* The postal service refused to deliver to Galántai mails addressed to Artpool; to obstruct this, he had ‘Artpool’ registered into his artist ID as a pseudonym.
1▶ p. 15.
György Galántai: Rubber stamp work, 1983
Galántai’s artist ID card (membership book for the Association of Hungarian Visual Artists)
Artpool, which began as an archive, ran its various public activities as
“independent institutions.” This idea was inspired by Robert Filliou, father of the “Eternal Network,” with a request he made on one of his postcards. The poster created from this request hung unnoticed for a month on the announcement board at the Young Artists’ Club in Budapest as the first manifestation of Artpool’s Periodical Space (APS no. 1).
The APS series had 14 events, each dealing with various aspects of publication in space. There were exhibitions, performances, screenings, actions, concerts, and performance pieces on a range of themes. Among these were several of our network projects that made Artpool known all over the world. We arranged an exhibition for G. A. Cavellini in 1980, for example, as well as a joint performance on Heroes’ Square in Budapest, Hommage à Vera Muhina, and in 1982 we did an artistamp exhibit (World Art Post) a collection that has grown to be the largest in the world through the workings of the “Eternal Network.”
Another type of institution was the Buda Ray University,2 which built on my correspondence with Ray Johnson between 1982 and 1994. (The exhibitions tied to this, between 1986 and 1997, constituted Artpool’s Ray Johnson Space.) The 15 exhibitions based on facsimiles of the correspondence were shown in many countries (Italy, Canada, Ireland, Hungary, Netherlands, Slovakia, and France), and the ever-growing number of participants reached 316. We supplemented the mail-contact data with personal documents through two European art travel projects (Artpool’s Art Tour 1979, 1982), then published all this in samizdat (Artpool Radio no. 5 and AL/Artpool Letter 1–4). This was the first, “non-officially sanctioned,” illegal period of the Artpool Project from a fluxus perspective.
2 ▶pp. 59–64.
Source: György Galántai antwortet auf Fragen. Fluxus + Konzeptuell = Kontextuell / György Galántai responds to questions. Fluxus + Conceptual = Contextual, in: Fluxus East.
Fluxus-Netzwerke in Mittelosteuropa / Fluxus Networks in Central Eastern Europe, Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH, Berlin, 2007, pp. 141–156.
Filliou’s postcard, 1979 (recto / verso)
The poster at the Young Artists’ Club
A r t P o o L e V e n t s 1 9 7 9 – 1 9 9 1 37 The Artpool project continued the Chapel Studio project inasmuch as its aim was to alleviate the isolation and information shortage of the contemporary Hungarian art scene. Beyond this, it also undertook the documentation of art events that were “invisible” because they were not favored or sanctioned by the cultural politics of the era.
Continuing its documentary activities retrospectively as well, it set up an archive to facilitate future generations of artists and art historians wishing to examine the intellectual and artistic struggles that characterized the art scene of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Between 1979 and 1990, periodically banned, but on the whole tolerated, Artpool organized 23 exhibitions and art events, contributed to the realization of another 14 events by lending artworks, documents, and photographs, and published 11 anthologies and art catalogs. Between 1980 and 1982, it produced 30 issues of Pool Window, a one-page mail art newsletter. From 1983 to 1985, Artpool published eleven “illegal” issues of
“AL” (Artpool Letter), a samizdat art magazine that still serves as the sole documentary source on the non-official art of those years. Eight Radio Artpool programs were “broadcast” between 1983 and 1987 from audiocassettes.*
As Artpool had no permanent art space, most of the events organized by them at that time were all held at different locations: clubs, small galleries, etc. Between 1979 and 1984 these were called the Artpool Periodical Spaces (APS). These exhibition events were always accompanied by documentation materials of some kind:
posters, artists’ books–publications or catalogs in which theoretical texts and translations on correspondence art, mail art or artists’ stamps were first available in Hungary. These publications, beside György Galántai’s own network art, formed the essential exchange material when it came to the expansion of the archives.
* Source: Artpool, Budapest, in: Gabriele Detterer – Maurizio Nannucci (eds.): Artists-Run Spaces. Nonprofit collective organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, JRP / Ringier, 2012, p. 87.
Júlia Klaniczay typewriting the first issue of AL (1983)
▶
On this day György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay decided to establish an active alternative arts archive, which they named Artpool. At first Artpool’s operation was realized strictly via the mail art network using postal services. Artpool’s projects were made public at APS-s (Artpool’s Periodical Space) organized at various venues. The project materials and intensive exchanges facilitated the accumulation of the archive and its numerous collections. Galántai created Artpool’s image design (he designed a rubber stamp and envelope stamps, and issued postcards).
DOCUMENT: “Artpool” rubber stamps PUBLICATIONS: adver
-tising postcards; “Artpool World Post” and “Postal Art Work” stamps;
Artpool Cards series; The Artpool (A6, 18 pages, offset, foldout bookwork, 1980, it is at the same time the first issue of Poolwindow)
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The Artpool – Documentation 1979–1984, Artpool, Budapest (A4, ca. 80 pages, photocopy, occasionally with collaged photos, artistamps, rubber stamp prints), published in eight series between 1984 and 1988, altogether in 64 copies.BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bán András: [Beszámoló az 1979-es év művészeti eseményeiről], manuscript, 1 p.
III/III secret police document: “Festő” dossier*, February 7, March, April 9, April 23, May 12, July 12, July 29, 1980; subsequently the “evaluating”
and “summarizing” reports: October 8, December 1980; July 13, 1981;
June 14, December 1982; July 12, 1983; February, September 1984;
March 27, 1985; March 28, 31, July 31, 1986; October 7, 25, 1988
* The best-known and most notorious department of the Ministry of the Interior in Hungary was Dept. III/III, which dealt with internal affairs. It also recruited people to spy on their friends, relatives, and colleagues. As soon as it became available for researchers, György Galántai made public on the internet the content of the “Festő” [Painter] dossier opened at the III/III department of the Security Services to collect secret reports and decisions about his activity and Artpool.
To consult the folder visit www.galantai.hu/festo/
General bibliography about Artpool’s first period from 1979 to 1992 (selection):
Perneczky Géza: Az Art Pool gyűjtemény. Egy magyar művészeti gyűj-temény megszületése, Művészet, August 1989, pp. 2–5.
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Perneczky, Géza: The Art Pool Archives. The Story of a Hungarian Art Collection, The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1989, pp. 192–196.■
Galántai György:Pooling the Arts. The Artpool Art Research Centre, The New Hungarian Quarterly, No. 125, Spring 1992, pp. 96–100.
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Herczeg Béla: Az Artpool több, mint archívum, Magyar Felsőoktatás, No. 3, 1999, pp.56–57. (interview with György Galántai)
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Galántai György: Artpool from the Beginnings: A Personal Account, in: Bismarck, Beatrice von – Hans-Peter Feldmann – Hans Ulrich Obrist et al. (eds.): Interarchive.Archivarische Praktiken und Handlungsräume im zeitgenössischen Kunstfeld / Archival Practices and Sites in the Contemporary Art Field, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2002, pp. 393–395.
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Tranberg, Dan: Budapest Rising, Angle. A Journal of Arts + Culture, Vol. 1, No. 11, 2004, pp. 12–17.
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Tornai Szabolcs: Szabadságtechnikák.Huszonöt éves az Artpool Művészetkutató Központ, Heti Válasz, March 18, 2004, pp. 40–42.
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Bodor Kata: “…I would like to be connected to the time I’m in…” Interview with György Galántai, the curator of the Parastamp exhibition, in: Parastamp. Four Decades of Artistamps, from Fluxus to the Internet, exh. catalog, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 2007, pp. 84–100. [pp. 86–87.]■
Forgács Éva: Does Democracy Grow Under Pressure? Strategies of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s, CENTROPA, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2008, p. 15.■
Schwarz, Isabelle: Archive für publikationen der 1960er bis 1980er Jahre, Schiftenreihe für Künstler-publikationen, Band 4, Salon Verlag, Köln, 2008, pp. 298–339.■
Röder, Kornelia: Topologie und Funktionsweise des Netzwerks der Mail Art. Seine spezifische Bedeutung für Osteuropa von 1960 bis 1989, Schriftenreihe für Künstler publikationen, Band 5, Salon Verlag, Köln, 2008, pp. 159–163.
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Janssen, Ruud: 25 Years in Mail-Art, TAM Publications, 2008, pp. 68–69, 97.■
Fuchs Péter: Szabadságbörtön.A szocialista kultúr politika ellenbázisa: Artpool, Hamu és Gyémánt, Vol.
44, Summer 2009, pp. 46–55.
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Kálmán Rita – Katarina Šević (eds.):Nem kacsák vagyunk egy tavon, hanem hajók a tengeren. Független művészeti helyszínek Budapesten 1989–2009 / We are not Ducks on a Pond but Ships at Sea. Independent Art Initiatives, Budapest 1989–
2009, Impex–Kortárs Művészeti Szolgáltató Alapítvány, Budapest, 2010, pp. 11, 114.
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Borsos Roland: Az emlékezet művészete. Galántai György és Klaniczay Júlia útja a Balatonboglári Kápolnától az Artpoolig, Múzeumcafé, 2011/4, August–September, pp. 91–93. (Art that remembers – György Galántai’s and Júlia Klaniczay’s journey from the chapel in Balatonboglár to Artpool, English summary, p. 109.)■
Farina,Eleonora: La memoria collettiva è in mano agli artisti / Collectiv Memory is in the Hands of Artistst, Arte e Critica (Roma), No. 68, 2011, pp. 60–
61.
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Tumbas, Jasmina: International Hungary! György Galántai’s Networking Strategies, ARTMargins, June–October 2012, Vol. 1, No.2–3, pp. 87–115.
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Detterer, Gabriele: The Spirit and Culture of Artist-Run Spaces, in: Detterer, Gabriele – Maurizio Nannucci (eds.): Artists-Run Spaces. Nonprofit collective organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, JRP/Ringier, 2012, pp. 11–49.