19.11.2024 \\
On 19th November 2024, Fondazione Morra Greco hosted a project by Hungarian/Swiss artist Tamás St.Turba, curated by Petra Feriancová. The project is titled IPUT (International Parallel Union of Telecommunications – Trust.ee in bankruptcy: Tamás St.Turba): Subsist.Ence Level St.Andard Project 1984 W (or This is What has Become of the Unicell) – Part I: Czechoslovak Radio 1968 (action); Centaur (film).
During the event, the artist Tamás St.Turba guided the participative action Czechoslovakian Radio 1968 and introduced his film Centaur.
Discover more: Czechoslovakian Radio 1968
On Wednesday, August 21, 1968, troops of the Warsaw Pact, supported by thousands of tanks and hundreds of aircrafts, participated in an overnight operation that occupied most of the strategic places throughout Czechoslovakia. Leading Czech-Slovak representatives were then arrested and interned. It came to be a military occupation of a sovereign country by its allies, executed despite the disapproval of its legally elected representatives and calls for help from other countries, including the UN.
The public expressed strong opposition to such a procedure carried out by the so-called “friendly” countries. There were protests that led to street fights in several places and civilians rose to defend the free broadcasting of czechoslovakian radio. When the Soviet troops tried to break into the radio building, its defenders threw stones and broke through the tanks’ fuel turrets with pickaxes, which they set fire to, managing to destroy several.
Soon after the Soviet army began detaining civilians that walked around with radios, or bricks (universally recognized as tools for revolution and anarchy) made to look like radios (the emblem of communication and circulation of news) by radically changing, painting or attaching antennas to them. It was a way to honor, through a portable memorial of resistance, czechoslovakian radio, and how it aided in spreading freedom until it had been violently silenced.
Czechoslovakian Radio 1968, made in 1969 by Tamas St. Auby (Szentjóby, Staub, St.Auby, Stjauby, St.Aubsky, Emmy Grant, T. Taub, St.Ruby, St.Turba, etc., Trust.ee in bankruptcy of IPUT /International Parallel Union of Telecommunications/; Agent of NETRAF /Neo-Socialist. Realist. IPUT’s Global Counter Arthist.ory-Falsifiers Front/), consists of an action where the audience takes action by maneuvering the bricks to re-create this portable memorial. These “devices” are for Tamás St. Turba an embodiment of the marriage between media and activism, “the mutation of socialist realism into neo-socialist realism: a non-art art for and by all”. “Czechoslovakian Radio 1968” is in collection at Tate gallery, London; Centre of Digital Culture, Mexico City; it was also presented within the framework of Documenta, Kassel 2012.
Discover more: Centaur
Centaur is a 16mm, b/w, 39-minutes film conceived by Tamás Szentjóby between 1973-75. The dehumanization and critique of the ruthlessness of daily work make Centaur as relevant to today’s audiences as to those of any time.
The film, prior to its final release, was banned by Hungarian authorities. A confiscated print was only found accidentally in 1983 and copied secretly on the spot. The digital reconstruction of the deeply damaged film material only occurred in 2009, when the film got selected for the 11th Istanbul Biennial, where it received international praise.
Artist bio
Tamás St.Turba (also unknown as Tamás Szentjóby, Staub, Stjóby, Stauby, Stjauby, Mentjóby, Emmy/Emily Grant, St. Aubsky, T. Taub, St. Ruby, szenytyóbi, etc.) began his non-art-art activity at the end of his traditional art production – in 1966 he wrote his „last metaphysical poem“. Since then, he has conceived an extensive oeuvre made up of actions, happenings, objects, compositions, concrete/visual/action-poems, images, sculptures, photos, videos, mail art, email art, etc. Drawing on Happenings and Fluxus, he deems himself a Neo Socialist Realist. St.Turba founded the International Parallel Union of Telecommunications (IPUT) under the cover name of Parallel Course / Study Track in 1966 in Hungary. IPUT’s aim is the achievement of the Subsistence Level Standard Project 1984 W (SLSP1984W).
In 1974, St.Turba was arrested for participating in the Hungarian Samizdat movement and expelled from the country. In 1975, he left Hungary and settled in Geneva due to his dual Hungarian-Swiss citizenship. There, after years of illegality in Hungary, the headquarters of IPUT were legally reopened and IPUT continued hir St.Rike in Progress: the Subsist.Ence Level St.Andard Project 1984 W.
In 1987 St.Turba opened the Ruine Gallery with the help of collector André L’Huillier, based on the theory and practice of “No profi, No profit, No profile, No Prol”, thus conducting the gallery in a ‘heterarchic’ manner (the exhibiting artist was his/her own gallery manager).
Following the putsch in 1989, IPUT moved back to Hungary in 1991. Here St.Turba presented the Katabasis Soteriologike, the 3rd Phase of the SLSP1984W project at the Budapest Palace of Art. In 2001 IPUT opened the Neo Socialist Realist IPUT’s Global Counter-Art History Falsifiers Front (NETRAF), followed by the Portable Intelligence Increase Museum – Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Actionism in Hungary during the 1960s (1956–1976), assembled in 2003. It consists of some 1100 works, banned or neglected under the so-called proletarian dictatorship. In 2013 the 7 Phases of the SLSP1984W was presented at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest.
In 1991 St.Turba accepted the invitation to lecture at the newly established Intermedia Crèche of the Hungarian Mercantile-Military Penalty University of Fine Arts. However, in 2012 he was kicked out from the University because of his best efforts towards cultural-legal-economic systemic change at the Crèche, on and off campus.
IPUT is continuing the St.Rike in Progress for the Amnesty to Adam&Eve with the aim of finally achieving the Basic Democracy – Basic Income in the Mythic Purgatory.