It's difficult to count the ways artists have tried to popularize literature by using different media, but another has been created by Rémusz Szikszai, whose five tents make up an "amusement park" for visitors to the Valley of Arts.
Szikszai describes his inspiration: "Last year, when I went to the Valley
of Arts, I thought about all of the different things to buy. It came to me that our whole lives are such: colourful shelves and cheery ads sell us everything. I thought, why not do the same thin with artistic works? The original idea was for me to go into a little shop in Pula (one of the villages where the Valley of Arts festival is based) during a certain period in the day and tell everybody who buys a certain product - say, sandwich meat - that that product comes with a poem, which I would recite on the spot. But then, somehow the image of an amusement park came to mind...and the original idea changed."
The five tents which make up Szikszai's amusement park are connected by Tolstoy's War and Peace, which is read aloud as visitors make their way from tent to tent. One of the tents will feature interactive games, another will require visitors to test their physical strength against literary greats such as Thomas Mann and Proust, and another will test their mental condition. A fourth tent will feature film and a fifth erotic poetry.
The Valley of Arts is being hosted by six small villages in the west of Hungary from July 27 until August 5.
Author: György Kerékgyártó
