Kultur und Freizeit
/5
- Culture and Leisure
- Kultur und Freizeit
- 2006/2007
- video installation with 6 videos, wooden construction
- 35min 260 × 400 × 290 cm
Andreas Fogarasi’s work “Culture and Leisure” consists of six single channel videos, which are projected in separate black boxes. In this project the artist shows the cultural centers in Budapest and their changes due to various historical and public understandings of culture during history. Fogarasi shows present Hungary and the pictures of the places and streets which are dominated by commerce – corporate buildings, shopping centers and fast food drive-ins, but also pictures of the town from 1973 and its architecture, which by then presented the modernist ambitions in construction. As a metaphor the picture of the modern building-culture-machine includes an auditorium and the retractable roof. This action is followed by the subtitle “while being under permanent observation.” The next historical move confronts the viewer with a building erected in 1906 by the printers’ union, a theatre, with the time of the upcoming socialism, where the conception of workers associations and clubs was established. In contrast to this the pictures of the next part tell a story of decay, of workers’ heroes on the one hand and the fact that the workers cannot find paid employment in the city, on the other. The culture centers, as a relic from another time, are replaced by Hollywood movie and Cineplex centers. A.B.