2016
video, 6’49”
mounted photo, 90 × 160 cm
The 2016 work Anamnesis by Katharina Roters and József Szolnoki reflects on the pathos of a 1956 relief[1] through a drama pedagogy project, one of the main elements of which is the re-enactment, reconstruction in the form of a live image on the theme of a relief about 10 metres long, the communist topos of the worker–peasant–intellectual alliance with secondary school students from Salgótarján. The Salgótarján relief —based on the figures and motifs on it—depicts an excessively pathetic utopia, some elements of which refer back to the Stalinist Cultural Revolution and Vera Muhina, while other parts to the French Revolution and the art of Eugene Delacroix (Liberty Leading the People, 1830). The re-enactment of the 1956 socialist scene is further enhanced by the memory of the Salgótarján massacre. According to testimonies about the newly unveiled relief, in December 1956 more than a hundred peaceful demonstrators were shot by unidentified gunmen from the windows of the headquarters of the party seemingly committed to peaceful utopias. This tragic event, considered by many to be the greatest massacre of the Kádár era, remained a taboo topic until 1989. After the Regime Change in Hungary, it was the revolutionaries of 1956 and the members of POFOSZ (National Association of Hungarian Political Prisoners) who reintroduced it into the official politics of commemoration. In contrast to the personal dimensions, the dramatization of the collective memory of Salgótarján, the revival and “re-enactment” of the socialist utopia resulted in changing situations: on the one hand, signs of humour and comedy appeared, because secondary school students could neither recall the Rákosi coat of arms, nor the Bolshevik language of Stalinism, on the other hand, in the epilogue of the work, Roters and Szolnoki learned about the micro story of a local POFOSZ leader that after the Regime Change, people who, based on their previous and later positions, were certainly not on the side of the revolution, could also receive honorary pensions. Thus, official documents and narratives were conflicted with images of personal memory and private life, drawing attention to the importance of a close analysis of discourse and memory.[2]
[1] The relief was inaugurated on 16 October 1956.
[2] Hornyik, Sándor: A kulturális forradalomtól a múltfeldolgozásig
http://tranzitblog.hu/a-kulturalis-forradalomtol-a-multfeldolgozasig/