GYÖRGY GALÁNTAI
SELF-RELEASE AND SELF-EXTINGUISHING
JANKOVSZKY GYÖRGY MAIL ART FOTÓIRÓL

One of the interesting, worldwide phenomena in art in the eighties of the twentieth century was correspondence art, or the incredibly fast development of the mail art networks using postal services. Every time a need emerges simultaneously and en masse, there is a reason and an explanation: the work of the mail artists building postal networks can be seen as an antecedent of the electronic worldwide web that emerged in parallel with but independently of theirs.

In essence correspondence art is dialogical and pieces of information that can be linked together are organised into a system by discussion and dialogue keeping each other in balance in the network. Dialogues store discussions, and discussions provoke dialogues. Persons are holons (simultaneously wholes and parts), at times participants, at other times initiators, and in both cases autonomous; every operation is a result of personal intention and decision.

György Jankovszky made his self-portrait series in 1981, for Artpool’s invitation for the “World Art Post” artist’s stamp project, and then he reused them as stamp images. There are several interesting questions to be asked in connection with the series of images. Why does somebody, e.g. an artist/a photographer make a self-portrait, i.e. why does he look into the mirror or into his camera?

A self-portrait is a means by which an individual makes an attempt to objectively view himself. The Latin word for mirror is speculum, from which the word “speculation” is derived. In the old Hungarian language speculation actually meant scientific thinking and examination. The camera as a mirror is the photographer’s work tool. “The photographer is a person who attempts to place, within the image, information that is not predicted within the program of the camera. Image: a significant surface on which the element of the image act in a magic fashion towards one another. Significance: the aim of signs. Sign: a phenomenon that signifies another. Magic: a form of existence corresponding to the eternal recurrence of the same. Rites: actions corresponding to the magic form of existence.” (Vilém Flusser: Towards a Philosophy of Photography)

The strength in György Jankovszky’s self-portraits is in their conceptuality. Duality as identity appears in his attitude on a conceptual level – in the gesture of an action. While he is releasing his camera with the self-release button, he is extinguishing the picture of his own face. The action is carried out in two ways, so it can be seen as two series. In a trivial way, we could say about the first series that “it hurts”, and about the second that “it doesn’t hurt”. The first one is reality and the second one is a dream: it is happening but I take no notice of it. Of course there could be other contextual explanations according to cultural and social points of view, but that would lead too far away. One thing must be added however: in the eighties, in the last decade of the Kádár era the actual environment of art was the culture of silence (and interception), shortage economy, and the right social behaviour: mediocrity.

Jankovszky was not the only one who made such self-portraits. There were some antecedents which, albeit not widely known, are worth mentioning here since similarities that come into being independently usually amplify one another.

Miklós Erdély: Self-lighting – Light Eats Man Up, 1969
Arnulf Rainer: Self-depictions, 1971-76
Sándor Pinczehelyi: Sickle and Hammer, 1973
Gábor Attalai: I can be foolish too, 1973
Endre Tót: TÓTalJOYS / I am glad if I can read a newspaper, 1973/75
György Galántai: Window-mirror (local), 1975 - Ego Problem (local), 1976
András Baranyay: Self-portrait, 1977
Tibor Hajas: Torture of the Surface I, 1978
Endre Tót: Communism made me glad, 1978/89
Kálmán Szijártó: Metamorphoses, 1978
INCONNU GROUP - Péter Bokros: Ego, 1979

However, György Jankovszky’s self-portraits reused on postal stamps are unique in the whole world. Nothing close to this was ever made before or after it. Of course, only because these pieces have not become known up until today.

The most important thing about Jankovszky’s stamps is that he not only made them but posted them too, or rather had them posted to his own address, on 63 envelopes posted in 34 countries, which all arrived stamped. To use a modern expression, it was a postal “hacking” action, in the most positive sense, since the post did not suffer any damage because Jankovszky had purchased valid stamps. Thus, hacking refers to the content of the stamp images here and not to conning the post. (There are a lot of examples of conning the post, from various fake “artist’s” stamps to counterfeiting stamps.)

The content of the stamp images is subjected to an official procedure in every country before it enters circulation, which means that every tiny postal stamp is the territory of the country that issues it. It is exactly these territories to which Jankovszky smuggled his self-portrait without being noticed. Although this project is symbolic, if it is given publicity, it can work as a cultural virus (meme) because its significance is its meaning. This reminds me: a meme is nothing more than an information pattern which happens to have developed a form which makes people repeat that pattern. Included among typical memes are individual slogans, phrases, melodies, discoveries and fashions. It might sound ominous that people are hosts of mind-altering strings of symbols, but in fact this is all that human culture actually is. (Glenn Grant)


The story and background of writing this article

I hadn’t met György Jankovszky since the Stamp Images exhibition in 1987. Last year, when I was organising the Parastamp exhibition, I tried to contact him, but without success. Then, at the beginning of this year he contacted me, asking me to write about his stamps for the catalogue of an exhibition that would be organised in the Hungarian Museum of Photography in Kecskemét. I kept telling him that writing was not my forte, but he insisted that no one else could write about his stamps. Okay, I’ll give it a try, I answered, but I won’t promise anything. Then I asked him to bring me all his original pieces, and that might get me going. The next time we met he brought the album and left it with me for a few months. When he came to inquire how the writing was going I had not managed to come up with anything, despite having spent quite a few days trying to approach the subject as part of an extensive study.

Using my method of “self-assembling writing” I developed during the years, I started collecting and grouping those key notions that would build up the content of the future piece of writing, as a kind of raw material for an assignment. Of course these (self/I-picture portrait, self-portrait history age-reflexive / means, media, apparatus, age-identitical | place-reflexive / present/ place-identical self-reflexive/personal/self-identical holon, part-whole, networker/artist, functionary) didn’t get me far, but at least enabled me to prepare myself a bit. When we last met I had the idea of having a conversation recorded on tape, one that would perhaps help me get started with the writing. A lot of time passed by again and then I thought that the material of Jankovszky’s stamp project put on the Internet would be interesting as it was, so even if I ended up not writing the article, I would upload it. After this the writing started self-assembling itself but not at all as I wanted to think it would but rather the way I could have thought it would.

While I was writing, it became clear to me what the reason was for Jankovszky’s choice, since this is what made the writing write itself. It also occurred to me that I first saw the stamp “Kepler Orbits” on the envelopes I received from Jankovszky, and right after that I made my rubberstamped sheet of stamps entitled "Refunctioned object".

(György Galántai, 2008)