common places

http://www.indymedia.hu/foglalthaz/

1074 Budapest, Dohány utca 57, door-bell 128
http://www.indymedia.hu/foglalthaz/
The single most salient feature of the urban environment in Budapest, even for a visitor making their way through the city for the first time in fifteen years, is the number of abandoned or vacant buildings. In the city center alone, on our first evening’s walk from one bar to the next, we counted fourteen vacant multi-story buildings over less than 20 blocks. There were many more walks to and from many more bars over the next few evenings, and it became impossible to keep count. And almost all the pubs we ended our evenings in were set up in the courtyards of abandoned buildings; surrounded by trees, ivy-covered walls and hundreds of laid-back patrons, it was impossible not to wonder about the four stories of windows above us, vacated, in many cases, years ago. One was a former school with dozens of classrooms; a former bank, or ministry, factory or apartment building.

The city is trying its best to be a new European metropolis – investing in gigantic cultural institutions, revving up tourism and packaging “history” as its primary selling point, all requirements for what Europe considers a succesful urban center. Covering itself in the signs of “European” “representative democracy”, the “transition” period in Hungary has been primarily a ruthless plundering of common property by a corrupt political class. As in the case of Romania, holding public office has become the fastest way to seize vast industrial properties, real estate and lands from state ownership and “transfer” them into one’s own pocket at , shall we say, preferential rates. The proliferation of large, hip bars as a way of dealing with the courtyards of vacant buildings does little to disrupt the city’s newly constructed European facade. Camouflaged on hostile streets, an estimated 30,000 homeless in Budapest have become skillful at invisibility.

On Friday, 30th October 2004, a vacant former Socialist shopping Mall in the center of Budapest named Uttoro Aruhaz was occupied by squatters (more info here). It was the first such action in the city, an experiment to “prove to the public, and to ourselves, that it is possible to occupy a building in Budapest”. Driving this new movement is a campaign for the right to housing – to force the issue into visibility precisely as winter was approaching and the situation of the homeless was more and more precarious. But the squatters were a heterogeneous bunch, some affiliated with the Greens, some Reds, some anarchists, many independents – activists and students and writers alike – and some squatters wanted to create autonomous spaces as headquarters for already established projects such as indymedia and food not bombs.

Many of those involved in the short-lived but much publicized squat of last October are reunited around AK 57 – a small flat on 57 Dohany Utca, which many refer to as the Basement, or “the squat that is not really a squat”. Maxigas explains to us that the space is owned by a previously failed foundation of some sorts, and is occupied with their blessing – participants pay only building taxes as well as utilities. But this is not a squat really, it is “a seed for a squat, a legal flat that rehearses the workings of a squat (…) a headquarters and center of operations, a place to return (after evictions). What is developed here as individual projects can be transplanted to the next squat”. Our conversations at the Basement are about activating potentialities.

There is living space (people come and go, we are told, and many foreigners that are passing through find a bed there through global word of mouth), an illegal bar, a communal cooking space for nightly meals (most popular on the week-ends), a workshop (featuring a badge and stencil area) and an info-shop/anarchist-bookshop/library. “We are black and red and green” we are told, “there are eco-anarchists, communist anarchists and ontological anarchists”. There are formal and informal affiliations to political parties or activist groups or ngo’s, and many of the squat regulars play multiple roles in multiple collectivities – from indymedia to street art to the contagious afk (autonom fiatalok kozossege or autonomous youth collective, in which membership is by self-appointment), to a local CrimethInc cell . “we are anti-institutional and so we have no formalized collective structure, but we have many different affiliations”. We are curious about this strange intersection of forces that seems keen not on sources, but destinations — not on existing social relations, but on transformation and consequence. “How do you find people, or how do people find you?”, we ask “How do you actually work?”– the response comes with the swift casualness of the self-evident: “it is a matter of needs” .

So check out AK 57 next time you are in Budapest. Do not pass through the dark hallway in too big of a hurry – on our visit we were introduced to what began as a sticker exhibition, but quickly became an exercise in collective culture as visitors started treating the walls less as an exhibition and more as a free exchange area: “People understand that where you take, you can also give back”. A visit is the best and quickest way to be introducesd to different projects, groups, networks and general mayhem that intersects in the Basement. Find the redesigned Hungarian shield or – a local favorite – the re-appropriated right-wing slogans. Help cook if you want, and spend the night if you need. Ask about the Horizon Research Institute, and its subdivisions: the Casual Biennale, the Peter Greenaway Society and Party Culture, to name a few. Try to talk about relational esthetics here and you might make people vomit — the playful re-enactment of Peter Greenway Films, illegal parties, political campaigns, research, performances and national organizing intersecting here spill out of any institutionalizing frame with a vengeance. This is a recent space, a young convergence still in tremendous flux. Whether or not it is sustainable is uncertain, and perhaps not the heart of the matter. The attitude to longevity here is relaxed, but different from the rather self-conscious short-term performances of mini-utopia we have become so accustomed to. The language once again is one of necessity and potentiality, an actual investment in notion of transformation: “we stay as long as we can”.
common_places is happy to now feature a short video of our visit to AK 57, starring in particular maxigas and toxic, and (hopefully soon) an in-depth analysis/article (maxigas, we’re waiting!!).

Filed under: Places: Budapest
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