17.02.2014
Centaur, Tamás St Auby
Screening and artist talk, I: project space, Beijing, CN

China Premiere of Tamás St.Auby´s film „Centaur” (1973-75/2009) at I: project space
First Screening with artist talk 17th of February 7 pm

After that, the movie will be shown from the 22nd of February until the 8th of March by appointment.

Hungarian/Swiss artist Tamas St.Auby`s film “Centaur” was banned in 1973 before completion. The film was digitized and restored in 2009. Since then it has been shown in various museums and galleries and at the Istanbul Biennale. On the 17th of February I: project space will show “Centaur” for the first time in China.

“[…] The centaur is half-animal, half-human. The sound film as such is centaur: image and sound. In this case, the image is the visible, material realm, what is given, the world in which we live, what exists, the status quo – the horse body of the centaur; the audible voice is the evaluation, the plan, the thing that will be, the bodiless, the invisible, the spiritual world, the trespass, the mutation, the transcendence, the other world, the mind, the will, the future, that which is coming into existence – the human part of the centaur, in parallel. […] The film juxtaposes – or to be more exact, superimposes – a realistic and a utopian dimension. Thus, this is not a horizontal space/time montage, but a vertical sphere-of-existence montage. A mutation montage. Α 39-minute instant mutation. […]”
excerpt from an interview with Tamás St.Auby, manuscript, 2006

Tamás St.Auby (*1944) – his numerous alternate names include Szentjóby, Staubsky, Emmy Grant, St.Turba, etc. – started off in the underground scene and worked in a broad range of media. He became one of the pioneers in Hungary for happenings and conceptual art. In 1966, he co-created the first Happening in Hungary and is still promoting the ideals of the international Fluxus movement. He established IPUT (International Parallel Union of Telecommunications) in 1968 to cause and accelerate the inevitability of Basic Democracy and Basic Income. For participating in the samizdat movement he was forced into exile from his native country in 1975 to his origin: Switzerland from where he returned to Hungary in 1991. One of his latest works is the Portable Intelligence Increase Museum: as the Agent of NETRAF (Neo Socialist-Realist IPUT’s Counter Global Art-History-Falsifiers Front), he collected the works and documents of the Hungarian unofficial art scene of the sixties (1956-76) and presented them in a specially designed transportable multimedia study environment throughout Europe.

Curated by Wolfgang Obermair

I: project space