10.00–10.15
Gábor Dobó and Evanghelia Stead
Welcoming
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10.15–10.40
Presentation 1.
Chair: Laurel Brake (online)
Kriszta Kiss A.
How to emphasize the significance of Jókai Mór’s first humour magazine, Nagy Tükör in the history of Hungarian humour magazines?
The most well-known and longest running humor magazine of Jókai Mór was Üstökös (Comet) but before its success the author had another humour magazine, called Nagy Tükör (Big Mirror). While significant research has been done on the Üstökös, the literary- and/or journal historians haven’t really focused on the Nagy Tükör so far. Little is known about its significance in the history of Hungarian humour magazines. In my presentation my aim is to focus on the following topics: how one can emphasize the significance of a relatively forgotten magazine in its category when it is living behind the shadow of its highly popular successor. I would like to demonstrate how I analyzed the periodical, in which ways I was able to differentiate it from other humour magazines (from the earlier and following times), and what were my main aspects on highlighting the importance of the magazine. The presentation then will go on to how we can examine the evolution of Jókai Mór’s usage of his pen names and pseudonyms, what is the best theoretic method to analyze the more and more innovative caricatures, and in general the whole profile of a humour magazine. I’ll talk about the origin and the role of the magazine’s recurrent character: the innocent figure from the countryside who is surprised by the urban situations and habits, therefore it can look at them in a new perspective. This character is widely popular in numerous international (mostly Austrian) humour magazines, so I’d like to present how we can show the similarities between the foreign models and Jókai’s practice. I examined the targeted readership of the humour magazine, hence I’d like to present my approach – though analyzing Nagy Tükör – to this topic: what is the best method to become aware of the actual readership of a periodical in general and in this particular case. The Nagy Tükör’s running was formed mostly by its readers’ and subscribers’ active role: they sent anecdotes to the editorial staff and after Jókai edited the texts, he published them and these became the main content of the magazine. I intend to share my research about how this practice was an atypical or a typical practice both in Hungary and internationally. Though the magazine’s main focus was the anecdotes, it offered a mix of genres such as fiction, caricatures, satyres, fictional letters to the editor, poems and genre pictures. In conclusion I’d like to demonstrate how this hybrid medium, namely Nagy Tükör became the pioneer and the model of future humour magazines, especially Jókai’s next and much successful business, Üstökös.
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10.40–11.05
Presentation 2.
Chair: Laurel Brake (online)
Bruna Oliveira Santiago
Production and circulation of illustrated periodicals in Portugal and Brazil during the second half of the nineteenth century: Agents and spaces (online)
Considering the specific methodological points pertaining to periodical studies, my research intends to go through the backstage of production. That means follow the traces regarding the production and circulation process of each one of the illustrated periodicals from the outset. To do so, the first step is an attentive reading of the periodicals to catch any relevant information related to production and circulation, paying particular attention to signatures on the engravings, mentioned proprietors/managers/printers, notices to readers and commercial spots. The intention is to identify who was involved in the process and in which places. Once agents and spaces have been identified, the second step is the cross-referencing with other editions of the same periodical (when possible) and other sources such as letters, for instance. Crossing the periodicals with other sources allows the understanding of the dynamics behind the scenes. For the workshop presentation the idea is to focus on an outcome of my PhD research. I intend to communicate how I applied the described methodology to approach illustrated periodicals aimed at Portuguese and Brazilian readers that were printed out of the Portuguese-speaking area.
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11.05–11.30 | Coffee break
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11.30–11.55
Presentation 3.
Chair: Kristóf Nagy
Sára Bagdi
Storm above Shanghai: The representation of Chinese coolies on the pages of the periodical 100% and its relevance to Hungarian workers’ culture, 1927–1929
In this paper, I focus on the representation of Chinese coolies (low-wage workers) in a Hungarian Communist periodical, entitled 100%. Analysing China-related content in 100% in comparison with other leftist articles does not only provide us with some insights into the shifts in the leftist representation of Chinese workers but it can also help us to better understand the anti-imperialist program of the journal, as well as the challenges the leftist press were facing in the process of imagining how class operates on a global scale.
Chinese coolie labour was first introduced to Eastern-European journalistic discourse when, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a heavily charged debate started in German politics on whether Polish agricultural workers could be substituted for Chinese coolies who had already been working in German colonial territories. In the 1920s, when the civil war broke out in China, the topic of coolies got once again more publicity.
100% was a legally published, Budapest-based, cultural periodical with close ties to the illegal Communist Party. It was first launched in 1927, in the same year when the League against Imperialism (LAI) held its international conference in Brussels. Following the polices of the LAI and the second congress of the Comintern, the authors of 100% heavily criticized the sentimentalism of western primitivism, they urged a radical break between primitivist and communist aesthetics, and advocated for developing a more critical understanding of colonial nations. The articles published in 100% saw Asian as well as African people in general as important members of the global working class, whose economic and social struggles were primarily defined by the imperial geopolitics of capital accumulation and the unequal division of labour. They also published African and Asian themed poetry in which the representation of Chinese and African people shifted from premodern to a distinctly working class phenomenon.
Compared to the European imagination revolving around African people, the trope of Chinese coolies was somewhat less charged by primitivist connotations. They were already seen as the members of the urbanised lumpenproletariat, working at American and British railroad companies or carrying rickshaws in the rapidly expanding Chinese cities, therefore this trope proved to be especially useful for the editorial team of 100% in the creation of an idea of an international working class for the collective imagination of the Hungarian left.
Though Aladár Tamár, the head editor of the journal acknowledged in his personal correspondence, that only a few sources were available on Asian politics, the 100% regularly reported on the latest events of the Chinese civil war. While these articles primarily discussed the initiatives of political leaders such as Sun Yat-sen or Chiang Kai-shek, the coolie-themed literature they published, staged everyday Chinese coolies as the real agents of political change. In these texts, Chinese coolies, the most oppressed members of the global working class, have been transformed into revolutionary actors. Therefore this trope did not only play an important role in the rethinking of the international working class because of the coolies' entangled history with the globalised labour-market, but also because during the political turmoil within China, the geographic distance allowed the Hungarian leftist press to use Chinese workers as romanticized examples of "subaltern resistance" shifting the trope of the Chinese coolie (the universal symbol of the global lumpenproletriat) towards becoming a heroic working class icon.
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11.55–12.20
Presentation 5.
Chair: Evanghelia Stead
Ana Sekso Milković
Meetings on the periphery. Cooperation between the editorial boards of the Zenit and MA magazines and their impact on the South Slavic countries
Zenit – The International Revue for Art and Culture was edited by a group of dislocated individuals connected by similar interests and eclectic ideas headed by Ljubomir Micić- a teacher, poet, writer and art collector. The editorial board had its headquarters at first in Zagreb (1921–1924) and later in Belgrade (1924–1926). Zenit was not just a magazine, it represented a movement proclaimed by its manifesto according to which its goal was to change the provincial status of national culture, building its own cultural system based on new art, and entering the European plan, or to elevate the culture of periphery towards the centre. Zenit built an international network of collaborations with a great number of the most prominent artists close to European avant-gardes.
During its years in Zagreb, Micić and his associates established a collaboration with the circle of Hungarian artists and activists gathered around Lajos Kassák in Vienna where they continued to publish the avantgarde magazine MA. The Vienna editions of the MA 1920–1925 had an emphasized international character. Despite limited opportunities of its creators, MA was ingeniously expanding its network of collaborators and helpers, who in various ways enabled the transfer and distribution of the magazine to Hungary (where it was banned by the authorities) and in the surrounding countries. The MA also had subscribers in the area of the young South Slavic State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Some other Hungarian mainstream newspapers also wrote about Micić's work at the time.
Both magazines were headed by individuals of modest means, without any institutional support, but surrounded by close people from cafes and apartments. In addition to publishing magazines, both MAists and zenitists published other, related magazines that were short-lived, engaged in organizing exhibitions and cultural events. For both editors of avant-garde magazines, traveling and correspondence were the two most important ways to expand their network, to communicate and exchange ideas and materials with other authors and readers.
Using archives, magazines in the original and in their digitized editions, and by getting insight into the correspondence and legacy of the actors and network research, I will try to examine the cooperation between the two magazines, give answers to the questions about who were the few people who read MA and Zenit in the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and in Kingdom of Serbia and how did the both magazines transfer information and knowledge and influence their croatian readers not only in Zagreb. So far it seems that the cooperation between the Zenit and the MA ended with Micić's migrating his network to Belgrade and his turn in political attitude, but in spite of that, he kept collaborating with hungarian artists. Undoubtedly, MA and Zenit influenced the creation of their Novi Sad counterpart Út created by Hungarian artists of Vojvodina transforming Novi Sad from periphery towards a centre of neo-avant-garde dissemination in the future.
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12.20–13.20 | Lunch
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13.20–13.45
Presentation 7.
Chair: Fabio Guidali
Jan Lampaert
Mapping the neo-avant-garde: A dynamic network visualization of Flemish literary periodicals (1949–1970)
The 1950s and 60s constitute one of the most exciting and turbulent episodes in Flemish literary history. A radically new poetry and poetics emerged and flourished within a myriad of neo-avant-garde periodicals. Flemish periodical studies, however, tend to focus on one particular magazine such as the pioneering Tijd en Mens (Time and Man) or the long-running De Tafelronde (The Round Table). This presentation will argue for visual network analysis as a method for charting and tracing literary dynamics. As the analysis is applied to the full range of literary periodicals published in Flanders between 1949 and 1970, it becomes possible to attain a finer grasp of the intricate and rapidly evolving literary landscape. Moreover, the reticular approach provides new perspectives as the value of exchange and circulation takes precedence over considerations of literary value. The network consists of Flemish literary periodicals and their contributing poets (128 periodicals, 2.850 authors and 12.300 contributions). The dynamic network visualization is made up in Gephi, an open source network exploration tool. This presentation will provide two illustrations of new research perspectives based on visual network analysis. Firstly, the rise of Flemish neo-avant-garde periodicals is reflected in a centripetal shift from the periphery of the network and the subsequent formation of a cluster alongside the established or central periodicals. The ultimate breakthrough of the neo-avant-garde is visualized as a central cluster of periodicals breaking up the core of established periodicals. Particularly striking are the multiple connections between neo-avant-garde and established periodicals, as existing research regards neo-avant-garde and traditional poetry as two almost entirely separate circuits. Secondly, the 1960s are generally described in terms of the fragmentation and gradual decline of the neo-avant-garde. Consequently, the post-experimental youth periodicals of the late 60s have received little or no attention. However, the corresponding network slices reveal a sudden boom of these mimeographed periodicals and the formation of a significant and rather dense core next to the established or ‘central’ magazines. Highlighting aspects of exchange and circulation, these graphs reveal the prominence of the ‘peripheral’ youth periodicals of the late 1960s.
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13.45–14.10
Presentation 8.
Chair: Evanghelia Stead
Annemarie Iker
Open secrets: Santiago Rusiñol (1861–1931) and the Catalan press (online)
Can an artwork keep a secret? This question fascinated Santiago Rusiñol (1861—1931) and the Catalan modernistes, a group of artists, writers, musicians, architects, and designers active in and around turn-of-the-century Barcelona. At the Postgraduate Workshop on Periodical Studies organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, and the Central European Research Institute for Art History, I propose to discuss a means of communication vital to the modernista conviction that art must both evoke and elicit secrets: periodicals. Throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, the modernistes were deeply involved in the dynamic print culture of fin de segle Catalunya. Rusiñol and his peers cultivated close relationships with existing newspapers, journals, and magazines in order to obtain coverage of their art exhibitions, literary publications, and cultural festivals. Simultaneously, the modernistes actively contributed to these periodicals, using them as publishing platforms for their artistic manifestoes, critical reviews, and experimental prose, poetry, and prints. And last but not least, the modernistes founded periodicals of their own, including two illustrated journals associated with Els Quatre Gats, the celebrated tavern, gallery, and theater they established in Barcelona in 1897: Quatre Gats (1899) and Pèl & Ploma (1899–1903). Throughout my doctoral dissertation, I explore the ways in which Rusiñol and the modernistes deployed periodicals to advance their conception of artists, artworks, and artistic movements. In narrowly circulated “little magazines,” they published esoteric lithographs and obscure prose-poems; in mainstream newspapers, they printed declamatory manifestoes. In both cases, the objective was similar: Rusiñol and his colleagues sought to portray themselves and their movement as introducing new ideas and new forms to what they considered to be the culturally provincial world of late-nineteenth-century Catalunya. Yet the modernistes, as members of a self-consciously avant-garde movement at the presumed periphery of Europe, were motivated by conflicting impulses toward revelation and concealment, and inclusion and exclusion. Should modernisme be directed to fellow modernistes, most of whom were affluent, educated men from Catalunya, or should it address a wider audience of diverse readers and viewers? At the Postgraduate Workshop on Periodical Studies, I wish to suggest that periodicals allowed the modernistes to consolidate their emerging movement while constructing multiple publics of different class, gender, ethnic, linguistic, and national compositions. As requested by the workshop organizers, my presentation would focus on methodological concerns: first, the role of periodicals in fostering solidarity among nascent cultural movements; and second, the capacity of periodicals to nurture new cultural centers beyond western European capitals. By attending to these concerns, I aim to offer new insights into Catalan modernisme—a cultural movement often overlooked by scholars of modern art—as well as the modernity from which this movement emerged and to which it contributed. While in Budapest, it would be a privilege to attend the ESPRit Conference, and to collaborate with students and scholars engaged in periodical studies; in addition, I am particularly interested in receiving comments on my research from members of the Artpool Art Research Center, ESPRit, the Kassák Museum, KEMKI, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
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14.10–14.40 | Final Q&A
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14.40–15.30 | Coffee break