[ISEA94] Artist Statement: George Legrady – An Anecdoted Archive From The Cold War

Artist Statement

An Anecdoted Archive from the Cold War is an interactive computer media artwork installation project that features early 1950’s East European personal and official Communist material in the form of home movies, video footage of Eastern European places and events, objects, books, family documents, Socialist propaganda, money, sound recordings, news reports, identity cards, etc. These are part of my collection of things and stories related to the Cold War that I have gathered during the past 20 years. These items, in the form of over eighty stories, have been arranged thematically in eight rooms superimposed on the original floor plan of the former Workers’ Movement (Propaganda) museum in Budapest – (the original contents of which have been in permanent storage since 1990). The Anecdoted Archive reflects my particular history in relation to the Cold War. Born in Budapest in 1950 near the end of the Stalin era, I fled with my family to the West during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

  • George Legrady Born in Budapest in 1950, a Canadian citizen and a resident of California, USA,since 1981. Associate Professor in Information Arts at San Francisco State University, a program that integrates cultural theory and emerging technologies within the contexts of conceptual art and contemporary art practise. He is currently working on “Slippery Traces”, an interactive multimedia project that investigates the experience of “seeing” within the context of today’s vision tools, and the influence of their origins in medical and military technologies. His artworks have been exhibitied in the US, Canada, France, Germany,  Denmark, Mexico. During the fall 1994, Legrady will be a visiting faculty at the Budapest Art  Academy.