magyar

György Jovánovics:
PARCEL 301 – MEMORIAL TO THE MARTYRS OF THE 1956 UPRISING 1989-92


In 1989, the construction of the memorial dedicated to the martyrs of the 1956 uprising was started on the basis of the plans of György Jovánovics, the one successful applicant among many others. Afterwards the artist reproduced the historic experiences of the opening-up of the mass grave, the process of the construction and the accomplished memorial on a CD-ROM called PARCEL 301, which he presented at the Venice Biennial in 1995. The CD-ROM is made up of three parts-the "Impressions" of the entrance of the Rákoskeresztúr cemetery, where the memorial is located, the process of the construction called "Genius loci", and a "Close Reading" of the memorial based on its spatial arrangement and subsequent symbolic meaning-also including an interview with the author. Jovánovics´s work is clearly arranged, easy to navigate, and is almost entirely composed of documentary video inserts, and what is more, it manages to reproduce glimpes of historic significance supported by sublime baroque music. There is just one question to it: do we witness the documentation of an important historic event and through it recall the past-all presented on a CD-ROM in a subtle, refined, sensitive fashion, or do we see an independent work of art for which the 1989 event is but a pretext?