SUGAR, János

Time Patrol

On Moszkva tér, everybody who can dictate uninterruptedly by heart for 10 minutes to a typist in a caravan receives 4.000 forints.
The texts are transcribed and published in a paper, entitled Time Patrol, which can be purchased exclusively at the newsagent’s on Moszkva tér for 400 forints.

My aim is to produce a documentary whose future value is incalculable —exactly because it does not seem to be of any significance in the present. What we wouldn’t give for an accurate transcription of a random conversation that took place in a mail-coach at the beginning of the 19th century!

As the result of technological developments, the private sphere has become constantly sacrificed; the price of effective communication, collaboration and co-ordination is that we can less and less make certain that nobody has access to our privacy and our secrets. On the level of possibilities, anything (post, phone, e-mail, credit cards, etc.) can be controlled (spy satellites, surveillance cameras, face recognition systems, automatic search and filter software on the internet, etc.), so because of all this, in our everyday communication, it is easier to assume that we are constantly in public.

János Sugár, lives and works in Budapest.

I remember János from my time in BP: he was at a couple of events where I read my "poetry," he was the inter-media instructor of a number of acquaintances, and he was around at places I was around.

The Ludwig Museum is in the old Castle/Palace. Slighly odd for my (mid)Western-American eyes to see contemporary art in a building that had 900-year-old foundations. But that's the point, isn't it. We've all got 90,000 year-old foundations if not more.....