More than 200 events are held in the fourteen participating cities and towns during the art festival. It is difficult to keep track of such a multitude of events, but the locals have gotten used to the abundance of choice. Every two years since 1992, the culture of a different country is in focus. Hungary was picked as the partner for this year?s festival because the Hungarian city of Pécs is sharing the 2010 European Capital of Culture with Essen, in Germany?s Ruhr region, as well as Istanbul. Hence Scene Ungarn can help Pécs and Essen attract attention to each other.
The German organisers have recognised the potential in this opportunity. Pécs has left it unutilised: except for a few events, the German city is practically unmentioned in Hungary. But throughout the Ruhr region there is almost an invasion of Hungarian dancers, musicians, artists, writers and theatre companies. The 14 Hungarian cities that participate in the series could decide for themselves whom to invite from the Hungarian contemporary scene. Official cultural politics did not interfere either here or there. Instead, personal links and the character of the various cities determined who would present what from Hungary.
One quarter of the EUR 1.2 million festival budget is paid by the local government of North Rhine-Westphalia and the remaining three quarters by the organising cities and towns. North-Rhine Westphalia, with a population of 18 million, has not only been a citadel of German heavy industry for a long time, but also home to a civil society that nurtures rich cultural traditions. A Kunstverein, or non-profit art society, has been operating in each of the cities for some 150 years and they support local contemporary art. In Düsseldorf, a city with half a million residents, has an art society with 4,000 members. This many locals believe it important that local artists, mostly young ones, should get involved in the promotion of national and international art. The art societies usually get their headquarters from the city. In Cologne they are housed in the former British embassy built in the 1960s, in Düsseldorf in a classicist villa that was once the birthplace of the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Goethe?s contemporary and friend. The city also gives them some money for operating costs, but they have to sort out the rest. Most of the region?s art societies are participating in Scene Ungarn. Düsseldorf, for instance, is presenting the works of three young Hungarian artists: Júlia Vécsei, Marcell Esterházy and János Fodor.
The fourteen cities have also published a joint events guide comprising separate booklets that each present a different young Hungarian photographer. The photographers have also been given a shop window in Düsseldorf where Eszter Tóth, a curator from Pécs, has created a concept for presenting their work. This is a special combined presentation opportunity that does not require several rooms of exhibition space.
Péter Nádas has held a public reading in a café in Wuppertal, the international troupe headed by Joseph Nadj has performed in a dance theatre converted from a tram shed, and Eszter Salamon, who lives in Berlin, has shown in Essen that the roots of contemporary ballet rest in folk dance. She appeared in a performance space converted from the former changing rooms of miners. It is clear that while such internationally successful Hungarian acts as the musicians Bea Palya and the Dresch Quartet, the theatre troupe of Béla Pintér and the films of directors István Szabó, Béla Tarr and Benedek Fliegauf are featured, the emphasis of the series is not on well-tested patterns but on demonstrating Hungarian culture with an exciting and multi-layered approach.
The meeting points of Hungarian and German history are not always referred to in the series but one exception is a highly successful multimedia exhibition by Péter Forgách and Gusztáv Hámos, entitled German Unity at Lake Balaton. It presents meetings at Hungary?s Lake Balaton between German friends and families divided by the Iron Curtain. The material was presented at Berlin?s Collegium Hungaricum in 2009 and it is now on display at the historic museum of Dortmund. Placed in a much larger exhibition space than before and extended with refined elements, the show is ever more effective. Germans from two sides of the Iron Curtain had practically no other choice but to travel to Lake Balaton to meet each other for three decades. The exhibition uses interviews, private films and personal objects to present the era and explore a phenomenon that worked rather well putting in practice ?German re-unification.?
These 200 Hungarian events are only an extension to the main attraction of the Ruhr area in 2010. The majority of the European Capital of Culture investment projects have been completed for many years. There are only a few exceptions: the contemporary art centre in Dortmund?s U tower is still only accessible on wooden planks and there are some large-scale construction projects in other German cities, as well. But the transformation of the Ruhr region is on track. The decline in heavy industry resulted in an unemployment up to 10-15 percent but the institutional development of culture has successfully renewed the region. The Zollverein mining area of Essen eventually closed in 1896 but at first it received UNESCO World Heritage status and was later developed into a visitor and tourism centre based on designs by international star architects, and it currently attracts as many as 1 million people annually. The local residents have made the former empire of ?black gold? their new home, organising super-expensive wedding parties and conferences on innovative design here.
Author: Eszter Götz
