The first winners of the Kassák Contemporary Art Prize are Igor and Ivan Buharov, and the winning application is a film installation project, submitted in collaboration with dramaturg and curator Katalin Erdődi. The title of the film project – "We Anarchists Do Not Fret Over Moral Maggots" – is borrowed from a conversation between Kassák and Szittya, which Kassák describes in his autobiographical novel Egy ember élete (The Life of a Man). The central figure of the film, Emil Szittya, poet, writer, painter and art critic, was also a major influence on Kassák. During the Second World War, Szittya collected the dreams of people he knew and didn't know in France. His volume 82 Dreams During the Second World War 1939–1944 (82 rêves pendant la guerre 1939–1944) was particularly inspiring for the filmmakers, who had already explored the theme of dreams in several of their earlier films. The duo's film installation, a multi-channel, Super 8 mm film installation, draws inspiration primarily from Szittya's individual writings and paintings, which are collages of fragments.
Igor and Ivan Buharov (Kornél Szilágyi, 1971 and Nándor Hevesi, 1974) are artists working in the fields of experimental film, visual arts and music. For almost thirty years they have been making feature and short films as well as audiovisual performances and installations using analogue techniques. Their work has received numerous international awards.
Katalin Erdődi (1980) is an independent curator and dramaturg, working at the intersection of contemporary performance and visual art. She has collaborated with Igor and Ivan Buharov on several occasions, most recently on the on their Eternal Intentionfield Tuning performance-installation (steirischer herbst, 2018). She is curator and artistic collaborator of the exhibition We Anarchists Do Not Fret Over Moral Maggots.
KKMD 2022 | WINNING APPLICATION
The film project by Igor and Ivan Buharov won the Kassák Contemporary Art Prize in 2022, awarded for the first time this year. The award was open to entries related to avant-garde movements and Lajos Kassák's approach to art. The prize is worth HUF 1.5 million and the work will be presented in a solo exhibition at the Kassák Museum in 2023. The winning film installation will be about Emil Szittya, a friend of Kassák's from his youth. In the story, Szittya himself appears as a filmmaker, who processes his wanderings and the dreams he collects not only in his writings but also in experimental films.