Budapest, Hungary
Mission Title: We Are Not Ducks on a Pond - Impex's Art Bar
Mission By: Haroun Al-shaater, Christopher Vincent Vincent
Mission Finished on Date: 29-05-2008
SCRIPT
- Meet Gergely László, the Impex founder, and have a talk with him.
- Have Gergely show you the old neighborhood they were based in and tell you about the new gentrification and its implications in their art practices.
- Ask him about self
- awareness and networking realities in the Hungarian art scene, about their evolution ever since he started working, and especially what losing his space reveals as a trend in both development and its relationship to art.
- Highlight urban features in the Jozsefvaros district, focusing on new buildings for housing and offices and the Rom community. Try and depict the contrast between the old poor environment and the new gentrified neighborhood.
TRAVEL BAG
How do artists deal with the loss of marginal spaces in the city?
Impex art collective has decided to go without walls entirely, out of the gallery and into space. These self-proclaimed “contemporary art providers” manage workshops and meetings to connect Hungarian artists with their international counterparts, as well as focusing on curatorial practices and public contexts. However, when redevelopments in the lowbrow popular district of Jozsefvaros in Budapest destroyed the pub that was hosting their space, the Impex guys had to move.
Left without a workshop and gallery, the group is now more literally identifying with their primary function: networking.
As they're on their own book project titled after Lawrence Weiner's “WE ARE NOT DUCKS ON A POND BUT SHIPS AT SEA”, this may they're launching another book, Networked Culture, and a flea market for artists and art. Being an example of open self-awareness and the will to network, Impex is now looking beyond the object and the limitations of physical space. Cities are regularly shifting and changing, discover how does one artist collective creatively deals with the loss of a marginal space in which they previously worked.
