IGOR AND IVAN BUHAROV: “WE ANARCHISTS DO NOT FRET OVER MORAL MAGGOTS”

2023. June 22. – 2023. October 29.

KASSÁK CONTEMPORARY ART PRIZE 2022 – EXHIBITION OF THE WINNING PROJECT
Curator and artistic collaborator: Katalin Erdődi

Well-known as experimental filmmakers, but also working in the fields of visual arts and music, the artist duo Igor and Ivan Buharov are now presenting a solo exhibition opening on 22 June at the Kassák Museum. Their new work revolves around the figure of Emil Szittya, a versatile avant-garde artist (writer, poet, painter, publisher) and anarchist vagabond who had a strong influence on the young Lajos Kassák at the turn of the century. In collaboration with curator Katalin Erdődi, the Buharov brothers won the newly established Kassák Contemporary Art Prize in 2022, with their proposal for a multi-channel film installation using Super 8 analogue technology. The artists draw inspiration from the life and work of Emil Szittya, especially his collage-like fragmentary writings, paintings, and the dreams he collected from acquaintances and strangers in occupied France during the Second World War, which they revisit and transform with their signature anarcho-surrealist visuality.

Emil Szittya was born Adolf Schenk in 1886 to a poor Jewish family in Óbuda. Living as a vagabond in his younger years, he stayed at the Monte Verità art colony in Ascona, where life-reform was professed and practised, toured the museums and churches of Europe and joined various artist groups, such as the Viennese society of the poet-essayist Karl Kraus, the Zurich Dada around the Cabaret Voltaire and the avant-garde circles of Paris. He met Lajos Kassák for the first time in Stuttgart in July 1909, when he was travelling by foot from Budapest to Paris. Kassák’s autobiographically inspired novel, The Life of a Man, reveals how they tramped across Western Europe and how Szittya, while introducing the young Kassák to the innovative trends in contemporary art, ensured their livelihood by begging and swindling. Settling first in Berlin and later in Paris, Szittya became known as an art writer from the 1920s and 30s, among others discovering and publishing about the work of artists such as Henri Rousseau and Chaïm Soutine. Thanks to his multifaceted and diverse activities as a writer, artist and publisher, he played an important role in the international avant-garde movements of the time, however, perhaps due to the unclassifiable character of his work, he never became a canonical figure in the history of the avant-garde. In recent years, the professional public has begun to rediscover his work, and with their exhibition, the Buharov brothers also wish to contribute to his recognition. At the heart of the exhibition is Emil Szittya's extraordinary collection of dreams, published in the 1960s under the title 82 rêves pendant la guerre 1939-1945 (82 Dreams During the War 1939-1945), which was particularly inspiring for the artist duo. Dreams are a key element of the Buharov brothers’ films, a form of artistic expression that embodies the collective and associative practice of ‘free thought’ the artists strive for. At the same time, the way in which the dreams collected by Szittya talk about the experience of the world war also responds to our current reality of armed conflicts with sharp insight and sensitivity.

The artists imagine Emil Szittya not only as a writer and painter, but also, with a speculative twist, as an amateur filmmaker who documented his vagabondage and the dreams he collected in the form of experimental films. The title of the exhibition is a quotation from Szittya, recorded by Kassák in the Vagabondage volume of his The Life of a Man.

"Emil Szittya sets an example that is much needed today: a radically free, transgressive personality who, with his vagabond philosophy of life and his politically engaged art, defied the oppressive manifestations of the various social orders. Throughout his life he was a dissident thinker critical of the system, to whom we can relate through his leftism and anti-war activism", says Kornél Szilágyi (Igor Buharov). “On account of his difficult and precarious life, his artistic and social sensitivity, his constant outsiderness, his desire for freedom, his compassion, we can also see him as a kind of itinerant teacher, a mendicant monk, a preacher of 'mad wisdom', who preached dissident, free thought with his individualistic anarchist views. The individual, artistic and political freedom for which Szittya fought a hundred years ago is an issue just as important, perhaps even more pressing, today", says Nándor Hevesi (Ivan Buharov).

Nándor Hevesi and Kornél Szilágyi have been making experimental arthouse films for almost thirty years under the nom de plume Igor and Ivan Buharov. Their work has been screened at film festivals and cinemas, as well as at prestigious art biennials and exhibitions: Manifesta 8 Murcía, Kyiv Biennale, Documenta 14, Art Encounters Timisoara, steirischer herbst Graz, OFF Biennale Budapest 2021. Their latest feature film, Land of Warm Waters (2022), has been featured at 12 international festivals and won the main prize in Belgrade, Paris and Genoa. They previously worked with Katalin Erdődi on their performance-installation Eternal Intentionfield Tuning, which won the Péter Halász Prize and was presented at the steirischer herbst festival (2018, Graz) and the Vasas Metal Workers’ Union Headquarters (2019) in Budapest. The Vienna-based curator and dramaturg is currently co-curating the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague and the Hungarian-German collaborative art research project SALT. CLAY. ROCK.

CREDITS

Curator and artistic collaborator: Katalin Erdődi
Collaborating historian: Magdolna Gucsa
Installation design: Igor és Ivan Buharov, Csaba Vándor
Graphic design: Réka Fignár
Technical team: Ferenc Badak, Tibor Gergely, Gyula Kemény
Loans: Antal-Lusztig Collection (Debrecen), Collection Goldring (Paris)
Production: Álomvadász Kft.
Communication: Renáta Szikra
Administration: Erzsébet Károly
Insurance: UNIQA

FILM INSTALLATION IN COLLABORATION WITH

Cast: Catherine Badet, Gergő Bárdi, Balázs Bodor, András Zsolt Bordás, Géza Buda, Erekle Chinchilakashvili, Attila Dániel, Benjamin Dino, Stanislav Dorochenkov, Katalin Erdődi, Laca feLugossy, Hermina Fátyol, Réka Fignár, András Hadik, Fruzsina Háda, Szabolcs Hajdu, Ilka Hevesi, Nándor Hevesi, Nina Hevesi, Csaba Hernádi, Ádám Hodászi, László Horváth, Mihály Horváth, Ottó Horváth, Gustavo De Mattos Jahn, Attila Jenei, Karina Karaeva, Judit Kemenesi, Emma Kata Kircsi, Tara Khozein, Tamás Komár, Péter Köblös, Atsushi Kuwayama, Márta Ladjánszki, Igor Lazin, Szilárd Masika, Lajos Major, Tamás Menyhárt, Márió Z. Nemes, Ádám Németh, Enkhtaivan Ochirbat, Renátó Olasz, Antal Orosz, Rudolf Pacsika, Gábor Papp, Viktória Pászthy, Olivér Pénzes, Dóra Rábai, Iringó Réti, Ádám Sarkadi, István Sebők, Antal Szabó, Domokos Szabó, Adrienn Szarvas, Zsófia Szász, Rozi Székely, János Szén, Kornél Szilágyi, József Szolnoki, Marica Tárnok, Zsófia Tolnai, Attila Torma, Orsolya Török-Illyés, Csaba Vándor, Zsolt Varga, Lili Vetlényi, Berta Vereb, Mária Zaujecová

Camera: Lola Bedécs, Igor & Ivan Buharov
Super 8 developing: Szilárd Szilas, Csaba Vándor (caffenol)
Set: Lili Mestyán, Tamás Fuchs
Costume: Júlia Szlávik
Makeup: Zita Kozári
Music: Nándor Hevesi, László Horváth, Ottó Horváth, Ádám Jávorka, Árpád Kiss, Gergely Kovács, Ferenc Royal Kovács, Ádám Mészáros, Zsolt Sőrés, Zsolt Varga, Kristóf Velsz, Szabolcs Vereb

Sound installation / Dreams performed by: Dávid Csányi, György Cserhalmi, Laura Döbrösi, Hermina Fátyol, László feLugossy, Péter Forgács, Imre Gelányi, Lujza Hajdu, Szabolcs Hajdu, Gábor Harsay, Fruzsina Háda, Csaba Hernádi, László Horváth, Eszter Katona, Karina Kecskés, Judit Kemenesi, Lili Kemény, Erzsébet Kukta, Igor Lazin, László Mátray, Zsolt Nagy, Antal Orosz, Miklós Paizs, Erika Pereszlényi, Iringó Réti, Bori Rutkai, Iván Tabeira, Szabolcs Thuróczy, Ottó Tolnai, Orsolya Török-Illyés, Angéla Stefanovics, Domokos Szabó, Tünde Szalontay, Tibor Szemző, Miklós Székely B., Emese Vasvári, Lili Vetlényi, Zsolt Vicei
Source: Emil Szittya, 82 rêves pendant la guerre 1939–1945 [82 Dreams During the War 1939-1945], Les Diurnales, Paris, 1963.
Hungarian translation: Magdolna Gucsa

Special thanks:
Tamás Blaha, Róbert Bordás, Éva Csiki, Walter Fähnders, Mihály Gál, Goldring Laurent, Magdolna Gucsa, Nikola Herweg, Tünde Holly, Leonóra Leimszider, Lili Mestyán, Katalin Nagy T., Márió Nemes Z., Dr. Szandra Németh, Gábor Pados, Eleonóra Peták, Linda Pfeiffer, Tamás Polgár, Ferenc Pusztai, Zoltán Rockenbauer, Julie Sándor, Csaba Szeredi, Roberto Sassi, András Soós, József Szolnoki, Lőrinc Tímár, Dr. Tamás Verő, Elisabeth Weinek, Niki Welsh.
Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Frankel Synagogue, KMH Film, L1 Independent Artists’ Association, Liszt Institute Paris, Liszt Institute Stuttgart.
To every actor and performer, and everyone who helped.

Links

Kassák Contemporary Art Prize
Igor and Ivan Buharov's Website