Stephen Kovats on Sat, 4 Jun 2011 01:13:22 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Janos Sugar sentenced for „Wash your dirty money with my art”


Hi Calin, 

we're all shocked and disgusted by this - and yes, I can imagine that Janos will have or has an idea about a suitable reaction. I agree that the usual 'letter of support' may be useless, and there are other ways supporting Janos and properly criticizing this untenable situation. One real hurdle here is that, despite Hungary overwhelmingly voting in a fairly unsavoury populist right-wing party, they have done so along with an extreme right-wing neo-nazi party, there was nowhere near the outcry that followed Austria's voting in (and not even to the chancellorship) of the xenophobic anti-culture Jorg Haider party. It makes me ill to see how parties such as 'jobbik' (which loosely translates as 'the better ones') have marched onto the political spectrum in hungary alongside the Fidesz with little comment from EU (Fidesz having enough support in parliament to change the constitution, which they have already done with considerable disrespect to acceptable norms of European human ri
 ghts). I suppose part of this may have to do with the relative isolation/insulation provided by the hungarian language, and the difficulty of deciphering much of the code embedded in its revisionist historicizing cultural vocabulary. More on this later, as it is a big - and, if you can decipher the code - pretty scary issue lying under Janos' predicament. 

At this point, I would like to also hear from Janos, and ask him where we should take this. 

greetings, 

Stephen

On 02.06.2011, at 18:01, Calin Dan wrote:

> I think Janos himself is best positioned to say what would help his case, but if I read correctly his interview, and also based on what I know about the situation in that region, raising the political awareness of the (informed) audiences beyond the tame level of politically correct art gatherings remains an issue, even more than in our sedated West.
> 
> Addressing that is complex and time consuming. This particular case might need quicker reactions. The well known and a bit tired support letter?
 <...>


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