Progressive provincialism
My conviction is that a perfect society, the members of which are able to shape directly the destiny of their community, can be established only on small scale. Extended to the whole of the humankind, this society would be the network of communities based on the principle of solidarity. The unities (villages) composing this network would independently shape their own utopia, according their geographic, cultural, etc. properties. The cities of today, however, I regard as proliferating tumorous cells.
This somewhat simplifying vision can be applied also to the world of the arts. Instead of moaning over the difficulties to be faced if one wants to gain entrance to the great art centres, we should think about the role contemporary artists and their work play, as well as the significance they have, in their provincial environment. The socio-cultural relations can perhaps be more effectively shaped, if we consciously pay attention to the local levels, and if we bind closer our relations with the neighbouring organisations. It is not difficult to understand the reason of the phenomenon, yet in Budapest we often regret that the art events held in centres of renown attract hardly any participants from Hungary. At the same time, we have more thorough knowledge about the centres far (to the west) from us than about the neighbouring regions, although in principle we have more to do with them. It is in vain to criticise the centralising effect of the art business, if we're magnetised by these business-based centres. Our desire to gain access to the inner circles in order to gain more attention only reinforces the discriminating tendencies of these circles — namely, due to lack of attention generated by our desire on the provincial level.
As I see, this phenomenon is embodied by art albums/exhibitions of the kind "Art Now". It is needless to go into details about the appropriate representation of the participants coming form New York and from Eastern Europe in these albums and events, which claim to accept objective standards.
These considerations made me conceive an emphatically subjective project: Art Now on the Province. This could be a regional Internet database with dynamic network structure.
In the April (2008) issue of the index-link* (and paralel in a blog), I would like to exemplify the possible content of the project. The co-editors or co-authors — either artists, or somehow dealing with arts — will sketch a possible chapter of the project, either by explicating a general theoretical problem, or by analysing art works and describing the activities of artists, groups, alternative institutions and projects regarded important by them.
Kaszás, Tibor T
