Press Room - 2019

The Velvet Revolution of 1989

The year 1989 is a symbol of change. For a long 40 years Czechoslovakia, like other countries of Eastern European, lived under the rule of communism and especially the great-power influence of Moscow and the Soviet Union. 1989 brought the fall of this system. Czechoslovakia was one of the last countries where changes took place.

Venue: Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
Address: 1051 Budapest Arany János u. 32.

The exhibition runs: November 20 - December 15, 2019.

Organized by the Prague National Museum; Czech Centrum, Budapest; The Slovak Institue, Budapest; the Slovak National Museum; The Blinken OSA Archives

Invitation to the launch of László Rajk's Book
 

Date: 21 November 2019, 6:00 p.m.

Venue: CEU Auditorium (15 Nádor Street, 1051 Budapest)

With: János Kis philosopher, János Rainer M. historian, Edit Sasvári art historian, Béla Tarr film director.

Moderated by András Mink
 

The event is in Hungarian.

Sharpen your perspective – The 16th Verzio Film Festival is coming soon

Between November 12th and 17th, Verzio Film Festival invites you on an amazing trip around the world via the finest human rights documentaries, which will be shown in Budapest, Debrecen, Kecskemét, Pécs, Szeged, and Szombathely. The festival offers three thematic sections that put the state of media, the life of young people, and the Anthropocene age in the limelight.

Dot.To.Dot – new curatorial visitor program starts, targeting the Hungarian contemporary art scene run in cooperation between OFF-Biennale and IMPEX
with the lecture of our first international guest, Farid Rakun.

Dot.To.Dot is a newly established curatorial visitor program aiming to boost the links between the members of the Hungarian and international art scenes. We plan to invite 4-5 international curators and critics yearly with stimulating professional backgrounds for a short research trip to Budapest/Hungary. Based on preliminary dialog the tailor-made program of our guests includes meetings with Hungarian art and cultural players sharing common interests and research topics. Additionally, we also organize public events in order to offer a platform for discussion for a wider audience.

1989 from a different angle – Storytelling as a community building mechanism – a visit and a great learning experience at Blinken OSA

On September 2, 2019, a group of 30 teachers and students from 12 different Eastern European countries visited the OSA . The group was participating in a program co-organized by the US State Department and World Learning. They had visited important East and Central European sites of the 1989 transition such as Prague, Bucharest, Timisoara and finished their tour in Budapest to collect the memories of 1989, the communism and post-communism through the eyes and experiences of those who were witnesses to those times.

Collective Dreams and Bourgeois Villas – Site Plan of the Hungarian CIRPAC Group

Blinken Open Society Archives, Galeria Centralis

May 4 – September 15, 2019

Joint opening of the exhibition and the 2019 edition of Budapest100 entitled In the Footsteps of Bauhaus: May 3, 2019, 6 p.m.

Greetings by:

István Rév, Director, Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at CEU

Bálint Kádár, President, Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre

In interwar Hungary, the CIRPAC group was one of the most important representatives of “Neues Bauen” [New building] movement. Farkas Molnár, József Fischer, and their associates, who were linked to Bauhaus and its mentality in several ways, ventured beyond the framework of architecture. Addressing social issues, they wrote publications and organized presentations and exhibitions—even if it meant confrontations with the authorities. Thus, besides architectural achievements, their site plan also presents the complex political conditions of the 1930s.

2019. június 16., vasárnap, 11:00–13:00: Vezetett séta a Blinken OSA Archívumtól a Jászai Mari térig. Június 16-a Nagy Imre kivégzésének és újratemetésének évfordulója, idén a Vértanúk teréről a Jászai Mari térre áthelyezett emlékmű újraavatásának napja. A Blinken OSA Archívum sétáján meglátogatunk több, Nagy Imre emlékéhez kötődő helyet, hogy a megemlékezés változó értelmezési kereteit felidézzük.

 

Respect and Mercilessness: 1956-1989-2019
All day screening of archival video footage on three screens from 1989 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the reburial of the executed Prime Minister, Imre Nagy and his closest political allies.

By attending this event visitors can express their solidarity with the current situation of the 1956 Institute and with the primacy of historical facts over a distorted historical narrative.