I am glad if I can stamp

- I am glad if I can stamp
1971-1976
b&w photograph
10 × 10,5 cm

In 1971, Endre Tót made an experimental film entitled “I am glad if I can take one step” at the Balázs Béla Studio in Budapest, which was open to young artists and filmmakers. Tót’s film, which consisted in the documentation of a single step and hence consciously avoided overtly political content, was perceived as a provocation by the Hungarian censors—who, even so, were powerless against the humor that drove Tót’s conceptualism. Different versions of the “I am glad if…” series put the rigid, pathos-laden, and ideological character of Eastern European socialism to the test with their minimalism, individualism, and seemingly spontaneous performativity, which hewed closely to the spirit of Fluxus. Tót’s minimalist demonstrations (such as reading or burning newspapers as well as indecencies such as scratching or stamping images onto intimate bodily parts) were performed as private actions, which he refrained from carrying out in the public sphere until his 1978 emigration to Berlin. In accordance with his original idea, these photo performances—realized together with the filmmaker János Gulyás, who also often collaborated with other Hungarian experimental artists—would, in their final form, have been based on the synthesis of text and visuality as well as supplemented by their titles. The excerpts from this photo series that were published in a 1976 issue of “Flash Art” appeared as shown here and came to be viewed as emblematic of one of Eastern European conceptual art’s striking personalities. E.Kü.