Design Art Papers 2025 | No. 13

through use. In shape, they resembled agricultural tools, and just like farm utensils, they required human action to fulfill theirpurpose. Thisphilosophyextendedtothe manifestation itself. The work existed not as a static object, but as a collaborative event, in which the audience's participation was vital. By encouraging viewers to get involved, Bereś implicated them in the creative act, transforming spectators into agents. This activation aligned with his broader artistic mission, aiming to provoke reflection and awareness, to encourage social manifestation rather than passive acceptance of Poland's political and social deficits. While his work can invite comparisons to Joseph Beuys's shamanistic performances, Bereś's innovation lay in his specifically Polish critique, addressing the tensions between religious authority and political power, and the increasing social deficit of the 1960s. The artist challengedwhat he perceived as the population's uninvolved attitude during the period of increasing repression, and expressed his ideas through actions named demonstrations , in which he used his own body inaChristic reconfiguration, andhis zwidani art tools. [16] Thebasement settingof theKrzysztoforyGalleryamplifiedall these elements. In that underground space, removed from the scrutiny of official culture, yet accessible to those willing to descend, Bereś created a temporary community bound by shared risk and awareness. The manifestation could not have achieved the same intensity in a conventional gallery space above ground. The basement's physical constraints, its enclosure, its separation from the everyday world, its suggestion of both tomb andwomb, made it the ideal space for Bereś's vision of creating art as a ritual purification and social provocation. Hungary: Goulash Communismand the Limits of Cultural Permissiveness The history of post-World War II Hungary begins in 1947 with a political coup that resulted in the inauguration of the Communist Regime. The ascension to power of the Communist Party was paired with alignment to the Soviet Socialist system, as Hungary became one of the USSR's satellites. However, continued opposition led to the 1956 Revolt in Budapest, which was quickly and violently suppressed with Soviet tanks. After the 1956 turmoil, János Kádár was installed as head of the Hungarian Communist Party by the USSR. His policy envisioned a New Economic Policy between the 1960s and 1970s, informally titled „Goulash Communism.” While this economic liberalization brought economic improvement, the political regime simultaneously tightened its grip. Censorship became stricter and more reinforced, which meant that messages transmitted in cultural fields needed to be carefully encoded in order to pass censors. The suburbs and countryside afforded more freedom of expression than the capital, and gradually, major artistic events and practices migrated from Budapest to the peripheries. Yet, even within the capital, artists sought out marginal spaces, such as cellars, private homes, or gardens. There they could push boundaries, and steer clear of official scrutiny. On the Path to Creating the First Happening in Eastern Europe In this context of constrained liberalization, three artists, namely Miklós Erdély, Gábor Altorjay, and Tamás Szentjóby, developed distinct, but complementary practices, that would converge in 1966 in what became a landmark event of Eastern European performance art. Each came with a particular sensibility. Erdély's focusedoncollectiveactionand political courage, Altorjay's engagedwithmyth intertwining it with human and natural elements, and Szentjóby's explored absurdity and critiqued society with Eastern European Pop Art Objects. Miklós Erdély had established his commitment to politically engaged art as early as 1956, the year of the revolution. His action Free Money consisted of a wooden dowry chest, placed on the streets of Budapest, with a sign reading: "The purity of our revolution allows us to collect in this way for the families of our martyrs. [18] ” This daring prompt asked passersbies to donate money to the families of those shot during Soviet reprisals, functioning as both street collection andsubversivememorial. Theaction latergainedrecognition as an iconicmoment in Hungarian avant-garde history. The ideas and memory of the 1956 revolution became the primary taboo under Kádár's regime, since the political power shiftwas founded on Sovietmilitary intervention, and any invocationof the revolution cast doubt on the legitimacy of the existing political system. In a hypocritical twist, Kádár labeled his own regime „revolutionary” while denouncing 1956as a „counter-revolution.” This ensured that discussions of the uprising were only permitted in negative contexts. Under this shadow of repression, few artists dared address 1956 directly, as their works would have faced censorship and, even more importantly, they themselves risked severe punishment. Individual artistic strategies emerged to keep thememory of the crushed revolution alive, thoughmost of theseworks only becamewidely accessible after the political changesof1989. Thedocumentaryvalueofartworkscreated during and immediately after the revolution preserved firsthand experiences that official history sought to erase. [19] Gábor Altorjay understood performance art as an environment in which human beings and nature became interdependentelements. [20] Hisworks frequentlyreferenced the myths of classical antiquity, and local legends of the Huns' arrival in Europe. These topics, whether international or regional, offered neutral backgrounds for creation, and an escape from socialist reality. In such conventional settings, critique couldbeencoded. [21] This engagementwith mysticism, ritual, and surrealistic creation provided another avenuefor transcendingthe limitationsofeverydayexistence under authoritarian rule. Tamás Szentjóby's practice centered on absurdity and conceptual displacement. His 1965 series of Futile Objects emphasized the situation in Hungary at the time [22] through objects that served no apparent purpose, like a scented magnet, or a jar of cooling water. These seemingly nonsensical items raised questions and prompted viewers to ponder upon their meaning in a context where official discourse had been disjointed from reality. The objects were created during a period when Szentjóby possessed forbidden, unpublished texts by Béla Hamvas, who wrote aboutmysticism, esotericism, andthepropertiesofmaterials such as magnets and amber. Inspired by these underground texts, Szentjóby created copies and distributed them as samizdat , [23] connecting his artistic practice to broader networks of cultural resistance. In an interviewwith Dóra Hegyi and Zsuzsa László, Szentjóby recalled that the discovery of a book by German artist Wolf Vostell and Jürgen Becker, called Happening , opened his and his colleagues' eyes to the possibilities of action art . [24] He later adopted what he called „activity montages” and continued to subvert artistic constraints through actions and body art. [25] On top of the previously-mentioned source for the understanding of what a happening entailed, a 1966 article on Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow's happenings , published in the Film, Theatre, Music magazine, served as the immediate catalyst for organizing a collaborative event, inwhich all threeHungarian artists quoted in this article took part. As Szentjóby noted, „We understood that we were not lonely madmen, but in the midst of a huge intercontinental movement. [26] ” This realization prompted them to organize whatwouldbecome knownas thefirst happening in socialist Hungary, The Lunch - InMemory of Batu Kán , in 1966. TheLunch- InMemoriamBatuKán:Descent intotheCellar The performance took place in the cellar of István Szenes's house in the Buda district, a space supposedly connected to the medieval figure of Batu Khan. [27] The choice of location was crucial: a 15th-16th century cellar, rumored to have been a former torture chamber. It provided both historical resonance, and a physical separation from the everyday world above ground. The event was structured as a journey through three zones: the garden, the entrance area, and, finally, the cellar itself. Guests were first welcomed in the garden, where they encountered Tamás Szentjóby buried waist-deep in earth, calmly writing something on a typewriter. He continued his studious work, undisturbed, despite the chaos surrounding him, which included a baby carriage ablaze nearby, a kettle containing a live chicken, and a cacophony of sounds filling theair.MajaFowkeshas interpretedthis imageassymbolizing the artistic act in Hungary, with the artist remaining focused on creative work, against a backdrop of political and social chaos. [28] Despite the difficulties, the buried typist persisted in his task, embodying the determination necessary for artistic practice under repression. After passing through this disorienting outdoors environment, the visitors descended into the dark cellar. The underground space was equipped with a stereo system playing Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronic piece Victory , a composition featuring the sound of an airstrike, mixed with incoherent fragments of conversation from a French group in an underground air-raid shelter. [29] The auditory assault was paired with unsettling visual and olfactory experiences, such as amplified sounds, burning roses in a vase, moldy chairs, red-painted plaster, seaweed, and feathers scattered throughout the space. In this claustrophobic underground environment, Altorjay and Erdély performed actions involving fire props and bleeding animal organs. They sat at a table eating, vomiting intobags, thencontinuing toeat rawpotatoes. Theyengaged in chaotic, symbolic destruction, by smashing furniture, hammering nails, and created improvised sculptures, using random objects, like bicycle wheels, rollers, and feathers. Live chickens and mice became part of the performance. As the actions reached their climax, the artists tied themselves, the audience, and various objects into a collective web, physically binding everyonepresent intoa sharedexperience of constraint and connection. The cellar filled with debris, organic matter, and symbolic chaos. Beethoven's Ode to Joy played at overwhelming volume. Finally, after the assault of noise and physical constraint, the audience experienced sudden darkness and silence, before being allowed to leave through a barricaded exit, dusting themselves off as they emerged back into ordinary reality. [30] The Cellar as a Transformative Space The happening used a mundane act, such as eating lunch, and turned it into a ritual with the aid of the outdoor and indoor space, the garden, in contraposition with the cellar. One interpretation was the synonymity of the open space with the first public sphere, the one where actions are done in public, and thus are under the supervision of the state. The enclosed space, on the other hand, was understood as a place of secrecy, and intimacy, representing the second public sphere, where, in theory at least, censors would not have entered as easily. [31] The physical descent, a metaphor of exiting the public domain and entering the private space, was prepared by Szentjóby’s half-buried presence, both exposed and hidden. The features of the cellar also worked in the interest of the happening. The humidity, and darkness did not lead only to an olphactory reaction and decreased visibility, but also facilitated the existance of decay, rot, and mold, metaphors of a political systemviewed as ever-deteriorating. The cellar's historical associations with a medieval torture chamber is interestingly linked to the artists’ observations and discontent with social realities in Budapest. According to Szentjóby, many basements were turned into clubs for young people that were alligned with state principles. [32] Appreciating the underground just for its existance, without bringing socialist-realist politics into the space, was possible in his mind by taking a medieval basement and utilizing its existing features in an alternative way. Once again, escaping immediate reality was conceptually possible by focusing on a more distant past, linked to archetypal and local identities. The cellar was used as a liminal space where normal social rules were suspended for a brief period of time. It acted as a gray space for temporary or time-sensitive and sight-specific happenings. The Aftermath and Tightening Control The scandalous nature of The Lunch - In Memoriam Batu Kán drew immediate attention from authorities. The eclectic character of the event, the totality of musical sounds, ticking clocks, performers' voices, animal noises, and overwhelming visual and olfactory elements, created an overall sense of chaos that officials found deeply threatening. [33] The performance marked a brief moment of radical experimentation before censorship intensified dramatically. Following this event, cultural restrictions became increasinglysevere, andalternativeartwascensored in Budapest. Planned events such as The Direct Week had to be relocated from Budapest to a chapel in the Balaton area to avoid complete suppression. [34] By 1968, the Hungarian secret police was producing reports that denounced happenings as expressions of "nihilism, irrationalismand the denial of healthy human activity," claiming they encouraged decadence and „facilitated the decentralizing politics of imperialist circles. [35] ” This official characterization reveals 311 310 / / / / Caiete de Arte și Design / nr. 13 / 2025 / / / / Publicație a Centrului de Cercetare și Creație în Artele Decorative și Design / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /