Birthday messages and memories on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Júlia Klaniczay, co-founder of Artpool

Ádám Czirák

Dear Juli,

First of all, I would like to offer you my heartfelt congratulations on your round birthday and use this occasion to say:

The Juli I got to know on my first visit to Artpool in 2012 is an exceptional person, so it is difficult to fit her into categories such as ‘founder’, ‘partner’, ‘editor’, ‘translator’, ‘assistant’, ‘managing director’, or ‘artist’, although all of these are definitely accurate. My uncertainty is probably no coincidence, since these categories conceal mutually exclusive roles both in respect to traditional logic and institutional structures: Manager and assistant? Editor and artist? Artist and partner?

To me, you are Júlia Klaniczay, a lively, keyed-up, tireless and always critical mediator between past and present, art and theory, documents and researchers, memories and those recalling them, generations and languages, institutions and interests.

I remember my first visit to Artpool (at the time a complete novice, clueless and uncertain) and that during an unforgettable conversation you, very generously, shared – or helped me to obtain – more names, contacts, stories, places to find things, ideas, knowledge, skepticism, anecdotes, advice and still intact documents with me than all that I found in the material I borrowed. The kind of presence you exude is priceless, impossible to categorise, and indispensable. And for me that is how it will always be.

Ádám Czirák
(2024)