Big Hope: 'Disobbedienti', Liget Galeria, Budapest, September - October 2002.
Miklos Erhardt & Dominic Hislop interviewed by Keiko Sei for 'Umelec', November 2002.

Keiko Sei: Please explain the meaning of your project; why you wanted to do it, for what purpose, and why in an art gallery.

Miklos Erhardt, Dominic Hislop: We first went to Corso Brescia 14, Torino, the meeting place of the Torino Disobbedienti around six months ago while we were working on the previous project. Immediately we were impressed with this colourful space with its rich variety of objects, paintings, posters and stencils covering its walls that hosted the activities of a group of people composed of adult women and men who as well as having jobs doing various kinds of social work, offer long hours of unpaid labour to give assistance to and organize protests on behalf of migrants. As our projects use channels of art to move towards the same goals and we also tend to invest a lot of time in activities that are not financially rewarding, there was an immediate mutual sympathy towards each other's work. It was then that the idea of documenting their activities and recreating the environment of their meeting space in a different location first emerged.
More generally speaking, with the global justice movement's growing popularity and recent high profile protests in Seattle, Prague and Genova etc. we can see clearly how 'the system' has seized the opportunity to recuperate and commodify their practical and low-tech imagery. Since its use of unregulated sweatshops in developing countries to produce their goods was exposed, Nike has been one of the movement's prime targets of protests and boycotts. In an attempt to confuse its function, Nike's recent 'scorpion team' advertising campaign featured the kind of cut out stencil spay painting imagery, that is traditionally identified with the aesthetics of resistance, in it's posters and even spray-painted directly onto walls and buildings. This and other recent strategies, such as the recent Diesel campaign depicting scenes of mock protest, calculate the appeal of the aesthetics of resistance but neutralize any political content and agitational intention.
The disobbedienti project attempts to reproduce some imagery of a very specific part of the global justice movement and present it together with the original content and context, in a way that avoids confusion with any other signification or message than that of the representation, or re-creation itself. In doing so it seeks to restate a connection between imagery and content which can generate awareness of and counter its recuperation and commodification. For this an art gallery with its neutral space and relatively neutral context can be an appropriate location.
This location also provided the opportunity to react to the politically and socially sterile atmosphere of the majority of the Hungarian art scene. This is the kind of atmosphere which is characterized by a 'sophisticated understanding' of contemporary political, economic and social realities, without drawing the slightest practical conclusion of this understanding. To this well ordered and not very lively garden, we wanted to contribute an unclear, unclean and disordered but living and active environment.

K.S.: Was there any reservation from the gallery side or anybody else involved in this project?

M.E., D.H.: The Liget gallery is run by a friend of ours, Tibor Varnagy, an artist with whom we share an interest in 'reality-based' art, so from that perspective, no obstacles were imposed. From the side of the Torino Disobbedienti, they only asked that we don't record whilst they discuss some 'surprise' tactics that they want to use at a demonstration in November. As they were keen to have some feedback from and curious to learn more about activist circles in Hungary, we decided to record an interview with relevant activists in the gallery space in Budapest, that when sent to Torino, could relate their answers to the same questions answered by the Disobbedienti and create some communication that can bring closer an international support network of like-minded organizations. This 'condition' concurred with our intentions anyway, which consist of making art projects that somehow interact with some social reality, and try to facilitate a communication both between different social groups somehow lacking the adequate channels and between the contemporary art-scene and the other marginalized social spheres.

K.S.: Do you consider the contemporary art scene to be marginalised?

M.E.: Yes, I think there is something marginalised in contemporary art and I'm not sure whether it's a bad thing or good. It has lost it's leading positions in innovation, high-tech visuality, even in subversion, the latter being it's last fortress since the Situationist times. The system, through its 'avant-garde' i.e. advertising, produces the most exciting imagery, both quantitatively and qualitatively and you cannot beat it with art. By contrast, visual arts, in their most autonomous appearance, are like a laboratory where essences are produced, pure and hermetic. Art became weak but it doesn't know yet how to use its weakness as a strength, although I think this situation favours some visually less aggressive, more morally founded work.

K.S.: Could you briefly describe your previous projects and future ones, if you have any concrete plans, that channel the art-scene and marginalised social spheres.

M.E., D.H.: We did our first common project in 97-98, it was an 8 months long work.. We gave disposable cameras to homeless people in Budapest and asked them to document what they found to be worth showing in an exhibition, of their everyday experience. The photos were shown in an art gallery, every picture having alongside the comment by the person who took them. The next bigger project of the kind was the work we did for the BIG Torino Biennial of Art, 2002. We called the project Re:route and it consisted of a mapping of the town of Torino by recent migrants (even in an European scale Torino has a very massive immigration which makes the social balance of the town delicate), about 30 people, legal migrants, refugees and illegal workers, from different Third World and Eastern-European countries. The participants were asked to trace a 'mental map' of the parts of the town they use everyday or they are impressed by, whether in positive or in negative sense, then to illustrate the map with photographs. We recorded two interviews with them, first about the map and then about the individual photos. The end result of the project will be a printed map of Torino, more or less the same format like the tourist maps, composed of the material of the project, providing both 'poetic' information due to comments and photos, and useful information, i.e. a list of immigrant support groups, health and counselling services, ethnic/cultural organizations. The map will be out in the spring 2003 and will be distributed for free through the help of Torino's city council. Both of these projects have websites with a large part of the material produced during the work, i.e. photos, comments, full interviews, maps.

K.S.: What was the response of the participants to those projects?

M.E., D.H.: In both the homeless and immigrant projects, everyone we approached was interested in participating, and for the right reasons I think, as we didn't mention anything about financial reimbursement until after they had agreed to take part. Amongst the immigrants we worked with, some of those without legal documents were a little cautious about being identified or about mentioning some illegal activities, but when assured that they could participate under a pseudonym, they were more comfortable. I think they understood the premise of the projects and appreciated the opportunity to express something publicly. In both cases, the essential element of the participation, taking a photograph and talking about it, is universally appreciated and for those with access to a camera, often taken for granted. At the stage of presentation, I think those that made it to see the exhibition opening - full of an enthusiastic public - were very proud to have contributed to something so much appreciated. In both cases, I think an important aspect of the process was that an outsider to their situation became involved with them, spent time listening to their experience and views and that through this dialogue, they had created something that on the one hand enabled a reflection on their own personal situation and on the other could communicate something of interest to a broad public.

K.S.: In the Czech Republic thanks to the state propaganda machine Italian and Spanish leftist groups are either misunderstood or in most of the cases not understood at all. Instead their image has been distorted in the lead up to the IMF-World Bank meeting and they are simply put into the category of "fanatic, radical and extreme" kinds of people and Czech citizens are advised not to talk or discuss anything with these people according to "The Ten Commandments" issued by the Ministry of Interior advising citizens on how to behave during the NATO summit . Stereotypes have thus been created. People seem to buy into this stereotype, or rather they may want to do so since Czech Republic is a former communist country people still have resentment towards "radical or extreme" left. I think your project at the Liget Gallery is helping people to be properly informed about what those groups are really doing.
I also learnt that you'd been translating and publishing leftist texts in Hungary. Still, especially Italian leftist scene is so rich and colorful and since autonomia there have been so many groups, positions, opinions, activities that one needs much devotion to understand the true picture of what's going on. Do you see the need to connect Italian (or other) leftist ideas and agendas to those of former Eastern Europe as much as you try to connect art scene and other social scenes? And why do you think so and how effective is it? Can art be a good mediator for this purpose?

M.E.: As far as the Hungarian situation concerns, I can state much of what the question speaks about is valid for here, too, with the difference that in Budapest people don't have the experience of a massive alternative globalisation protest. So the danger doesn't seem to be that imminent and all these stereotypes aren't formed about Italian and Spanish leftist groups. The slogan of the day is terrorism and anarchism as these expressions are apt to generate dissent and mistrust among citizens. Generally speaking, the atmosphere is characterized by the 'not our business' attitude. This is the good old central European mentality. *
In Eastern-Europe the issue of leftist politics is particularly delicate due to the state capitalist (called communist) past of the region. Most of the ideas and slogans launched by the street-movement here are considered long obsolete. In this concern it is important - and hopefully inspiring - to represent everything that can be a vehicle of a different, organic reality - if you like, a local reality different from your local reality, in a context when mainstream, and in its most aggressive tactics, the independent, media and politicians are pressing on cultural-economical globalism, i.e. uniformity.
About it being effective, I don't think we shall have very high goals about the large scale impact of an exhibition - there are much more efficient methods and situations in which to spread a different consciousness than an art gallery (from a public protest to media appearance). But art is not activism - its premises and its situation make it to be too defended and safe a place where different tactics of protesting are likely to end up being self-satisfying but irrelevant. This was one of the reasons why we've chosen the 'modest' way of reproduction, instead of using the false supremacy of art to make a political statement.

D.H.: The 'disobbedienti' take their name from the words of the radical priest, Don Milani who urged civil disobedience as a strategy of resistance. Amongst the assortment of groups that consider themselves to be 'disobbedienti' there isn't a central directive on behaviour, the extremities of the disobedience has always been open to interpretation and debate within the movement. As they know the landscape better than me, I mentioned the perception of Italian and Spanish groups in Prague to some of the disobbedienti group who were in Prague at that time and they were a little surprised as they were with a peaceful 'yellow' group and said they always had the impression that it was the German and Austrian 'black block' that usually initiated the more extreme behaviour. They thought that although the autonomia groups were more extreme than the disobbedienti, there wasn't really an Italian equivalent of the 'black block', and that those Italians who did favour more radical tactics would be likely to share the views and strategies of a larger and more international 'black block' than operate independently as a national group.
Generally, there seems to be a desire on the part of the establishment to blur the distinction between violent and non violent strategies. In any political cause, extreme tactics are an almost inevitable consequence of people becoming frustrated when legitimate grievances consistently fall on deaf ears. The 'black block' minority amongst the protesters at the G8, WTO, IMF or NATO meetings are the extreme end of the 'global justice movement' in the same way that Al-Qaida are the extreme end of those Arabs angry about US policy in the middle east. They have both provided the establishment with the justification to dismiss critique of heavy handed repressive measures.
To go back to some reasons for the exhibition in Hungary, when I lived in Hungary, I perceived a cynicism and passivity amongst my peers towards political discussion and involvement. Feelings of cynicism and political impotence had probably been ingrained in people since the crushed uprising of 1956 and the subsequent years of one party state Socialism with its forced processions and leftist rhetoric that everyone knew had no connection to reality and only sought to embellish a well acknowledged illusion in order to maintain power. With the perception amongst many Hungarians that the left had been discredited by its abuse of power, a large part of the political territory for raising consciousness of a government that, like those of western Europe, puts corporate before public interest has been claimed by the nationalist right. It's more common to see sizable demonstrations from the nationalist right in Budapest than the left, moreover, they are allowed to parade the main streets and squares uncontested. In other parts of Europe, the left would mobilize a counter demonstration that would outnumber and prevent the right from completing their route. In Italy, I've seen numerous such colourful and vibrant demonstrations. In presenting the environment and activity of an Italian activist group in Hungary, one aspect of the exhibition at the Liget was to try to demonstrate through an example in western Europe, that leftist rhetoric and action can be differentiated from that of the Hungarian experience to have some real connection to its stated meaning and have some relevancy and urgent need of application at a grass roots level in contemporary politics. So even though it's only on a very small scale, this kind of communication can be a key to exposing some historical baggage and understanding how to move forward.
Artists have a visual awareness and dexterity that can be channeled in many directions to influence how a society sees itself. With this comes a responsibility. Many artists, particularly many of those in Budapest, uncritically aspire to the recreate the slick quality of advertising imagery in their gallery based work and as though eager to make 'the real thing', offer their creativity to advertising companies. The presentation of crude activist stencil 'art' in a gallery to a predominantly art based audience, raises issues of the responsibility of the images artists produce. In this way, the exhibition has suggested, to me at least, some alternative possibilities for collaboration. Since documenting their meeting and environment, I've been working with the disobbedienti group for a forthcoming demonstration in Torino against the immigrant detention centre. We've been planning some city centre participative 'installations' and making a video documenting the responses of immigrants to the implementation of the Bossi-Fini law so that even if their precarious position in Italy prevents them from participating, they can register their presence when the video is projected onto the outer wall of the detention centre.

K.S.: Since I've mentioned Ya Basta! and Wu Ming and those activists in my article on the IMF-WB and NATO summit in Prague that goes with this interview I would like to ask this in relation to what you mentioned about the corporations use of leftist style of design in their ad. campaigns. These new Italian left theory-activists groups are keen supporters of pop culture and actively adopt and borrow its language. So the activists and corporations are battling over pop culture in terms of style and that's the old Situationist problem. How do you see the role of art there? I also want to ask this because one big "gap" between East and West, as Miklos calls it, to my eyes is the treatment of pop culture by artists. I often see a huge misunderstanding of pop culture by artists from Eastern Europe in their art which is in marked contrast to an apt use of pop by certain activists.

M.E.: In my eyes, Italian groups like Wu-Ming, Luther Blisset or Candida are quite unique in their couter-Situationist approach, and very encouraging for the same reason because Guy Debord's conclusions in cases can be paralysing for every kind of cultural production. This has a lot to do with what I said about the 'weakness' of art although I'd put the accent on 'modesty', instead of pop creativity, as a means to work against ideological purism and supremacy.
About differences between East and West Europe in this concern, I think they are embedded in the cold war history of the regions. Pop culture is a phenomenon of market economy, so that that kind of solidarity or creative community formed around pop myths that in the eyes of the mentioned Italian groups makes pop culture to be the sword with which to cut through the Gordian knot of the mainstream-subculture antagonism, wasn't present here. Communism simply didn't produce pop culture in this sense and Western pop culture filtering through the borders was only enough to create some strange, distorted subcultures. In art for example, a tomato soup can printed by Warhol had totally different, political connotations - pop art of the region was a manifestation of dissent, even resistance, towards the ruling ideology. To sum up, in Eastern Europe it was the bare ideology to create the hierarchy and that kind of hierarchy doesn't really leave room for solidarity or life outside of it. The other factor can be that during the communist years, in Hungary at least, art had a special role in society; mostly due to the "utopian attention generated by censorship" (Janos Sugar), artists represented a high (absolute) moral standard which contrasted with the ordinary spectacle of official culture and politics. This role, as soon as the circumstances changed (i.e. market came to rule), became slightly anachronistic, and this was why the big cultural vacuum formed in the 90Õs. Even today there is a tendency towards elitism in artists attitudes, that is also present in institutions and education, which I consider to be the heritage of this moral supremacy, or moralizing tendency of Art. In this regard, it is also important to be aware of the fact that in these countries, the experience of Ô68, i.e. the experience of a large scale grass root cultural-political shock generated by the youth, is missing.

D.H.: In the use of pop iconography by many Eastern European artists, I noticed an eagerness to court and conform to the interests of the west. Often this involved a strong use of new technology and globally applicable content and a playing up to stereotypes. Whilst I was in Budapest, I made a number of quiet public interventions which altered or added to existing iconography or signage, such as metro icons, touristic posters and local company advertisements, much of which were particular to Hungary. These were made in a way which commented on the use of the public space in which they were located. Rather than only working with the relatively new (to Hungary at that time), universally recognized popular images of globalisation, for me it was important to try to work on quite a local scale, using a visual language particular to the city and to integrate the interventions into specific locations in a way that couldn't be easily identified as art or politics, advertising or graffiti. Because once defined within a category that carries a lot of baggage, the mind of the viewer could be prejudiced from considering the implications of the work. In this way I think public art works best when it is 'invisible' as art.

--- After the interview, a number of disobbedienti from All'Alba, near Napoli were arrested on conspiracy charges (under post September 11th anti-terrorism laws). Activist groups throughout Italy organized demonstrations in protest. Developments can be monitored on www.italy.indymedia.org.

* Miklos Erhardt's text on the question of Eastern-Europe versus the recent alternative-autonomia movements can be read at:
<http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0208/msg00014.html>

Keiko Sei is a Prague based artist and writer.