INCONNU, the independent group of artists and the samizdat publishers ABC and Arteria announced an art competition in the August 14 issue of The New York Review of Books, in connection with the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The competition was called The Fighting City. The announcers of the competition give the following information:
The members of the INCONNU group were summoned to the police station on September 26, 1986. There they were told that they would be banned from Budapest if they were to go ahead with the exhibition scheduled to open in October.
There is a reason to suppose that some of the artworks sent through the mail were never delivered by orders of the authorities.
The only artworks received from abroad by the stated closure date for the competition were the following: Jessica Gwynne, London GB; Judith Roberts, Oxford GB; Glenn Helm, Arizona USA; N. Rubington, New York USA; Sophie Rivera, New York USA; Stephen O’Harrow, Honolulu USA;
Under the circumstances, we have extended the closure date for entries to the competition till November 30, 1986. We would like to ask everyone who entered a piece of work but whose name does not appear on the list above to make an official complaint to Hungarian Embassy in her or his country. Any new works should not be mailed but rather sent by hand through personal contacts to our published addresses. Any new competitor and anyone whose artwork has not been delivered to us should notify the following person:
G. Krasso
Hungarian October Information Centre
24/D Little Russell Street
London, WC 1
Tel: 411-430-2126
All artworks sent to us will be recorded, exhibited and will be included in the catalogue. The works from the competition will be handed over to SZETA, The Foundation for the Poor, to be auctioned and the money from this will be used for the benefit of the poor in Hungary. The Fighting City art competition is sponsored by: Timothy Garton Ash, Danilo Kis, George Konrad, and Susan Sontag.
Peter Bokros, Izabella utca 92 II/17a, 1067 Budapest, Hungary; Tamás Molnár Lajos, utca 142 VII/39, 1036 Budapest, Hungary; Robert Pálinkás Patak, utca 8, 2079, Pilisborosjenö, Hungary; Sándor Szilágyi Dankó, utca 38 III/32, 1086 Budapest, Hungary; Jenö Nagy Kalászi, ut 48, 1039 Budapest, Hungary.
In the US, please feel free to contact: Tibor Csipan, 2300 Pimmit Drive #1416, Falls Church, Virginia 22043, Tel: (703)573-3354.
This Issue
December 4, 1986