Ministry for the Exterior

image: Monkia Balint cooking a Hungarian Feast with HINTS Institute

B+B started their season at the ACF by investigating current critical art practices in Hungary. Ministry for the Exterior considered the role of socially engaged art practices in a post-communist, pre-EU country. The programme included presentations by sociologist Monica Balint of HINTS Institute of Public Art and an insight into the history of politically engaged art by curator Katalin Timar (Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest).

Thursday 20 March, 1900-2100h

Ministry of the Exterior 1: An evening of presentations by Monika Balint (HINTS Institute, Budapest) and Sophie Hope about the role of socially engaged art practices in post-communist, pre-EU Hungary.

Sunday 23 March, 1500-1900h

image: Katalin Timar's presentation with slide by Gyula Pauer, 'Marx–Lenin', 1971

Ministry of the Exterior 2: Katalin Timar, Curator, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest, discussed the history of political art practices in Hungary from the 1970s to the present day. This was followed by a Hungarian feast prepared by Monica Balint and B+B based on a menu devised by artist Eszter Agnes Szabó.

Material on projects happening in Hungary were on display, such as Demo (ICA, Dunaujvaros, 6 May–25 April 2003) and Moszkva Ter (Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 16 May–29 June 2003). During Ministry of the Exterior we also screened Tamas StAuby's video documentary about his action in 1992, 'Statue of Liberty's Soul.'

MSDM book launch

Saturday 29 March, 1600-1800h, tea and biscuits
Launch of Outsourcing, a new publication by Paula Roush/MSDM (Mobile Strategies for Display and Mediation). The publication was developed in response to Paula's solo show at the Institute of International Visual Arts.

'Outsourcing: the soft borders of art practice, the idea of labour, the link to the globalised producive system. To ask: what are the relations between social and aestheitc thought? Where do teh dynamics of art, production and the branded economy meet and collide?'