that it is not so easy to find an already existing museum/institution that can fit Artpool in with its own profile. Several solutions were proposed in recent years but at the moment we would have reached the point of implementing the given plan, there was always someone recommending a ’better solution’ so the concept had to be shelved. And of course the process had to be started from scratch every time a new minister or state-secretary was appointed.

In the meantime, we had to ensure Artpool’s continuous operation, but the conditions were only deteriorating, and the situation turned untenable again in 2010. While until 2010 we had employed three full-timers and three part-timers (and our annual budget amounted to 40 million forints – at the current value – from various sources), after the termination of funds in 2010 our archivist, Dóra Halasi, and I had to do all the work alone, and support previously rendered to art projects and for archiving work was discontinued. In 2011 the Municipality of Budapest withdrew all support from Artpool and froze its annual support of 9 million forints. We were only able to save the centre in that year at a great human cost and barely got through with the only support left: funds from the ministry of culture. In 2012 the Ministry of National Resources dragged out the process of signing the contract with us for that year until the end of July, so we had no choice but to maintain the operation of Artpool with our own resources. In the end, we received 28 million from the (already renamed) Ministry of Human Resources, which is the minimum required to keep Artpool afloat in the given circumstances. György Galántai and I had agreed on several occasions that unless our everyday sustenance is directly threatened, we will take risks and use up all we have. It is unfortunately not much: our pensions and life insurances are only enough to keep the centre going for a few months.

What opportunities, if any, are there to find new innovations, to look for partners able to sponsor Artpool or see its investment potential?

Neither I, nor experts in financing culture have found sponsors or investors with whom long-term co-operation could be realised. I personally would have given it a chance to function as a non-profit organisation – partly financed through tenders and partly through sponsorship plus doing non-profit activities (e.g. book, video, CD publishing, events and conference organisation, etc.), and work in co-operation with other similar projects at a joint venue where community spaces and cafés would have also been operated. Of course such a plan could only be implemented if we found an appropriate property or a partner with enough capital, which I have not found so far and I do not really see much chance for something like this now. But whatever, if someone called me tomorrow and said let’s do it, I would be happy to meet them.

I think that as long as there is a chance to keep this great cultural treasure, this amazing intellectual treasure together in the form of state property and to make it available for research, we must keep on going somehow. When the moment comes that there is no chance even for that, then we’ll have to start saving whatever we can.

You have made many documents available online for those interested in the professional work conducted in Artpool, and your video archive and library can be researched online too. What projects can you highlight from recent years?

We have uploaded about 300 video documents to YouTube. The new titles in our video archive and our library, which we added 400 new items to last year, can be studied online. Researchers need to agree on an appointment and come to Artpool to study our documents. However, many important documents can also be accessed on our website. The materials that are researched the most on our website are partly theoretical writings and documents related to Fluxus, performance art, conceptual art, Mail Art / correspondence art, the genre of hypertext, writings by Miklós Erdély and Charles Tamkó Sirató, as well as the history and documents of György Galántai’s Balatonboglár Chapel Studio, writings by Vilém Flusser and various audio documents, and an in-depth chronology supplemented by photographs, called “context chronology”, etc.

A volume documenting the history of Artpool was published last year. Why is this publication important?

In the last few years it was the making of this publication that kept us going. Those who use the Artpool archive, visit its events and borrow books for their exhibitions are always amazed by the wealth of the material we have in Artpool, but these only represent certain segments of our activity. They do not see or understand what makes this place and its materials – which they find exciting and inspiring – unlike any other archive and museums they know. Artpool was the result of an art project. It is an active archive that has been growing and developing organically throughout the years; it was created and has been kept in motion by the creative and innovative energy of an artist (György Galántai). So Artpool is a place where such creative energy is collected and generated: a real creative-energy-pool, in which the archive, the library and the collections are only "side products", or "deposits". We wanted to document this somehow in a book, so we collected the most important documents and data – after a serious selection process – from Artpool’s history and we tried to present it in a structure that will help the study of these documents and serve as a starting point for further research. It is no easy reading; actually, it is not meant to be read from cover to cover. We hope that there will be people who take the trouble and read the history of Artpool spanning from the period of dictatorship to democracy, from the analogue to the digital era, and will see the consistent futures research of a creative artist. We have a few book presentations lined up, and we are excited to read the book reviews too. Next week we will present the volume in Berlin at the Collegium Hungaricum, and then in Vienna in April.

Is there a ray of hope, a plan or an idea that would help continue the work in Artpool?

The big question is whether in today’s Hungary the integrity of all this can be preserved, i.e. whether this documentation so crucial to understanding the Hungarian art / underground culture of the past 40 years can stay together. I think it is only feasible with help from the state (or the local government), since we do not know of any rich patrons of Hungarian underground art. If state support is not granted, there are still several museums worldwide where some of Artpool’s collections will be welcomed, and there are many university libraries that would be happy to manage Artpool’s library and its international documentation. However, without keeping everything together, it would be difficult to re-build the context that defined Hungarian art in the world in the 1970s and 1980s, the relationships that helped Hungarian works created behind the Iron Curtain to be included in famed international anthologies and exhibitions in many locations from Argentina to Japan. Of course, nothing is impossible, and researchers persistently look for crumbles about an era even centuries later. It is a shame, though, that research like ours is in a far more advanced stage in the neighbouring countries.