This site is a Web adaptation of the Optimistic Lecture of The influential Hungarian neo-avant-garde architect, artist, writer, poet, theorist, and filmmaker Miklós Erdély (1928-1986), held in 1980. The lecture was introduced with 9 points read by Erdély:
- One must acknowledge one’s own competence with regards to one’s life and fate, and keep to it above all else.
- This competence extends to whatever concerns one’s life, whether directly or indirectly.
- In this manner one’s competence extends to everything.
- One must have the courage to perceive whatever is bad, faulty, torturous,
dangerous or meaningless, whether it be the most accepted, seemingly
unchangeable case or thing. - One must have the boldness to propose even the most unfounded, least
realizable alternative. - One must be able to imagine that these variants can be attained.
- One must give as much consideration to possibilities that have only a slight
chance but promise great advantages as to possibilities that in all likelihood
can be attained but promise few advantages. - Whatever one can accomplish with the limited tools at one’s disposal one
must do without delay. - One must refrain from any form of organization or institutionalization.”
(Miklós Erdély: Optimistic Lecture: The Features of the Post-neo-avant-garde
Attitude.
Translated by: Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszák. Originally read at Eötvös Loránd University’s Faculty of Aesthetics, Budapest, 22 April 1981. Source: https://www.mke.hu/res/optimistic_exhibition_miklos_erdely_en-web.pdf
netartdothu (beta) 