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Specific Aspects of the Pedagogical Turn of the 1970s in Hungary / The work of Péter Forgács, István Sinkó & István Rév and the educational films of the Balázs Béla Studio


08 December 2023-14 January 2024
Opening: 7th of December 23, 7pm.

Curator: Virag Lődi

The exhibition focuses on specific creative engagements within public education by intellectuals of the late Kádár-era in Hungary, introducing democratic and critical attitudes and methods. The exploration of media artist Péter Forgács's complex experiment in aesthetic education between 1974 and 78 constitutes the axis of the exhibited material, but another semi-illegal school workshop led by economic historian István Rév and painter István Sinkó is also evoked. The political and social contexts of these pedagogical experiments are given more depth by the inclusion of a series of educational films made at the time in the Balázs Béla Studio, also highlighting the importance and educational aspects of the studio’s social film distribution program. The exhibition treats the above cultural practices within the intersection of pedagogy and art.

The term 'pedagogical turn' in the title refers primarily to the new appeal that education and children's culture presented in the Kádár era to many cultural practitioners and intellectuals who had 3no pedagogical training and did not originally work in the field of education. The research seeks to answer the question of what political/social ambitions or, in some cases, compulsions might have pushed the actors towards pedagogical engagements, and whether there was room for truly critical alternative practices (in the line of Western leftist traditions) alongside the official slogans of socialist education. What can visual education and ideological education do with each other?