{"id":400016,"date":"2000-11-11T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-11-11T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/?p=400016"},"modified":"2000-11-11T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2000-11-11T23:00:00","slug":"ot-nyul-megeszi-beuys-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/kritika\/ot-nyul-megeszi-beuys-t\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Rabbits Eat Beuys"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was just like the second-best scene from the John Malkovich film: exactly the same figure pops up simultaneously in the most\r\ndiverse scenes and roles. The whole thing started with a film screening. Already during the commercials, when we still did not know that\r\nthis was far from the best and liveliest part of the evening, the frequency of the appearance of the tigers was obvious. Later, a tiger also\r\nwas rendered the symbol of the comprehensive anguish of the feature film. The hero fights in the Colosseum in a life and death struggle\r\nagainst four tigers who have been expertly starved and provoked for several days. In the foreground we see a sight stretched to the\r\nbreaking point, while the fifth tiger, in the background, with apathetic deportment, is barely able to to stand on his feet. I would even swear\r\nthat he had grazed. In comparison to this striped Gladiator-bunny worth millions, a half-dazed, toothless example that I saw not long ago,\r\nas an accidental witness to a cheap porn film shoot in a circus tent, radiated more ferocity from within.
\r\n\r\nEven taking into account the matter of common knowledge that rabbits propagate more rapidly than tigers, the frequent appearance of the\r\ncarrot-gluttons in the past few weeks in Budapest was at least as apparent, and perhaps much more justifiable: an international Beuys\r\nconference took place at the M\u0171csarnok \/ Kunsthalle Budapest, with scores of truly fascinating presentations, with witnesses to the great\r\ntimes and the comrades of Beuys. It is telling that the Italian participant, Baroness Lucrezia de Domizio di Durini, who would like to\r\nappropriate Beuys’ last 15 years for her own and for Italy, made her entrance with her hair cut short and dyed conspicuously carrot-red.\r\n\r\nThe signs lead at first to the Ernst Museum, unfortunately merely superficially renovated. At the same time as the conference, an exhibition\r\ncelebrating ten years of the existence of the Block Group was held there. Successful, nevertheless they are always on the lookout for\r\nsomething new. They do not run after trends, but rather build tactics and tendencies into their own works.
\r\n\r\nIn the Ernst Museum, there are at first three and a half large-scale installations, in which the formal tools, such as video projection,\r\nmechanical movement and fluorescent colours, are employed in a variety of ways. Thus, the viewer will be, on the one hand, more sensitive\r\nto the impact of the use of tools of the same style as employed for diverse aims, while at the same time, via the comparison of recurringly\r\nemergent effects, s\/he can better approach the most divergent content.
\r\n\r\nOn the first floor, on the righthand side, we quickly forget the other exhibition, and we proceed directly ahead, then following the line of\r\nthe wall, we turn right twice so that we arrive at what I consider to be the first installation. This is the least convincing among them all: two\r\nvideo images simultaneously projected onto the surface of water are reflected into the corner of the space, on the wall. The water is\r\ndisturbed by cloths driven by the motor of a windshield-wiper: the movement of the electronic images is intermingled with the waves. It\r\nseems like the investment and technology, including the expansive water surface, outweigh the weak and symbolic images. That certain\r\nlightness which renders difficult subjects approachable is missing. Something may be felt of the lack of balance between the form and\r\ncontent also in the installation seen at the rear of the space, albeit the mechanically flashing and ceasing UV-light on the wall, manifest as\r\nan enormous fluorescent and sensitive painterly oval, is just surprising enough that we are able to forget about the crude technique.\r\nFurthermore, we are almost ready to believe in its intended charm, with which it links the object and the vision, attained within the\r\ncontextual relation between its oval alternating flashing and the enormous \u201dHIMMEL\u201dcaption lying before it on the floor. On our way back\r\nfrom the paradoxical game with its illuminating colours and projection, on the righthand side along the wall, we catch sight of a smaller\r\nwork, Leda and the Swan, while a hutch of approximately 3×3 metres practically bars our way completely. This is the summit of our tour in\r\nsemi-darkness, and at the same time, hurls us back to the Beuys conference and to the cinema.
\r\n\r\nThe grating of the hutch<\/a> is made of a thick screen\r\nof wire, with a video projector and a monitor inside. An image is projected across the grate onto the wall which is at a distance of about 3\r\nmetres, in such a way that it can be seen clearly on both sides of the network of wires, just as it is seen \u201doutside\u201d on the wall, in much\r\nlarger dimensions. A toy bunny made of metal is wound up, hops once on the tabletop, tips over, falls down, and is wound up once again.\r\nOne cannot say whether this refers to the childish desire for freedom of confined rabbits, the humiliation of domesticated bunnies, or the\r\nlightness of fantasy that transgresses boundaries. These are open questions that touch upon the essence of art in our functionalized\r\nworld. It is about inspiration, and that we should deal with our own freedom, as formulated by Beuys’ notion of Expanded Art. We have to\r\nbend down to the monitor standing on the floor of the cage, close to the grating, on which we can see five white rabbits before a grated\r\ngate, slowly gnawing on carrots formed into letters. The carrots spell out: BEUYS. The best idea in the John Malkovich film is the\r\nmezzanine.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  It was just like the second-best scene from the John Malkovich film: exactly the same figure pops up simultaneously in the most diverse scenes and roles. The whole thing started with a film screening. Already during the commercials, when we still did not know that this was far from the best and liveliest part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":630016,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kritika"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}