We wrote István Szilasi’s name first as Szili, and later as Szil, prior to his move to New York. His inventive works are sorely missed from the offering of Budapest exhibitions ever since. He has even attempted to produce some works via “remote-control” (asking his friends to execute now and again a work according to his instructions); this method, albeit, has not proved to be genuinely fruitful. Now however – this time with the aid of the world wide web – he appears once again. His domain, crossingthetsdottingtheis.org (the name refers to the finishing act of writing), is constituted of a number of entrancingly simple projects that ergonomically employ the characteristics of the network.
One of these is his blinking series, which can be broken down, moreover, to (at least) two trajectories. One line is that of time-travel: within this section, we find on the one hand, the Kelemen Mikes homepage, from which the portrait of the famous exiled Tekirdag Chronicler blinks back at us (I cannot recall such a concentrated depiction of the existence of an emigrant in any artistic branch). The other time-travel delineates the members of the one-time Újlak Group in the midst of a similarly condensed, rhythmical winking. We have truly not forgotten the group, in spite of the fact that the analysis of their collective activity – not to mention the entire era – by art historians and critics is still long-awaited. Upon seeing the mugshots of the convicted sitting in various prisons, I fully understood the true depths of the blinking affair. With regard to this feeling, I can only express that if I were a Member of Parliament, on beholding this homepage, I would certainly vote against the death penalty.
Szilasi’s other project, Ex xxx (whose name converges well with exindex), is also politically absolutely correct: the artist has transformed sex images collected from the Internet in such a way that the viewers of the amateur strippers formerly pictured on the page (presumedly for the most part, representatives of the “weaker sex”) can now only catch a glimpse of the emptied locations. Interestingly enough, it is a fact that these are cleared-out locations, and even the perfunctory viewer generally recognises this, but even this does not belong among the easily describable phenomena – the fact is that one cannot put their finger on what it is that arouses the suspicion. All that is certain is that it is not only the copyright-symbol that occasionally appears at the edge of the images, but also the disturbingly gauzy consistency at the center of the pictures that is a telltale sign.
Most probably, many would gain happiness with such a software that could clear the worldwide web of its undesirable (from their point of view) content in a similar way. Hopefully, this type of cleansing will never come to pass, as, in contrast to the TV, on the Net, everyone can choose for her/himself what s/he would like to watch, and its two-way communication becomes interesting precisely vis-à-vis its personal responsibility. Accordingly, everyone should see whatever they like, or whatever they can, for example at: http://www.crossingthetsdottingtheis.org.