Studied art history and aesthetics at Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest. Received her degree in art history in 2000. Works in the field of contemporary arts, as a curator and art writer, currently as a freelancer.

Orsolya Hegedüs: Findings

In 2081, human beings living on planet Earth suddenly have to leave their native planet due to an impending disaster. There is only 2 weeks left for the evacuation. In order to ensure that posterity can also admire the worthy pieces of art history on humankind’s new habitat (the planet Arythmia – later renamed Stillife – in solar system HD2458), a board of trustees consisting of renowned art historians is formed to decide what the 200 containers available for the purpose should be filled with. Due to a series of unfortunate events it so happens that only one scholar specialised in the period after the Renaissance is able to participate in the selection process; however, he is constantly voted down by his colleagues who are of the opinion that art history ended around 1500. The desperate curator, in the hopes of later reconstructability, puts together a significant documentation of works of art after 1500; however, this documentation ends up being destroyed, together with his personal belongings, on a spaceship that collides with meteorites. This series of bad luck finally leads to the point that, due to the new social arrangements created out of necessity in the primitive conditions of the colony founded on planet Stillife, memories of art, first only temporarily pushed into the background, gradually fade, become lost and forgotten. Over the course of the centuries, the stabilisation of the new social order creates a need for arts; however, it still does not reach the point of becoming autonomous; in fact, efforts in this direction are also quite rare, and usually lose impetus even before stifled by the authority.
Back in 2081, before the evacuation of the Earth, an enthusiastic employee of Kölcsey Center, then celebrating its 75th anniversary, decides to fill the container accidentally assigned to his recently deceased wife with works of art he has access to: the material of the 3rd International Artists’ Colony of Debrecen. This container, made of titanium alloy, together with the rest of the cargo on board the spaceship, gets loose shortly after the launch, and after travelling several centuries in space, it is mysteriously found in 2998 in a forest on the southern hemisphere of Stillife. Arriving on the scene together with the staff members of the Bureau of Human Safety is Professor Sejn Tenk, art expert of the state and a foremost scholar of the art of the 16th to 21st centuries, which is simply referred to as the lost age. In his first brief, surprised and occasionally almost subjective report prepared for the minister of mental hygiene and public education, we can read the following:
“The material containing the works of 18 artists is believed to have been part of a collection consisting of works related to animals. For this reason, the material is very suitable for supplementing some of the visual and written artefacts destroyed in 2457, at the time of the annihilation of all animals for safety reasons, thereby also allowing an insight into the role that these creatures may have played in the culture of our ancestors, which primarily served for modern human beings as a source of nutrition before the invention of synthetic proteins. In addition, given the variety of genres and approaches used, it can also provide some pointers that may help us become familiar with and understand the art of the lost age. The stylistic differences in the collection, which is apparent at first sight, may lead us to the conclusion that these works survived from different time periods; however, the stamps found on the back of all frames, indicating the place of the framing, suggest that they are all works from the same time period, which – on the basis of the typographical signs on the stamp – appears to be the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. On the basis of the rather scarce source materials at our disposal before, this was already the time in art history after the periods of rebellion which almost entirely eliminated the earlier traditions in modes of depiction and expression.  This fact explains many peculiar features in connection with the individual items of the collection, photographs of which are also enclosed with this report.
Contradicting our earlier assumption, even though it is customary and accepted today, only some traces of the intention to entertain while educating can be found in these works. By contrast, the so-called “humorousness” and another phenomenon called “poetic quality” which was common with our ancestors, but the meaning of which is highly debated by scholars today (cf. my study published in 2974) can be identified in several works.  Some of the works also require more thorough analysis, for example those that only contain indicative references to reality (cf., for example, images 14 and 16*) – the existence of these was hypothesised by researchers before, but no artefacts or sources had proved it before. In addition, we should also mention those works of art in case of which we do not know whether they reflect reality (in which case they will have the force of revelation on our zoologists) or they are products of an artistic freedom (or licentiousness), in which latter case they serve as evidence for researchers of the mental and intellectual condition of humankind at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries – cf., for example the purple bulls and the two-tongued cow in images no. 18 and 3, respectively. As mentioned above, the phenomenon called “humorousness,” which had long before been suspected to be present in the art of our ancestors, was identified in case of several pieces. Of course we cannot say anything for certain, especially in case of works such as drawing no. 7, which depicts two of the animals belonging to the species earlier believed to be the one called “dogs”, but dressed up in human clothes and apparently imitating singing.  It is quite possible, however, that this work will bring about a paradigm shift in our earlier concepts of what was supposed and called “man’s best friend.”
We assume that certain religious symbols can be identified in the work of art for which our engineers had to construct a specially designed playing apparatus so that we could examine its content. Illustration no. 15, which is a freeze-frame from the video, shows the image of animal totems engaged in a ritual dance around a white-coloured liquid used for the purposes of alimentation. Apart from this material of popular science depicting a primitive religious ritual that is clearly a step back from the earlier monotheism, moving pictures – for which the only desirable fields of application today are education and propaganda – were apparently used by our ancestors as the medium of presenting all kinds of autotelic visual effects and meaningless events (cf., for example, image no. 6). The relative over-representation of the genre called graphic arts is also apparent. Earlier it was believed – cf. Mahmood’s article from 2886 – that the age of drawings and processes of manual image multiplication was over by the end of the 20th century, mainly as a result of high-quality reproductions as well as machine-made oil paintings mass produced in China (a huge repository of which was identified 3 years ago on the edge of the stratosphere of planet Tetris). However, this theory seems to be refuted now. It appears that graphic arts did survive for longer than earlier believed, but how much longer exactly will have to reconsidered in the light of the present and the possible future findings of archaic works of art. The labels preserved in relatively good condition include quite a few indicated as “c-prints.” These are colourful prints, mainly based on photographic methods, the designation of which seems to suggest that there were also “a-prints” and “b-prints,” and who knows how far beyond the letter “c” our ancestors went in the alphabet. I propose that further research should be conducted to determine whether these were classified in a content or genre-based method.
In conclusion, this finding is of incalculable value for several disciplines. I request that further studies of this material should be ordered, and also recommend at the same time that certain parts of it should be classified and access to it by the general public be restricted until it is determined how the artistic considerations in them can be reconciled with the overall aims of our society.

Yours sincerely,
Sejn Tenk”


Delivered on 8 August 2008, at the closing exhibition of the Colony of Artists