ON MILK AND PEOPLE

ICA Dunaújváros, Hungary, Slavonski Brod, Croatia, 2001/2003

With the participation of Croatian and Hungarian farming families as follows – with the families of Torma Mihaly from Dunaújváros, Hungary, Torma Janos and Falusi from Nagyvenyim;  Beregzsazsi family from Kiszentmiklos; Fülöp family from Elloszalas; with the Samardzija family from Ruščica, Croatia; Zvirotić and Blaževac families from Donja Bebrina; Ostojčić family from Prnjavor; and Kolesarić familiz from Zoljani

On Milk and People was a participatory art project in the course of which an exhibition along 10 short experimental documentaries were produced. The film series featurs 10 families from two former socialist countries, Croatia and Hungary. The intention was to delve into the everyday life on several small farms in former industrial regions and see how the transition period of the 1990s influenced the socio-economical standing of small farmers, usually perceived as main losers of the transition from communism/socialism to capitalism, or from east to west. Another important aspect of the project was drawing attention to the fact that this very social group in principle does not have representation nor access to cultural institutions. The text below was written in 2006 to serve as exhibition wall text and has since then been accompanying gallery and museum presentations of the project.

Read More

Five Croatian and five Hungarian families involved in dairy production, that is ten small family and dairy farms took part in the project. In each family I filmed a video documenting their typical workday, from the morning through to the evening milking of cows.

The exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art-Dunaújváros, Hungary (ICA-D) included ten short video documentaries about these ten families, a corresponding object-installation for each family with household items selected by the family members themselves, and a one-hour video collage of interviews with members of the farming families. The exhibition gave an insight into the daily life and routine of small family farms and also provided a social and political comparison of the two countries.

In March 2002 I spent three weeks in Dunaújváros, Hungary, doing field research, finding, meeting and video-documenting five Hungarian families willing to participate in the project. Later, in August 2002, I spent three weeks in Slavonski Brod, Croatia with five Croatian families who joined the project.

Milk is the main source of income for all ten families. What is common to them is that they all work hard and rarely leave home. Their days are mostly alike. Since I filmed one working day in each family, about 3 hours of raw video material was made per household. The dairy families were all happy and grateful when I gave them this footage.

After five months of video editing, I had one short film about each family. I noticed that they enjoyed the raw video material much more than the final films. At that time, several Croatian and Hungarian villages had watched the films and tapes with interest, as their neighbors, family and friends had wanted to watch, and some even asked for additional copies.

My intention was actively to involve the farming families in the creative process and to organize a cultural happening that they would never forget. As it was, all the families received a small participation fee, equal to my own, as well as paid travel and per diems. The Croatian families traveled to Hungary to participate in setting up the show together with the Hungarian families. For some of them, this was their first time they had traveled abroad. Members of the families selected the objects to be exhibited from their household and personal belongings. They also set up the exhibits themselves. My ten short films documenting the daily work routine on the farms were screened on monitors set up inside their object installations.

The interview-tape with the members of the family was projected in a second exhibition hall. I edited the interviews into a one-hour tape and added Croatian and Hungarian subtitles in order for the families to understand each other. My focus in the interviews was on the social and political conditions of the farmers’ lives and work situation, and the social and political comparison of Hungary and Croatia, two neighboring countries sharing a history of communism. In the interviews both the Hungarian and Croatian dairy farmers complained of similar problems, such as small pensions or delayed payments for dairy products. Some expressed anger over the corruption and criminality to be found in politics, while others indignantly recalled the communist times and the work and production conditions at the time.

That second exhibition space offered a focused analysis of the social position of small family farms through video interviews and the accompanying written material. The wall text contained two parallel quotations from two interviews, from one Croatian and one Hungarian farmer. This was one of several examples of a number of similar cases, in which both the Croatian and the Hungarian farmers complained about the same problems, such as the coercion and pressure they faced from their respective agencies for the purchase of agricultural products. On a table set up in the exhibition space there were reading and advisory materials for farmers to take away, prepared by the ICA-D staff and students from the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in Gödöllő. The materials were about organizing and running dairy farms, with instructions on how to apply for grants and subsidies, how to get loans and such like matters.

The Croatian Ministry of Culture supported my solo exhibition in Hungary with 4,000 euro, which was just enough to cover the travel costs to Hungary for the farming families and myself. I invited two members from each of the Croatian families to travel to Hungary, meet the Hungarian families and set up the exhibit together. I rented a bus with a driver for five days, paid accommodation costs, and a small fee to all the participants involved. When we arrived in Dunaújváros, the ICA-D had prepared a reception party where we met the ICA-D staff and their guests and where the Hungarian and Croatian farming families met one another. We worked together on setting up the exhibition during the next three days. Each day we spent setting up the exhibition, we also dined together in the gallery space. I insisted on having our joint meals in the gallery as I believe in democracy in art.