Poipoi

Artpool decided years ago to reconstruct the Poipoidrom of the French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou and his "coarchitect" Joachim Pfeufer, which was set up between 7-17 September 1976 at the Budapest Young Artists´ Club, and to publish at the same time the interview of László Beke with the artists. The reconstruction and the publication take place now.

What is Poipoidrom?

The idea goes back to 1963, the first 00 prototype of Poipoidrom to 1975. The name is the keyword of the greetings and conversations of the African Dogon tribe, such as our "how do you do?" and mainly the answer given to the question. The poipoi is a tie of communication and a philosophy at the same time. Filliou changed the consonants of Rimbaud for it. The Poipoidrom is the space of "permanent creation". The Poipoidrom à espace-temps réel  No.1., realized in Budapest, was followed by some others (No 2 Nantes, 1977, No 3 Reykjavik, 1978, the second 00 Prototype, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1978). In the Young Artists´ Club a very simple wood device was built which structured different spaces and to which different objects, an egg, some photos were attached. As far as I can remember, the public - artists and non artists - present at the opening was enthusiastic and tried to fill the unexpected space of creation.

After the exhibition the relics were left in custody of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, where almost were wasted, but some parts were rescued so that we could achieve this reconstruction in 1998.

We publish on this occasion the conversation lead after the opening of the exhibition. This is an invaluable document - specially after the death of Filliou - though the undisciplined partners and the difficulties of language did not improve the level of the discussion. In order to eliminate the technical problems of the interview, we publish a strongly edited version of both the Hungarian and English text.

With this occasion I thank the collaboration of Sabine Fazekas, Agnes Klimó and Anna Bálint - who took part in the transcription, translation and edition work. Another credit has to be mentioned for the support of the museum of Fine Arts (Ferenc Tóth) and the Institute Français en Hongrie (and its director, Mr. Jean-Luc Soulé)

László Beke, 4 March 1998

(English translation by Anna Bálint)

László Beke: Introduction to the reconstruction of Poïpoïdrom in 1998

Robert Filliou (1926-1987) Biographie / Bibliography