Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

Lumen Station – Issue #1

Lumen Station – Issue #1

As of 2012 Lumen has opened a new chapter. The monthly solo shows are replaced by the Lumen Station program. Within this framework, regularly, a single project is chosen and focused upon. Instead of the artwork and the exhibition, the artistic process and its context are put into spotlight.

Colophon

Editing: Krisztina Erdei, Rita Kálmán, Gergely László Translation: Dániel Sipos Proofreading: Krisztina Erdei, Rita Kálmán, Anna Sára Milesz, Dániel Sipos, Dániel Zafir Graphic design: Katarina Šević Maps: Gábor Gerhes Printed by: Quarts Studio Texts © Authors, editors English translation © Dániel Sipos Photos © Gábor Gerhes

Published by: Lumen Photography Foundation H-1136 Budapest, Gergely Győző utca 3.b lumen@photolumen.hu www.photolumen.hu

Budapest, 2012 ISBN 978-963-88761-3-3

Supported by: Quarts Studio, Videospace Budapest 2

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

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Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

4

INTRODUCTION

In November 2010, a state security report was made public, one of its appendices listing the addresses of so-called “operative flats” used by the secret police. The document dated 1974 – pinpointed on Google Maps by the White Ravens workgroup (http://hollok.hu/ lakasok.html) – only contains street names and house numbers, therefore, the only certainty is that the K (conspired) and T (meeting) flats serving to monitor the society, established by the State Protection Authority (ÁVH) and supervised by the Ministry of Interior’s state security office, were located in these houses. Conspired flats were state property, and were visited by agents acting in important matters, as well as other roped-in individuals. Meeting flats were owned by private persons and were lent for operative actions and surveillance mostly out of “selfless patriotism” and “wholehearted helpfulness”.

Today the address list is available to all, but behind which doors in which stairway or corridor the secret meetings took place remains hidden in the murky shadows of past decades.

Based on the above information, Gábor Gerhes perambulated Budapest in JanuaryFebruary 2012 as a conscious flaneur. He returned to the “scenes of crime”, documenting the facades of unknown blocks of houses where once secret agents, spies and informers used to meet. In an austerely accurate and suitably removed manner, he used the typology familiar from the Bechers to record a strange, banal city guide where seriality and uniform representation draw up a faceless inventory of the recent past.

Similarly to cartography, photography is made up of visual signs: at first sight, both objectively represent their environment, but there is as much mystery inherent in their semiology as visibility offered by it. Gábor Gerhes replaces abstract geographical signs with descriptive black and white photographs, thus evoking the non-image underlying the representation: forgotten phantoms of Budapest, lurking in the shadows of the photographs.

Faithful to himself, he builds on our partial knowledge: he reveals and veils at once, stimulating passage between our real knowledge and our imagination.

Sári Stenczer 5

PÉTER GYÖRGY: The Dark Mountain1

“What business does the generation that still calls the Liberty Hill Swabian Hill have here on Earth?” (Tibor Déry: Vidám temetés [Laughing Funeral], 1955)

“The childhood memory of how unsuspectingly we had fiddled with our skis in front of this very house completely paralyzed me in that instant. This is where we had put our skis on, from where we had set out down the big slope. Rákosi’s healthy sperm is just a charming cherry on the top.” (Nádas Péter: Helyszínelés [Scene Analysis], 1977)

to Éva Gál, with honour

The gross majority of city dwellers visit the Normafa Hill to hike, ski, run, bike, or manically devote themselves to Nordic walking, ride the rack railway, the Children’s Railway, pass their time in the Adventure Park on Csillebérc Hill, while not giving much thought to either the name or the history of the mountain. Older generations refer to it as Liberty Hill, and then correct themselves, while for the younger ones the name Schwabian Hill comes naturally, all of which means little, as the use of a place does not necessarily require any awareness of its past. As regards the use of its name, the Déry-motto above is illuminating: the situation is almost the same today, only the names have to be switched in the quoted sentence.

At first glance, the past is the exclusive territory of burrowing local historians around these quarters as well. When did the grapevines disappear from the hill to be replaced by the rich and then by artists to retreat in Swiss villas? Who was the obsessed Ferenc Cathry Szaléz, to whom we owe the rack railway established in 1874? Is there anything left to see from what Mór Jókai mentions in his Útleírások [Travelogues]?

At the same time, the Schwabian Hill is one of the most haunted places of the city, where certain chapters of the past mostly still remain invisible and completely unmarked.

Living our peaceful quotidian life it seems as though the things that happened up there were more or less left out of Hungarian social history, and are well interpretable in the framework of the convivial nostalgia of politics-free local history. For instance, between 1937 and 1941, holiday resorts in Bauhaus style, poetically named Majestic and Mirabelle, were erected one after the other at the junction of Schwabian Hill and Széchenyi Hill, to be followed by Lomnic, Rege, Éden and Gyopár, now apartment houses of predominantly studio flats on Karthauzi and Melinda Roads. Of course, architectural history does not go beyond recording technical and stylistic facts, András Ferkai refrains from mentioning the buildings’ history of 6

use in his book Buda építészete a két világháború között [The Architecture of Buda between the Two Wars]. Thus, however, the sociology of the huge buildings that radically differ from the traditional proportions on Schwabian Hill is yet to be explored, as their construction presupposes the existence of a predominantly young, well-to-do middle class with two homes for winter and summer.

Following the German occupation in 1944, everything changed on the hill as well.

Adolf Eichmann moved from a villa on Apostol Street to the Majestic, where he set up his offices, while Mirabelle was occupied by the SD and the Gestapo. Lomnic Hotel was occupied

by Dieter Wisliceny and the SS. The buildings on Melinda Road were put to use by the German army. (Cf. Gábor Rosch: A Svábhegy modern üdülőszállói [Modern Holiday Resorts on Schwabian Hill], Hegyvidék, 3 April 2009) Holocaust literature evidently deals with the events that perspired at the meetings held in Eichmann’s offices and not their scene. (Cf. Kinga Frojimovics - Géza Komoróczy - Viktória Pusztai - Andrea Strbik: A zsidó Budapest [Jewish Budapest], 1995)

If we look down on the city through the gaps between the partly renewed residential houses of Karthauzi and Melinda Roads knowing that in 1944 they were used by the Germans, we understand instantly why this place is haunted. The programs of Holocaustresearch and local history have still not concurred, and it seems as though the traces and memories of whatever happened there had disappeared in the rift between the two narratives of different proportions. Was there a prison? In which building? Who were held there, how many, and for how long? Were the concrete chambers still standing in the courtyard of Majestic Hotel built then or later? Which was the room Eichmann used as his office? To which resident does it occur today that once the most horrendous mass murderer of Hungarian history used to work in the neighbourhood? What did these streets look like in 1944, bustling with German soldiers and Hungarian gendarmes? What did actually happen when the Rákosi-regime’s army took over the houses? Who does all this concern today?

What does the lack of the spirit of history mean in the uptown neighbourhood which is gradually becoming the exclusive residence of the upper middle class? Wouldn’t it be wise to finally mark this point in public space by subtle yet intelligible means? Are these few streets a peaceful quarter or a scene of crime? After all, here is where Eichmann put into practice what he had planned before he even got here: the eradication of the entire Hungarian Jewry.

I learned from a 1977 essay of Péter Nádas, Scene Analysis, how ghastly a place the Liberty Hill was. The text was published in the journal Napló, partly conceived and partly edited by Mihály Kornis, who dwelled on the margins of opposition subculture. This excellent writing is a topographical identification of the interrogation and confrontation scene recorded by Béla Szász in his memoirs entitled Minden kényszer nélkül [Without Any Duress]. By chance, Nádas found the villa on Eötvös Road in which Szász and Rajk were confronted and given a terrible beating, and documented it in another text according to the period’s circumstances. It was that certain hexagonal room the whereabouts of which the 7

blindfolded Szász could only roughly identify based on the sound of the nearby rack railway.

This is the house that Nádas, who spent part of his childhood on Liberty Hill, mentions as the memory of his naiveté. The house that continues to stand unmarked on Eötvös Road, where unsuspecting new generations similarly keep putting on their skis in the evident happiness of ignorance. If we had – as we don’t – any strategy to develop a social historical topography, this house would definitely be worth mentioning.

Our understanding is that the dark, politically loaded side of the hill surfaces exclusively in various texts, but never for a moment at the actual scene. At one point, Nádas’ Emlékiratok könyve [Book of Memories] also makes mention of the Rákosi-villa’s garden in Lóránt street, but today’s passer-by can move on unsuspectingly. Whereas, concealed by the often absurd sight of upper middle class villas, behind the images of evident wealth and the tall fences, even if silently, there lurk the stories of history. I learned, for instance, from Éva Gál’s outstanding study on the Mérei trial, that the State Protection Authority’s officer training school was housed in a monastery on the top of the hill, which now operates as a monastery again. (Cf. Mérei Ferenc és társai ,,ellenforradalmi szervezkedése [The “Counter-revolutionary Scheming” of Ferenc Mérei and Associates], 1956 Institute, 2009) Literary, theatre and political histories equally keep count of the fact that József Gáli’s drama Szabadsághegy [Liberty Hill], which illustrates the severe contradictions of the period through the story of a working class family of cadres, premiered on 6 October 1956 at the József Attila Theatre.

On the hill, however, the traces of the German occupation and the Rákosi-era, of the activities of the SS, the SD and the State Protection Authority remain unmarked. Conversely, according to the logic of a dynamic urbanistic museum strategy, nothing would be more important than to link de-politicized local history with narratives of high politics in the cultural spaces of daily life. On site, at the scenes of crime. I am thinking of such memorial places that – as opposed to traditional museums – we can bump into by chance, that are evidently free to use, while very significant traces of traumatic history are revealed. Our history does not only have to concern city dwellers and skiers or biking tourists if they wish to meet one or another interpretation of it. What happens now is that they visit the permanent exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum, which inexplicably marginalizes the things that happened to the Hungarian Jewry, inflicting more damage upon the democratic narratives about Hungarian history than it helps otherwise as – false – education.

Understanding the spirit of history and relating it to ourselves can most efficiently occur through sudden, traumatic experience. Living in our own personal present, to be suddenly confronted with the experience of the past – which is already our own – ambushing us at a certain point of the space. To stop in a stairway, where Eichmann used to walk up and down daily for long months decades ago. To look up at a window, knowing that that villa is where László Rajk was beaten. To walk along Lóránt Street and understand that Mátyás Rákosi used to live here for several years. The summarization of specific cultural spaces, spaces of daily use and the virtual spaces and stories of history into a single system of relations is a method 8

that benefits all of us. Historical knowledge and heritage are not facultative subjects in this educational method. Memory is just as specific as private is the confrontation with its sites, and ideological narratives are thus replaced by specific, tangible experience.

The new and easily intelligible semantic space created by the subtle, almost unnoticeable enframing – according to Zsuzsa Toronyi’s concept – of the garden of the Dohány Street synagogue, which is at once a memorial place and cemetery, is an outstanding example of what might be called dynamic urbanistic museology.Visitors arriving here with the most diverse cultural backgrounds and motivations can, in accordance with their own logic and expectations, freely interpret as well as follow through the process in which the former park with a pool was transformed into a cemetery. That is, the unmistakeable originality and intimacy of the place suddenly makes historical time – the distance of the past decades – vanish, and visitors undergo an inevitable experience when they recognize they are ambulating a scene of crime. The project named Dohánykert [literally Tobacco Garden]

by Zsuzsa Toronyi is worth attention for another reason: by virtue of its mere existence it evidently queries the concept of the permanent exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum. Thus, as far as I can tell, instead of opening another chapter in a hopeless ideological controversy, it simply makes it apparent that the exhibition designed and organized by István Ihász has unjustifiably failed to take otherwise undeniable facts into account. The most severe criticism of the ideological museum lies in the indubitability of concrete facts.

All this can be interpreted as a simple museum pedagogical turn, which in fact it partly is, and much more. The democratization of the interpretative techniques of historical past is at once a turn in the politics of memory. This is a challenge for traditional museums as it makes it difficult for them to stay aloof, and can make it clear that public institutions can only function in collaboration with the communities they represent.

The liberation of the techniques of representation also entails their creative renewal, an example of which is the Stolpersteine, or stumbling block movement initiated by Gunter Demnig in Germany, now also widespread across Hungary. One or two actual names in a given spot in the public space, a copper plaque resembling a cobblestone flashing on the sidewalk, as a subtle memorial for this or that Holocaust victim who used to live there – by all means more effective than huge monuments whose fate is always determined by politics.

Actually, the enframing of the Schwabian Hill in terms of politics of memory has begun a long time ago, and in a very absurd fashion. On each of the two busiest routes leading up the hill, on the level of Böszörményi Road, there stands a quite conspicuous monument, one of which is only partly related to the spirit and history of the place. The Wall of the Righteous stands on Apor Vilmos square since 2005, bearing the names of Hungarian citizens who have merited by virtue of their deeds during the war to be included among the Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. József Kampfl’s work has not triggered fervent debates, and it has definitely received less attention than it would have deserved. On the other hand, at the junction of Böszörményi and Istenhegyi Roads 9

stands a monument that has triggered endless controversy: Boldizsár Szmrecsányi’s statue of the Turul, Hungary’s mythical bird, a monument bearing the names of the district’s civilian casualties, which was erected without permission by the local government in the same year.

As though these monuments unintentionally made the invisible boundary between historical/ social spaces and the local patriotic Schwabian Hill perceptible, and even stronger. Whereas, the “occupation” of the hill’s history in the form of social space would be important because it is full of buildings and public spaces that demand interpretation. In addition to the aforementioned places, there is the Csillebérc Youth and Leisure Centre, which has replaced the former pioneer camp as a monument of Socialism. Or the Children’s Railway, the users of which are just as unsuspecting as Nádas once was according to his account. And there is, for instance, the presently vacated Golf, later Red Star Hotel, with a rich and complex past – the Liberian embassy according to official sources.

Enframing the dark mountain with signs of politics of memory would create a symbolic space out of the real spaces while offering an opportunity for city dwellers using the hill for leisure and sports to know exactly what happened at this place. Real estate prices guarantee that the hill be occupied for good by the homogenous culture of the upper middle class. This is why even the ones who do not reside here should know that they are not tourists in a foreign country on this hill: they are standing at a point in the same social space – among the same dark shadows.

These are the streets from where Rákosi set out each morning to return by evening.

The mountain and the plain share the same single history.

1

This article was first published in the 12 November 2010 issue of Élet és Irodalom. We are indebted to

the author for his kind permission to republish it.

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Lumen Station – Issue #1

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

11

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

The maps and the numberings refer to Gábor Gerhes’ own walking route and stops. The empty circles mark addresses that were left out from the walks. The ones that are crossed out mark faulty addresses or houses that do not exist anymore. The (K)-s in the titles under the photograph stand for conspired apartments, and the (T)-s for meeting apartments (see introduction on page 5)

12

walk #1 00

01 02 03

04

05

06

07 08

09

10

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

14

I.

00. Logodi u. 74-76. (K)

01. Attila út 117. (T)

02. Attila út 115. (K)

03. Attila út 109. (T)

15

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

04. Lovas (Sziklai S.) u. 10. (K)

05. Attila út 41. (K)

06. Attila út 35. (K)

07. Gellérthegy u. 2. (K)

16

I.

08. Mészáros u. 10. (T)

09. Naphegy u. 36. (T)

10. Attila út 2-4. (K)

17

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

18

walk #2

17 18 19 16 15

20 24

14

13

26 12

25

23

22

27

11 28

31

30

32

29 10 09 05 04 01

06

35

08 07

03 02

34

33

36 37 38 39

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

20

II.

01. Budai Nagy A. u. 6. (T)

02. Hollรกn E. u. 7/A. (T)

03. Hollรกn E. u. 12. (K)

04. Katona J. u. 35. (T)

21

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

05. Pozsonyi út 11. (T)

06. R. Wallenberg u. 12. (K)

07. Pannónia (Rajk L.) u. 22. (T)

08. Tátra (Sallai I.) u. 15/B. (T)

22

II.

09. Radnรณti M. u. 27. (T)

10. Hollรกn E. u. 30. (T)

11. Balzac u. 48/B. (K)

12. Hollรกn E. u. 41. (K)

23

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

13. Herzen u. 6. (T)

14. Pozsonyi út 39. (T)

15. Szt. István park 9. (K)

16. Pozsonyi út 40. (T)

24

II.

17. Pozsonyi út 52. (T)

18. Ipoly u. 5/E. (K)

19. Ipoly u. 7/C. (T)

20. Hegedűs Gy. u. 50. (T)

25

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

22.Visegrรกdi u. 52/B. (K)

23.Victor Hugo u. 19/A. (T)

24.Victor Hugo u. 24/A. (K)

25. Tรกtra u. 37. (T)

26

II.

26. Csanรกdy u. 28/A. (K)

27. Tรกtra u. 38. (T)

28. Balzac u. 27. (T)

29. Balzac u. 32. (T)

27

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

30. Hegedűs Gy. u. 30. (K)

31.Visegrádi u. 38/B. (T)

32. Kresz G. u. 38. (T)

33. Balzac u. 18. (T)

28

II.

34. Hegedűs Gy. u. 29/B. (T)

35. Felka u. 3. (K)

36. Hegedűs Gy. u. 20.? (T)

37.Visegrádi u. 17. (K)

29

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

38. Kresz G. u. 18. (K)

39. Kresz G. u. 14. (K)

30

walk #3

14 13

12

40d 40bc

40a

06

11

10

09

–

08 07

05

01 02

03 04

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

III.

01. Ostrom u. 10. (T)

02. Toldy F. u. 44-46. (K)

03. Donรกti u. 67. (K)

04. Donรกti u. 61. (K)

33

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

05. Batthyรกny u. 3. (K)

06. Bem rkprt. 41. (T)

07. Batthyรกny u. 12. (T)

08. Fazekas u. 4. (T)

34

III.

09. Csalogány u. 45/B. (K)

10. Erőd u. 7. (K)

11. Bajvívó u. 8. (T)

12. Buday l. u. 2. (T)

35

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

13. Keleti K. u. 11/B. (T)

14. Keleti K. u. 28/B. (T)

40/A. Margit krt. (Mártírok útja) 49.? (T)

40/B-C. Margit krt. (Mártírok útja) 43-45. (T)

36

III.

40/D. Margit krt. (Mártírok útja) 27. (K)

37

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

38

walk #4

20

19 18

24

21

17

23 22

16 15

13 14

10

9

7 12

8

11

6

–

–

01

04

02 03

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

40

IV.

01. Ráday u. 33/B. (T)

02. Lónyay (Szamuely) u. 37. (T)

03. Gálya u. 6. (T)

04. Zsil u. 3–5. (K)

41

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

06. Sรณ u. 2. (no photo)

07. Bรกstya u. 17. (T)

08. Kirรกlyi P. u. 13/B. (T)

09. Kirรกlyi P. u. 10. (K)

42

IV.

10. Szerb u. 17–19. (T)

11. Molnár u. 33. (T)

12. Belgrád rkprt. 13. (K)

13.Veres Pálné u. 5. (T)

43

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

14.Váci u. 44. (T)

15. Irányi u. 10. (T)

16. Duna u. 3. (T)

17. Kígyó u. 4–6. (T)

44

IV.

18. Párizsi u. 6/B. (T)

19. Petőfi S. u. 12. (T)

20.Vármegye u. 15. (K)

21. Szép u. 4. (no photo)

45

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

22. Ferenczy I. u. 14. (no photo)

23. Ferenczy I. u. 28. (T)

24. Kossuth L. u. 17. (T)

46

walk #5

01 03

04

02

08

05

06

07

09

11

17 14

16 15

14d

14a 14c

14b

12

10

19 18

20

13

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

48

V.

01. Markó u. 27. (K)

02. Szemere u. 10. (T)

03. Honvéd u. 18. (K)

04. Báthory u. 4. (T)

49

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

05. Báthory u. 7. (T)

06. Perczel M. u. 2. (T)

07.Vadász u. 20–22.? (K)

08. Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út 60. (K)

50

V.

09 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út 34. (K)

10. Hajós u. 13–15. (K)

11. Hajós u. 7. (K)

12. Nagymező u. 11. (T)

51

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

13. Nagymező u. 7. (T)

14. Andrássy (Népköztársaság útja) út 21. (K)

14/A. Erzsébet (Engels) tér 5. (T)

14/B.Vörösmarty tér 6. (T)

52

V.

14/C.Vigadó tér 3. (K)

14/D. József Attila u. 12. (K)

15. Október 6. u. 5 (T)

16. Október 6. u. 8. (K)

53

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

17. Október 6. u. 19. (K)

18. Október 6. u. 26. (T)

19. Szabadság tér 11. (T) (2db)

20. Akadémia u. 11. (K) (2db)

54

walk #6

–

01 10

02 09

– 08

11 04

07 05

06

Gรกbor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

56

VI.

01. Németvölgyi u. 6. (T)

02. Németvölgyi u. 14/B. (K)

04. Böszörményi út 18.? (T)

05. Kiss J. Alt. u. 48/C. (K)

57

Gábor Gerhes: Z, or A Country

06. Tartsay V. u. 17. (K)

07. Kléh I. u. 7. (T)

08. Királyhágó u. 2. (T)

09. Nyúl u. 10. (K)

58

VI.

10. FillĂŠr u. 21. (K)

11. Ezredes u. 1/B. (K)

59

Interview with Gábor Gerhes about his series Z, or A Country

Do you have any personal experience related to conspired or meeting flats, which your project Z, or A Country is about?

I was twenty in the beginning of the 80s, when the regime was already getting softer. We were young and didn’t know about these things, or at least we only knew about them indirectly. I was playing in a rock-band at the time. We always knew that we would have to hand in our lyrics and that there were certain people, but were pampered by the regime.

Practically, we could travel abroad every month. It would be hypocrisy to claim that I too was affected by this entire circus.

Tamás Szőnyei published a book six or seven years ago with the title The Registered Ones: Secret Servants Around Hungarian Rock, 1960-1990, which specifically examined the involvement of the rock-music scene in a very thorough research. The characters and stories in that book sounded rather familiar to me. The stories, places and situations he recollected in that book struck me as peculiar, they made me realise that a world like that had been functioning around me.

What was your main motivation when starting this enterprise?

Shortly before I bumped into this theme, I had come across Péter György’s writing1 in ÉS (a Hungarian political and literary weekly). It was a startling experience to realise how places of our youth like the Schwabian Hill are filled with romantically named places such as the Little Majestic or the Rege (Legend) Hotel, while they are overloaded with grave historical events.

A little later I bumped into the materials published by the White Raven Workgroup (Fehér Holló Munkacsoport - http://hollok.hu/lakasok.html). They had found a list of addresses from 1976, which contained secret meeting places of the State Security Service, about 140-150 addresses in Budapest.

From my home, I have a view on one of these houses. It was the 1st address on the list, 7476 Logodi Street. Actually, this house is rather sinister looking, unrestored, still bearing the marks of the siege of 1944. It is quite a special house in the castle district. The next address was where a good friend of mine lives. A little further, on Attila Street, there was another address. This is how it all began, that it would be worthwhile to browse through this list.

How important was it for you to be accurate, to make sure that your series was correct, that only specifically those buildings appear on your pictures?

For the historian it is absolutely essential to know exactly when and where an event took place. I was using the list published on the site of White Raven by Gábor Tabajdi and associates. It turned out that a lot of the addresses didn’t work anymore: the streets ended; 60

the numbering doesn’t exist; it isn’t b but a; there is no b, but instead there is a c… Even so, at most 10% of the registry is inaccurate. If you read original reports, they are full of mistypings, spelling mistakes and mishearings, faulty names. Apparently it was enough for the regime to be just more-or-less aware.

Naturally, it is an awkward thing to realise that the house I look at every morning when I wake up is on this list. Obviously, it would have affected me more, had I been living in one of these houses. Once word is out about exactly which house in which street contained meeting or conspired apartments, every resident can actually feel accused in this situation.

The reason: conscience rests slowly.

How did you handle the questions and errors that arose during your walks?

Gábor Tabajdi and his colleagues didn’t uncover the current names of the streets. For instance, the street by the Körmöci Stairs, above Logodi Street, used to be called Sziklai Sándor Street; it is Lovas Street today, but the list says Szikla Street. The address list had to be updated quite a bit for me to be able to find the current addresses. Once I found an address according to the list, I didn’t overrule it. If I didn’t find the accurate address, I put a question mark on that photo. I had a personal system of signs worked out. The question mark meant that the address and the location wouldn’t match.

There are no people on the photographs, only the buildings stand next to each other in lonelyness.

In January, when I was working on this series, it was awfully cold. I only realised later that it had actually done good to the series that the trees were without foliage and that there weren’t any people on the streets because of the cold. In fact, I was specifically looking for moments without people on these high traffic roads, as difficult as it may seem in a worldcapital. The photograph taken on Astoria is a true wonder. It was taken sometime around 11 AM during peak hours, but there is no one in the photograph. I got lucky in that tenth of a second.

How, in what order did you visit the houses?

It was five or six walks altogether. There was one walk that I took in three goes, but I tried to arrange them rationally. All the time I was trying to figure out what the primary criteria could have been for choosing the apartments, if there was a pattern. I didn’t manage to find any. Either there are rather large houses, which is understandable since there are a lot of people moving around in such buildings; or buildings in busy places where anyone can enter and exit without being noticed. At the same time, there were conspired and meeting apartments in tiny hidden streets with five houses as well.

According to you, what is the ultimate meaning of this monotonous series of black 61

and white photographs of buildings? Don’t you think you should have made a more distinct statement on such a delicate subject, which is touched upon by so few artists so rarely in the current Hungarian scene?

This work doesn’t state anything specific, it is a general proposition. It belongs to a tendency, namely that we are full of locations, collective historical crumbs, which have neither been uncovered nor talked about yet.

The less I make a statement, the more these locations, these buildings speak independently about their own stories. As there are sites of pride, there may be sites of absolute shame – this is how I look at them. They will never transform, regardless of any political shift there may be. They will always remain wounds. I believe there is nothing to add to this, they speak for themselves.

This is a work of art that addresses emotions. Collective emotions present in all of us. The entire thing is merely a proposition, anyone can relate to in whatever way they see fit. Infinite perceptions are possible. All I want is to raise awareness, therefore I am glad if someone hates or loves this work.

Since the start of my career, I have been following the strategy of stepping away from my own works. I rather strip the content that might be inherent to them. It would disturb me if I had to let myself closer. E.g.: I enter a house, meet the caretaker or a pregnant woman, and then… this doesn’t belong to the subject, it’s a different story.

I didn’t feel there was more for me to do. I had a certain relation to it, this was what I could do, this is what I wanted to do. I am not a historian, nor a sociologist, so I wouldn’t dare to venture onto shaky grounds where I would tumble after the first step. I don’t believe I should have gone any further. Where could I have taken this? Should we take a look at the addresslist, see who lived there in 1976 and start digging into it? That is a different profession.

Are you considering continuing? Are there any areas that still interest you concerning the secret flats?

It was astounding to realise that there were two types of flats. First of all, there were those owned, sustained and run by the regime. Second, there were the conspired flats, which are much more interesting. The owners provided their flats: they got a phone call and simply left for an afternoon cinema. The flat where they spent their intimate daily life, the same scenes – their kitchen, their bathroom, their bedroom – were suddenly submitted to State Security use for a few hours. In most cases, there was no coercion; it happened through some citizen’s zeal or loyalty towards the system. The apartment owners became collaborators, accomplices of the power.

That the power put its hands on real estate wasn’t as interesting. We are familiar with these simplified, primary means of power, how it acquires property. It is a lot more tragic when the people’s soul becomes their property.

I don’t believe I will continue this project. However, I would be very interested to see one of these flats from inside. Of course, that is a different thing. It must be a schizophrenic situation 62

to get into an intimate space, where something entirely different happens before and after noon. I would visit a meeting apartment, but I don’t know what use I would put that to.

Gábor Tabajdi mentioned that there were some documents on this, but he couldn’t yet get hold of them.

In your previous works, we often encountered humour, but this series doesn’t make us laugh at all.

This work is not funny; I have excluded the humour factor from my works a while ago.

Nowadays, I am much more interested in topics like this, that reflect on the society. I find this to be a bit more adult thing to do. Furthermore, we have certain responsibilities. I believe that if we artists receive information, we, who have publicity and know how to use it, empowered by the tools and strategies that come from thirty years of experience, cannot pass by such themes without a word. Even if this country were the heaven on Earth, we still would need to deal with them.

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P. Gy.: The Dark Mountain, on page 6. of this publication

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Lumen Station – Issue #1

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