Plakátok – az emlékezés formái
or advertisement, one of the many tools of visual communication, is imprinted on different stages of our lives. Recalled, or seen, like Proust's madeleine dipped in tea, it evokes a series of memories, while we can only directly attribute one specific message to it. In our individual recollections, these, if they exist, are in every case linked to a wealth of information that has little or nothing to do with what we see, yet in the tunnel of memory they reveal memories that are lined up behind the concrete visual image as individual or collective knowledge. Our visual memory assigns memory events to images in its own right and along a psychological process.
OSTERS as forms of remembrance
When walking around in various cities, among the urban tourist monuments we often come across the phenomenon of reproductions of posters from the second half of the 19th century. These posters typically advertise the favourite chocolate, cigarette paper and liqueurs of the time, i.e., products that were considered the luxury goods of the period, mostly in Art Nouveau style. One might wonder what it is that connects the identity of a city's experience with memories of a bygone era? Is it merely aestheticism or is it the last years of the belle epoque that preceded the severe traumas of the 20th century? And what does it all mean today, a hundred years on, if not the continuity of a linear progression in time between the past that once was there and the that existing in the here and now? For this is how these cheap souvenirs are linked to the reality of Art Nouveau buildings today, bringing to life the frames that represent the scenes of everyday life then and now. Their faint reflections, the information that shines through the present, project an image of the city people of a hundred years ago. It is no different now, in our days. The memories of the past, both near and distant, not only define the spaces in which cities live, but also influence the shape of individual memory: a poster, packaging Budapest 2022
From the posters of my youth, one stands out as a milestone, after which nothing was the same as it used to be: the poster of Istvan Orosz entitled "Tavárisi konyec" not only was carved into my memory, but also became a symbol of a historical turning point, since it now unquestionably proclaimed the end of the presence, i.e., the withdrawal of the Russian troops, who had been hardly mentioned before, but were very much present. At the dawn of a new era, it boldly conveyed, spoke out and combined in a very sensual representation the intoxicatingly beautiful moment of the country's independence. However, it was only in the space of the social public sphere defined by Habermas1 that this very sensuous image acquired its full representational role and its complex of meanings. Freedom is when such a poster appears in the street, because it can finally appear.
For the poster artist is not only a creator of images, but also a creator influenced by a given cultural sphere, who expresses his or her own point of view in a given cultural-social context; for the poster, like any other work of art, is on the one hand what we think about it, and on the other, what we see2. Thus, for the message of the poster to unfold, it needed those recipients to whom the message was conveyed in the given context and with whom it displayed a kind of shared thinking and shared will. In other words, this poster makes history not only by what it depicts, but also by the relationship of certain groups to it at that moment.
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Jürgen Habermas: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Hungarian edition, Századvég-Gondolat, 1993 D iego Zakaria: L’affiche-Paroles-Publiques Edition Textuel – Paris, 2011
