Street Stories
A street art action on public historic perception, Budapest, Hungary, June 2009
Commemorative plaques, a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, or other material, are attached to the walls of many buildings are very common in Budapest. The plaques, bearing text in memory of an important figure that lived in the building (or event that happened there), are written in Hungarian and usually give you a condensed of the important person, the years they lived, and what they are famous for.
Visiting Budapest I was fascinated by these plaques – the amount, the different designs but mostly wondering as a non Hungarian speaker who are these people, what did they do to deserve a plaque and who decides who gets one. I asked myself if these people who are commemorated are really important to the people who live near and in the buildings where they are attached. In addition, I wanted to learn more about the choices made in Hungarian culture about who is considered important.
The week before the opening of CONTROL an Exhibition at 2B Gallery in Budapest that I participated in, Orsolya Fenyresi, who was my assistant and translator, and I, explored the different plaques on Ráday Street (the street of the gallery) and it surroundings. We interviewed the people living in the buildings and passersby and asked them and who ever was willing to talk to us – if they heard about the people named on the plaques, and if they did – how they felt about them. At the end we googled the names to check the stories we gathered and find more information.
With the information gathered, I wrote new texts, printed them with a basic design on marbled paper and hung my newly produced “street story†plaques witch I hung next to the original ones.
photos by Dazz
The texts of the “new plaque”s: Read More »
