Krétakör presents Jaroslav Jicinsky Utopia Society

Site specific performance and workshop in Pécs, European Capital of Culture 2010, Hungary
April 30 – May 02, 2010

Developed at various sites of the South-Hungarian city of Pécs the three day long guided experience will engage with and recompose the city’s forgotten past and its unknown present.  During the three day long public, community performance participants discover the temporary and imaginary transformation of the urban peripheries and the long-forgotten story of the Utopia Society. The society’s name giver, Jaroslav Jicinsky, mining engineer and urban-planner was not only the accomplisher of the 1913-1927 modernization of coal mining but also the initiator of a secret society that in its name reflected its members’ commitment for change.

Krétakör’s work focuses on the creation of a public cooperation, a network connecting various local educational and cultural organizations. The performance evolves organically from the urban desires and utopias of the local community and reemerges on a new level in the framework of a common game based on a fictional concept developed by Krétakör.

In order to give an international scope to the project and to put the themes occurring through its development into context, we organize a half-day workshop Urban Therapy.  The workshop addresses the relation of site-specific performances and public space with a special focus on community participation. Community arts enable citizens to value and portray the personal and the immeasurable: memories, emotions, passions, senses, desires about themselves and in their relation to the urban landscape. Could community art be part of participatory city-making and where are the borders between participation as a liberating experience and therapy? The workshop brings together artists, art practitioners and theorists reflecting on the above mentioned themes through their work.

Urban Therapy
International workshop on site specific, community art
30 April, 2010 15:00 – 18:00
Venue: Nádor Gallery, Széchenyi square, Pécs, Hungary

Schedule
15:00 Welcome
15:15 Speakers Presentations
Sodja Lotker, Artistic Director Prague Quadriennal Found, Interactive, Community
Claudia Bosse, Artistic Director of Thetarercombinat Vienna Can Space be a Desire?
Aleksandar Brkic, research fellow at the University of Arts in Belgrade Questioning the Borders with the Site Specific Methodology
Daniel Belasco Rogers, artist, co-founder of plan b performance Three approaches to site as told through the experiences of plan b
Levente Polyák, urbanist, lecturer at the Budapest University of Technology and Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design Affective Spaces and Urban Therapies
16:30 Panel discussion

Details of the event
Site specific event in Pécs, European Capital of Culture 2010, Hungary

The Jaroslav Jicinsky Utopia Society kindly invites you to a geographic and imaginary travel experience recomposing the city’s forgotten past and its unknown present. During the three day long public, community performance participants discover the long-forgotten story of the Utopia Society. The society’s name giver, Jaroslav Jicinsky, mining engineer and urban-planner was not only the accomplisher of the 1913-1927 modernization of coal mining but also the initiator of a secret society that in its name reflected its members’ commitment for change. Their utopia however got out of control and turned against the city – now it is time to prevent its damaging effects! Developed at various sites of the South-Hungarian city of Pécs the three day long guided experience will engage with and recompose the city’s forgotten past and its unknown present. 

30 April (Friday)
Guided walking tour in the city center. Discover the forgotten story of the Utopia Society!
Venue: Jókai square, Info Point
Time: 14:00 – 19:00
You can sign up for the alternative walking tour at the Information Point  in the city centre. The tour contains audio-interviews by former coal-miners, which are available only in Hungarian language.

1 May (Saturday)
Performance at a former industrial site
Venue: Szécheni István Pit, a former industrial site
Time: 19:00
The Utopia Society opens its doors where the secret utopia of the Society reveals itself. Participants get the chance to meet the former and newly recruited members of the society and to experience the working method behind its concept. Jicinsky’s vision materializes in the form of a site-specific performance turning the heritage site into a living organism.

2 May (Sunday)
Community performances in the urban outskirts
Venue: Pécsbányatelep (a former mining colony in the Eastern periphery of the city)
Time: 11:00 – 15:00
The members of the Utopia Society invite participants in the outskirts of the city where they can meet the followers of the society and experience its everyday presence.

Information on travel opportunities and accommodation

Getting to Pécs from Budapest
The quickest way to go to Pécs from Budapest Ferihegy International Airport is by train from the East (Keleti) Train Station. More information on the transfer from the airport please find here. It takes three hours to get to Pécs from Budapest. Please find the schedule of the trains here.
We suggest booking your room at Hotel Aranyhajó (***). The Hotel is situated in 10 minutes walking distance from the Nádor Gallery in the city center (single room – 40 EUR, double room – 45 EUR, breakfast, all taxes included). 
You can book the hotel individually via online booking system. An alternative choice is Hotel Palatinus (***) that is also situated within 10 minutes from the workshop venue.
You can find more information on the Pécs European Capital of Culture Programme here.