Lee Tusman

Visiting Artpool Art Research Center in Budapest.

A little over a month ago I visited Budapest, Hungary. I went to the fringe fest there, galleries, museums, squats, collectives and a lot of ruin bars (stay tuned for upcoming posts on Caszino collective, other Budapest squats and ruin bars). I also was able to visit the singular Artpool Art Research Center (the website has a  mid-90s style to it with thousands of pages connected to it), a non-profit archive that collects books, pamphlets, music, video, mail art, artist books, invitations, artist’s money and stamps, collections, lists, notes, instructions and lots more. It has particularly strong resources dedicated to mail art and fluxus, Hungarian contemporary art, performance art/happenings, and early video and computer art. Founded in 1979 by Gyorgi Galantai and Julia Klaniczay, the place is thrilling, with tens of thousands of objects. I spent hours poring over documents from John Cage, Raymond Johnson, Allan Kaprow, and many others, as well as listening to sound art and watching video art pieces from their collection. The archive is quite active, and is open for scholars, artists and others who make an appointment to access their archives. Highly recommended. I’ve included photos below which hopefully give a sense of the resources there. One thing I thought a lot about was how Fluxus (and the other aforementioned categories of) artists were engaging in art forms that defy easy exhibition and collection. Ephemeral actions and events occurred and now we are left with writing, and sometimes photo or video. A new form is created: the archive. Reading the original documents transmitted something to me, helped me think through my own art and curating, helped me connect to these artists, informed my own world of art thinking… But it’s also definitely different than seeing these actions live when they occurred.