This project was originaly planned and prepared by Tamás Kaszas for the group exhibition called Trawelling without moving in the temporaly space of W139, in Amsterdam at December of 2004.
This environment is an esperanto language classroom made mostly from reused garbage materials from the streets of the town (Amsterdam) installated into a former shelter (temporaly space of W139 Galery) with drawings and esperanto poems by Loránt Aniko
The plan of the project on the Esperanto classroom (was written before the first realisation):
Motto: ’Utopias do have their own value – nothing can widen the imaginary horizon of human possibilities more – but as determinant/guider of behavior it can literally prove to be fatal. (…) Things cannot be motionless.’ (Herakleitos) – in Erzsébet Szalai: On Leftism
1st level: An ad hoc classroom made as if in a case of emergency with its typical set of furniture – set in a corner of the space with at least one brick wall, separated with draughtscreens. (African school, school in war area, etc.)
2nd level: The benches and chairs of the classroom fabricated of trash material collected on the streets, however, in a classical modernist style (battered Bauhaus and de Stijl).
3rd level: The tableaus on the walls, the notebooks on the tables, the texts on the blackboard compose a complete Esperanto lesson. The texts and their translations (English/Hungarian/Dutch) can be found on printed sheets to take away, completed with contacts of real Esperanto organizations.
4th level: The sample sentences of the lesson are all questions and answers of social and political problems formulated from a globalization critical, green, anarchist point of view, furthermore, they are related to the nature of Utopia completed with certain spiritual contents linked to it.
5th level: The illustrations of the sample sentences on the tableaus explaining the grammar are also related to the topics described above. The montage-like pictures can be either my works or they can come from related art historical tendencies (e.g. Russian avant-garde), and from the imagery of contemporary anarchist, globalization critical, alternative media.
Principally, the project deals with the tension between Utopia and its realization. Upon my intention i mean, but obviously, it will run out of my hands. Probably it already has.
Tamás Kaszás