Chained Bodies and Monuments of Hierarchy in Hungarian Performance Art

Katalin Cseh^1,2*

¹Graduate School of East and Southeast European Studies, Ludwig Maxilians University Munich, Munich, Germany.
²Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

DOI: 10.4236/adr.2014.24009                

Abstract

Hungary’s history was as troubled as Eric Hobsbawm stated Europe’s past in Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991. Dictatorships followed each another right from the end of WWI until the system change in 1989, but among all the authoritarian regimes socialism existed longest. After the thawing atmosphere of the second half in the 1960s, critical tone was articulated in the Neo-Avant-Garde’s “second public sphere”. A form of criticism against any kind of hierar- chical repression arose from performative and intermedial artworks and still didn’t disappear even in postmodern times long after the fall of the wall. The paper will focus on three-dimension of hierarchical bondage: being chained through the other, trough the authorities and through history. All artists’ works (that of El Kazovszkij, Tamás St. Auby and Little Warsaw) are meant to show inner relations between the body, its representation, authoritarian practice of control respectively performance and intermedia art.

Keywords

Hungary, Performance Art, El Kazovszkij, Tamás St. Auby, Little Warsaw

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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