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Author: Dovile Tumpytė
Keywords: humor, irony, metaphors of repression, social criticism
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Still from the film For Those Who Do Not Know, Ask Those Who Do, 1975, 5 min. Director: Artūras Barysas-Baras; cinematography: Jonas Čergelis, Stasys Mackonis, and Albinas Slavinskas (courtesy of Artūras Barysas-Baras’ family).
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Still from the film For Those Who Do Not Know, Ask Those Who Do, 1975, 5 min. Director: Artūras Barysas-Baras; cinematography: Jonas Čergelis, Stasys Mackonis, and Albinas Slavinskas (courtesy of Artūras Barysas-Baras’ family).
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Still from the film For Those Who Do Not Know, Ask Those Who Do, 1975, 5 min. Director: Artūras Barysas-Baras; cinematography: Jonas Čergelis, Stasys Mackonis, and Albinas Slavinskas (courtesy of Artūras Barysas-Baras’ family).
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Still from the film That Sweet Word …, 1977, 1 min. Director: Artūras Barysas-Baras; cinematography: Dominykas Velička (courtesy of Artūras Barysas-Baras’ family).
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Still from the film That Sweet Word …, 1977, 1 min. Director: Artūras Barysas-Baras; cinematography: Dominykas Velička (courtesy of Artūras Barysas-Baras’ family).
Date: 1977, 1979
Location: 4th and 5th Republican (LSSR) Humorous-Satirical Film Festivals
Artūras Barysas-Baras (1954–2005) – filmmaker, actor, record collector, and bibliophile – was one of the most prominent personalities in Vilnius’ alternative culture of the second half of the 20th century. He had become a member of the LSSR Society of Amateur Filmmakers in his school years, and made more than 30 short films during his lifetime, most of them between 1970 and 1984 (11 of the films have been lost). Barysas’ films earned critical acclaim at republican and Union-wide amateur film festivals. The amateur film festivals, presenting films under various categories, were popular events in all Soviet Union, as well as in other socialistic countries. Though subsidized by the state, the amateur cinema (an unprofessional art form), was left almost entirely outside the interference and control of Soviet authorities and was a medium conducive for experimenting. Film festivals presented Artūras Barysas and his films to audiences in Moscow, Leningrad, Tula, Tallinn, Riga, Brest, and Bryansk.
Braysas’ films were prized for their metaphorical artistic language, which implicitly mocked the everyday reality of life in the Soviet Union, and peculiar close-up montages. Barysas played the lead role in almost all of his films, supported by non-professional actors, with the action often taking place simply “on the street” as an improvised situations or according to a conventional scenario. In Barysas’s films, the film critic Skirmantas Valiulis[1] traces echoes of American postwar avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren’s theoretical statements about filmmaking, the comic aesthetic of pre-1968 Czech cinema, and Felliniesque humor, yet acknowledges that the Lithuanian filmmaker retains a peculiar style of his own.
Today Barysas’ work is considered to be a part of the Lithuanian cinematic avant-garde and an eloquent reflection of the epoch. In the context of the visual arts, some of Barysas’ films invite a discussion impossible without the concepts of performance and happening, especially two of them: That Sweet Word… (1977) and For Those Who Do Not Know, Ask Those Who Do (1975). Both of them were presented at the Republican (LSSR) Humorous-Satirical Film Festival (respectively in 1977 and 1979) for the first time, and later on That Sweet Word…, awarded with the 3rd-degree “cheese-sack”, was screened in three film festivals under different film categories, such as 9th Film Festival of Baltic States and Leningrad City, Leningrad, 1977; 9th Short-Film Competition in Riga, 1977, and 19th B-16 Festival in Brno, Czechoslovakia, 1978.
[1] Skirmantas Valiulis, “Baras kino baruose” [Baras in the Domains of Cinema], in Pasaulis pagal Barą [The World According to Baras), ed. Gediminas Kajėnas (to be published in 2012). The book is focused on Artūras Barysas-Baras’ personality and creative work.
(courtesy of Artūras Barysas-Baras’ family).
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Author: Dóra Hegyi - Zsuzsa László
Keywords: avant-garde, collective actions, conceptual art, environment / installation, festival, irony, metaphors of repression, performative practices, political reflection, semi-public event, site-specificity
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The poster of the banned Avant-Garde festival planned at the Bercsényi Club, Budapest, April, 1972 (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Centre)
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Call for the Direct Week (courtesy of Tamás St.Auby)
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Visitors sleeping in the Chapel during the
Direct Week. The work Conflagration Mock Up by Tamás Szentjóby can be seen in the background.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool
Art Research Centre)
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Tamás Szentjóby: Exclusion Exercise – Punishment-Preventive Auto-Therapy. Photo: Benke László (courtesy of Tamás St. Auby)
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Miklós Erdély: Brushwood is the Proletariat of Fuel – action and object. Photo: György Galántai
(courtesy of Artpool Art Research Centre)
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Miklós Erdély: Brushwood is the Proletariat of Fuel.
Captions: Semi-Brushwood, Miscellaneous Brushwood, Brushwood to “Épater Le Bourgeois”,
Birch, Stone Stricken Brushwood, Brushwood Against Demagogy, Packed Brushwood
Brushwood As You Need! Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Centre)
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Miklós Erdély: Brushwood is the Proletariat of Fuel – action and object. Photo: János Gulyás
(courtesy of Artpool Art Research Centre)
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Mihály Kornis, Gyula Pauer, Júlia Veres, Miklós Haraszti (from left to right) recording Gyula Pauer’s Pseudo Advertistment.
Photo: György Galántai
(courtesy of Artpool
Art Research Centre)
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Gyula Pauer: Marx-Lenin, 1971. It was exhibited as a leaflet with the cut out contour
folded on the newspaper clipping so that the visitors could open it. (courtesy of the heirs of Gyula Pauer and Artpool Art Research Centre)
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Gyula Pauer: Marx-Lenin, 1971. It was exhibited as a leaflet with the cut out contour
folded on the newspaper clipping so that the visitors could open it.
(courtesy of the heirs of Gyula Pauer and Artpool Art Research Centre)
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Date: 6-9 July 1972
Organisers: Gyula Pauer (1941), Tamás Szentjóby (1944)
Participants: László Beke, Miklós Erdély, Gyula Gulyás, Miklós Haraszti, László Haris, Ágnes Háy, Tamás Hencze, Péter Lajtai, Péter Legéndy, József Molnár V., Gyula Pauer, Margit Rajczi, Tamás Szentjóby, Endre Tót
Location: Chapel Studio of György Galántai, Balatonboglár
Direct Week was an exhibition and event series that incorporated works and actions replying to Pauer’s and Szentjóby’s call, as well as lectures and screenings that were originally in the program of the “Avantgarde Festival” planned in April in a Budapest Club, but banned shortly before its scheduled date.
Documents:
Gyula Pauer, Tamás Szentjóby: Call for “Direct Week” (1972)
Gyula Pauer: II. Pseudo Manifesto (Advertisement) (1972)
Tamás Szentjóby: Exclusion exercise – Punishement-Preventive Autotheraphy (1969-72)
Source: Törvénytelen avantgárd. Galántai György balatonboglári kápolnaműterme 1970–1973 [Illegal Avant-garde, the Balatonboglár Chapel Studio of György Galántai 1970–1973], eds. Júlia Klaniczay and Edit Sasvári (Artpool–Balassi, Budapest, 2003): 126-135.
On the website of Artpool Art Research Center
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Author: Dóra Hegyi - Zsuzsa László
Keywords: censorship, collective actions, conceptual art, irony, metaphors of repression, semi-public event, site-specificity, unofficial event
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“TODAY YOU OPEN THE EXHIBITION” notice at the entrance of the Chapel. Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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The entrance of the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
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Visitors entering the Chapel.
Photo: György Galántai (courtesy of Artpool Art Research Center)
Date: 28 July 1972
Participants: György Galántai (1941), István Haraszty (1934)
Location: Chapel Studio of György Galántai, Balatonboglár
The action took place during the exhibition of the Pécs Workshop (Ferenc Ficzek, Károly Halász, Károly Kismányoki, Ferenc Lantos, Sándor Pinczehelyi, Kálmán Szíjártó, Katalin Nádor) and István Haraszty’s kinetic sculptures.
Documents:
István Harasztÿ – interview (1998)
György Galántai – manuscript (1998)
Source: Törvénytelen avantgárd. Galántai György balatonboglári kápolnaműterme 1970–1973 [Illegal Avant-garde, the Balatonboglár Chapel Studio of György Galántai 1970–1973], eds. Júlia Klaniczay and Edit Sasvári (Artpool–Balassi, Budapest, 2003): 138.
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