Doctoral projects

Private Memory in the Hungarian Contemporary Fine Art Photography

My research focuses on the post-transition Hungarian art photography which I examine in the context of the national cultural history and also international influences. By doing so, I plan to outline the relationship between art photography and private memory in three major topics: 1. Trends in Contemporary Hungarian Art Photography after the regime change, with particular focus on personal photo, 2. Private and public archives – the family album, 3. Photography and Identity – the photography as autobiography.

In contemporary art photography it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the art photographer and the artist who uses photography as a medium of expression; and it is less and less simple to draw boundary between amateur and professional photographers only by the use of equipment. How does the amateur practice (private photo) affect art photography? What kind of international and local pre-figurations could be observed? What are the reasons behind the fact that the personal photo, the autobiographical stories, and personal narratives became emphasized after the political transformation in the Hungarian art photography?

Indicative Publications of the Student:

I published two theses which can be regarded as antecedents of my present research:

• Photo destroyers – visual interventions in the Horus Archives, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design – 2011.
• Father-image – The „Father figures” in Contemporary Hungarian Fine Art Photography, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design – 2013.
• Abstract: https://independent.academia.edu/JuditGell%C3%A9r

Selected Bibliography:

• András Edit: Kulturális átöltözés – Művészet a szocializmus romjain, Argumentum Kiadó, 2009.
• Bán András: A vizuális antropológia felé, Typotex K., Budapest, 2008.
• Bán Zsófia; Turai Hedvig: Exponált emlék – családi képek a magán és a közösségi emlékezetben, AICA, Budapest, 2006.
• Dokumentum 6 – a Vár Ucca Műhely folyóirat különszáma 2004/1–2.
• Foster, Hal. Archives of Modern Art October, Vol. 99 (Winter, 2002), pp. 81-95 Published by: The MIT Press Stable.
• Foucault, Michel: Megírni önmagunkat; Az önmagaság technikái. In: uő. Nyelv a végtelenhez, Latin Betűk, Debrecen, 2000.
• Guimond, James: Auteurs as Autobiographers: Images by Jo Spence and Cindy Sherman. MFS Modern Fiction Studies (September 1994), 40 (3), pp. 573-591.
• Habermas, Jürgen: A társadalmi nyilvánosság szerkezetváltozása: Vizsgálódások a polgári társadalom egy kategóriájával kapcsolatban, Osiris K., Budapest, 1999.
• Hirsch, Marianne: Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory, Harvard University Press, 1997.
• Lejeune, Philippe: Önéletírás, élettörténet, napló: Válogatott tanulmányok, Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2003.
• Pfisztner Gábor: Kortárs – fotó – művészet (I-IV.), Fotóművészet, 2011/1; 2011/2; 2011/3; 2011/4
• Rose, Gillian: Doing family photography: the domestic, the public, and the politics of sentiment, Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.
• Somogyi Zsófia: A személyes fotó elméleti vonatkozásai. Fotóművészet, 2010/2.
• Spence, Jo: Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal, and Photographic Autobiography. London: Camden Press., 1986.
• Szegő György: Privátfotó: szimbólumszótár, Budapest, Theater Art Fotó, 1998.

Barta, Judit

The critical analysis of ‘news curation’ as an exemplary praxis of digital journalism

In my doctoral thesis I analyse the ideology and professional practice of online news curation in light of technological change and transforming media usage. The concept of news curation appeared in journalistic rhetoric roughly in parallel with the expansion of civic journalism, the proliferation of user-generated content and the obligatory exploitation of technological possibilities offered by the web in the context of increased news competition and a fragmented public sphere.  The aim of my research is to examine how traditional journalistic roles are reinterpreted or preserved when journalists are engaged in a new journalistic praxis and what are those habitual, institutional and structural conditions that determine whether a new practice will remain marginal in a newsroom or become the defining feature of a collective journalistic identity. It is hypothesized that the increasingly transparent and open nature of journalism, the lengthening of the news cycle, and the radically transforming media usage changes the collective perception and definition of what news is, hence the research also tries to reflect on this process.  News curation is analysed on both a discourse and an empirical level by looking at journalists’ reflections on their profession ((Nieman Reports, a World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), Poynter Institute, Főszerkesztők fóruma); by analyzing successful and failed experiments of news curation in order to describe the practice; and by comparing the online and the traditional reports of a political drama (the corrupt state intervention into the tobacco business in Hungary) to identify unique features of news curation.

Indicative Publications of the Student:

• Egy generáció médiahasználatáról. Társadalom- és médiatudományi megközelítések (Pécsi Tudományegyetem) „Az online szerkesztőség és az új digitális nemzedék egymásra hatása” 2013. november 8

• „A szélsőjobboldali tematika kezelése a magyar médiában” in Médiakutató 2008/tél http://www.mediakutato.hu/cikk/2008_04_tel/05_szelsojobb_a_magyar_sajtoban

• „Ha nem megy ellenük, csináld velük!” in Médiakutató 2007/ősz http://www.mediakutato.hu/cikk/2007_03_osz/07_ellenuk_veluk

Selected Bibliography:

Fenton, Nathalie: New media, old news: journalism & democracy in the digital age, Los Angeles : SAGE, 2010.

Rosenbaum, Steven C: Curation nation: how to win in a world where consumers are creators, New York : McGraw-Hill, ©2011.Anderson, C W: Rebuilding the news : metropolitan journalism in the digital age,Philadelphia : Temple University Press, ©2013.Zelizer, Barbie: Changing Faces of Journalism, tabloidization, technology and truthiness, London ; New York : Routledge, 2009.Paterson, C A; Domingo D: Making online news, New York [etc.]: Peter Lang, cop. 2011.Jones J., Salter Lee Digital journalism, Los Angeles: Sage: 2012Lown, Edward : An introduction to technological changes in journalism, Ann Arbor, Mich. : Published for the Journalism Program, State University of New York, College at New Paltz by University Microfilms International, 1977

Further Reading on the Web:

• www.niemanlab.org
• www.cjr.org
• www.foszerkesztok foruma
• www.cij.hu
• www.reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
• www.poynter.org
• www.wan-ifra.org

Pusztai, Beáta

Reconstructing Japanese National Identity in Contemporary Anime

The research aims at delineating the basic patterns of negotiating national identity in contemporary Japanese cartoon. Designated as the objects of analysis are the samurai and the so-called furusato (“native place”, “homeland”, “the countryside”) anime. At the millennium, these two groups of cartoons provided the viewer with an alternative to the mainstream commercial anime of the 1970–90s, which was fascinated by—and arguably, much infatuated with—the various cultural treaures of “the West”. The problem would be examined from thematic, (inter)medial, and generic aspects. As far as theme (content) and mediality are concerned, I would like to compare the animetic and live-action filmic representations of the samurai and the furusato. As for the furusato, I am also intrigued to know why the mythology evolved into a coherent genre not in the live-acted (nor in the literary, for that matter), but specifically in the animated medium. Finally, generic analysis comes into play when attempting to sketch the “evolutionary” process of these two genra, and when comparing the animetic version of the samurai genre with its live-acted counterpart.Indicative Publications of the Student:

• Az egész estés élőszereplős mangafeldolgozások narratívájának töredezettsége. Metropolis, 2013/1., 64–77.
• Júlia, az utolsó szamuráj: Japán harcos nemességének reprezentációja a kortárs animében (konferencia előadás) http://www.idi.btk.pte.hu/dokumentumok/egyenespolitikaigyakorlat_kotet.pdf
•  Távol, és mégis közel – Az interkulturális adaptáció problémája a Romeo x Juliet (2007) című japán rajzfilmsorozatban. Filmszem, II./4. (2012. tél), 36–50. http://issuu.com/filmszem/docs/filmszem_ii._vf_4.sz_m_shakespeare_adapt_ci_k
• Képregény + film = rajzfilm? – A japán rajzfilm a médiumközi adaptáció hálójában. Apertúra. Film – Vizualitás – Elmélet, 2012. nyár
• http://apertura.hu/2012/nyar/pusztai-kepregenyfilm=rajzfilm Selected Bibliography: Cavallaro, Dani: Japanese Aesthetics and the Anime: The Influence of Tradition, McFarland & Company, Jefferson, 2013
• Hu, Tze-yue G.: Frames of Anime: Culture and Image-Building, Hong Kong University Press, Hongkong, 2010
• Lamarre, Thomas: The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis–London, 2009
• Napier, Susan J.: Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005
• Norris, Craig: Manga, anime and visual art culture. In: Szugimoto Josio (szerk.): The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2009, 236–260.
• Poitras, Gilles: Contemporary Anime in Japanese Pop Culture. In: MacWilliams, Mark W. (szerk.): Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime, M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2008, pp. 48–67.
• Szató Kendzsi: More Animated than Life, Kyoto Journal, 41 (1999), Kötetben: Maszuzoe Jóicsi (szerk.): Years of Trial: Japan in the 1990s, Japan Echo, Tokió, 2000 http://www.kyotojournal.org/media/animated.html

Further Reading on the Web:

• www.animeaddicts.hu
• www.myanimelist.net
• www.animenewsnetwork.com
• www.anidb.net

Batka Annamária

A History of the Hollywood-style Continuity Cutting

Selected Bibliography:

James E Cutting, Kaitlin L. Brunick és Jordan E. DeLong: How Act Structure Sculpts Shot Lenghts and Shot Transitions in Hollywood Film

Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind. Volume 5 Issue 1,Summer 1-16.

http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~jec7/pubs/FILMACTS.PDF William Brown: Resisting the Psycho-Logic of Intensified Continuity Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind.Volume 5, Issue 1,Summer 2011:69–86. DOI:10.3167/proj.2011.050106. David Bordwell :Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film

Further Reading on the Web:

David Bordwell: The Viewer’s Share: Models of Mind in Explaining Film http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/viewersshare.php Todd Berliner, Dale J Cohen: The Illusion of Continuity: Active Perceptionand the Classical Editing System http://sensation.vizkult.hu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Berliner.Cohen_.continuity.pdf Tim J. Smith: A Window on Reality: Perceiving Edited Moving Images http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/CDPS-11-0079_timjsmith_preprint.pdf Film Quarterly, Vol. no. 55, Issue no. 3,pages 16-28. http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1525/fq.2002.55.3.16 Tim J. Smith,John M. Henderson Edit Blindness:The relationship between attention and global change blindness in dynamic scenes. Journal of Eye, Movement Research 2(2):6, 1-17 http://csi.ufs.ac.za/resres/files/smith_2008_jemr.pdf Joseph P. Magliano, Jeffrey M. Zacks : The Impact of Continuity Editing in Narrative Film on Event Segmentation Cognitive Science(2011) 1–29 Copyright 2011 http://dcl.wustl.edu/DCL/Event_Perception_and_Understanding_files/maglianoandzacks%282011%29.pdf Jeffrey M. Zacks,Nicole K. Speer,Khena M. Swallow,Todd S. Braver, Jeremy R. Reynolds Event Perception: A Mind–Brain Perspective Psychological Bulletin Copyright 2007 2007, Vol. 133, No. 2, 273–293 http://ccpweb.wustl.edu/pdfs/event_per.pdf Tim J Smith The attentional theory of cinematic continuity Projections Summer 2012 http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/ATOCC_timjsmith_final_plusrefs_plusfigs.pdf James e. Cutting , Ayse Candan: Movies, Evolution and Mind http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~jec7/pubs/evolfilm.pdf

Orosz, Anna Ida

“The world” depicted by “a world” Hungarian animated documentaries of the 1970s and 1980s

Documentaries created with animated techniques – due to their constructed nature – usually fall out of the scope of the mainstream documentary discourse, although film makers often use hybrid creative practices or mixed medias to represent the actual world in the most authentic way. After 1968 a documentary turn occured in the Hungarian fiction film (e.g. documentarist fictions; narrative documentaries coined “Budapest School”), while experimental film makers came up with the reflections on the mediatic characteristics of the two opposing film practices (e.g. the films of Gábor Bódy, Tibor Hajas, Tamás Szentjóby, Miklós Erdély, András Jeles). Parallel to these, Hungarian animation artists also started to use documentarist methods at the turn of the 60s–70s (such as the “anima verité” method of György Kovásznai, or the sociological animations of Kati Macskássy made with children); then also the reflections on the linguistic characteristic of the form appeared at the turn of the 70s–80s (e.g. 19th century “fake documentaries”). My PhD research focus on the styles and trends of Hungarian animated documentaries and animations using documentaristic means and methods from the turn of the 60s–70s until today.

Indicative Publications of the Student:

Történelem „belülnézetből” – Vázlat a történelmi animációs dokumentum-rövidfilm emlékezet-ábrázolásának vizsgálatához. Apertúra, 2012/nyár. http://apertura.hu/2012/nyar/orosz-vazlat-tortenelmi-animacios-dokumentum-rovidfilm-emlekezet-abrazolasanak-vizsgalatahoz Testetlen hangok – A(z) (magyar) animációs dokumentumfilmek hangi világáról. Prizma filmművészeti folyóirat, 2011/2. pp. 84-91. http://issuu.com/prizmafolyoirat/docs/prizma6 „Csak ott tul a tengeren, ott van az élet!” – Két magyar kísérleti dokumentumfilm a századfordulós amerikai exodusról (Orosz István: Ah, Amerika! / Forgács Péter: Hunky Blues – Az amerikai álom). Prizma filmművészeti folyóirat, 2010/2, pp. 92-97. http://issuu.com/prizmafolyoirat/docs/pizma4

Fábics, Natália

The Perception of Contemporary East Asian Films at European and North-American Film Festivals and in Art Cinemas

In addition to East Asian art movies, western audiences otherwise prefering more serious works of art, have in the past years, decades also started to admire contemporary East Asian cinema’s mainstream films produced with the primary aim of achieving commercial success: they appear at different film festivals, are often selected for the competition sections, and also make it to the program of art cinemas. The study mostly based on audience and reception recearch looks into the reasons of this phenomenon, while through the analysis of actual films and director ouvres tries to identify the characteristics, on the basis of which Western audiences handle a wide range of East Asian films as having similar qualities as Western art films, but are at least willing to see them in the same environment.

Indicative Publications of the Student:

The American Remakes of Contemporary Japanese Horror Films. Metropolis (2013) no. 1. (In Hungarian) Mothers, Stepmoms and the Brave, New Family – Intercultural Remake and Melodrama: an Analysis of American Stepmom and its Bollywood Remake. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies (2013) no. 6. (online version: http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-film/C6/film6-8.pdf) Translations (from English to Hungarian): Elsaesser, Thomas: Tales of Sound and Fury – Observations on the Family Melodrama. Metropolis (2012) no. 3. Elsaesser, Thomas: The Mind Game Film. Metropolis (2012) no. 2.

Benke, Attila:

Theory of the alternative genre film through the versions of western films

The variety of film genres represent the experience of reality in several different ways, but they have common interpretation of it as Jenő Király or Thomas Schatz cites. Melodramas, musicals, crime movies, war films, westerns, science fictions and horrors usually would like to make us believe that the recent political-social order goes well, there are morally good, normal people who win or at least deserve to fight for them and the deviant/morally bad entites get their punishment at the end. However, there have been several so called ’revisionist genre films’ since the birth of the genre films which stood against the previously mentioned standard mythology as a subversive counter-mythology. Although there can be found alternative genre films in every genre, the western was the most important and most famous subverted genre in Hollywood and beyond.

As it was mentioned before there have been revisionist genre films since the beginning of genre history, however, the theoretical works of revisionism are usually concerned with this notion as the speciality of Hollywood in the 1960s and the 1970s or as part of a greater or even non-genre specific analysis. Nevertheless, the alternative genre film is a very interesting and important phenomenon because the movies which use the strategy of genre revisionism could cirticize the mainstream political and social ideologies. Like their traditional counterparts, revisionist genre films have clichés and recurring structures: amoral anti-heroes, relativization of the protagonist and the antagonist, pessimistic ending or targeted subversion of classical genre plots. Thus the alternative genre films shall be defined as parables which models and criticize the capitalist establishment with generic subversion.

So, the main question is why an alternative genre history (generic supertext) developed and could be created from the mass of alternative genre films. Is the making of artfilms the only way to subvert the dominant social-political ideologies, or this thesis should be reconsidered? Why does someone chooses to make a subversive genre film instead of a direct social problem film or analytical drama? Could the revisionist genre films defined as parables which notion is usually connected with artfilms? And why is the western the most frequently revised genre?

Thus, my main thesis is that there is a paralell film history with the standard/classical generic supertext which is made of subversive, ideology critical genre films that are the symptoms of the problems of the recent (mostly the Capitalist) Establishment. So, I would like to show that there are popular genre films which are not conformists and could imply that something is wrong with the world order. Therefore, genre revisionism needs a strong theoretical basis which I would like to create.

Indicative Publications of the Student:

Western-reformáció: Az 1950–1980 közötti revizionista westernek az identitásválság tükrében. Metropolis (2010) no. 3. pp. 32-55.

Felkelő Napok. Politikai modernizmus a japán újhullámban (1960-1972). Metropolis (2013) no. 1. pp. 8-22. (Online elérhetőség: http://metropolis.org.hu/?pid=16&aid=475)

Hazatérések. Házasság és család válsága az 1939–1945 közti magyar családi melodrámákban. Metropolis (2013) no. 2. pp.

Legendák revíziója. Adalékok Király Jenő westernelméletéhez. Metropolis (2013) no. 3. pp.

Oshima, a japán élet „pornófilmese”. Oshima Nagisa és a japán identitás. Filmszem III. évfolyam, (2013) no 1. pp. 5-15. (Online: elérhetőség: http://issuu.com/filmszem/docs/filmszem_iii._vf_1.sz_m_filmtortenet?e=4945161/5160816)

A határtalanság határai (Kölcsönkapcsolatok a Nyugat és a Távol-Kelet filmjei között. Pannonhalmi Szemle XXI. évfolyam (2013) no. 4. pp. 80-94.

Huszadik századi balladák. A melodráma Szőts István két nagyjátékfilmjében. In: Pintér Judit – Záhonyi-Ábel Márk (eds.): Ember a havason – Szőts István 100. Budapest: Kosztolányi Dezső Kulturális Alapítvány, 2013. pp. 143-161.

Szuperhősök 2.0. Batman, Robin Hood, James Bond. Filmvilág (2011) no. 9. pp. 18-20. (Online: http://filmvilag.hu/xereses_aktcikk_c.php?&cikk_id=10759&gyors_szo=benke%2Battila&start=0)

A nagypapa mozijában. A némafilm utóélete. Filmvilág (2012) no. 4. pp. 34-36. (Online: http://filmvilag.hu/xereses_frame.php?cikk_id=11028)

Tévedések és áldozatok. Hitchcock és hősei. Filmvilág (2013) no. 4. pp. 12-15. (Online: http://filmvilag.hu/xereses_frame.php?cikk_id=11396)

http://www.prae.hu/prae/articles.php?type=1&menu_id=73&cat=1

http://www.kortarsonline.hu/szerzotax/benke-attila

Pálos, Máté

Cinema of Cruelty – Strategies of Authorship in the European Art Film in the ’90s and 2000s

Provocative and schocking theme along with radical cinematic techniques was an important trend in late ’90s’ European art film:  Lars von Trier,  Haneke,  Seidl,  Gaspar Noé,  Breillat,  Bruno Dumont,  Chérau,  Grandrieux).

This rigid representation continues and radicalizes of Bresson’s, Anotnioni’s and Bergman’s impersonal cinametic style, however, on the other hand, von Trier, Haneke and other auteurs also criticize this high art modernist position by using popular genre methods and visceral effects on the viewer. These auteurs appear to retextualize modernist mechanisms in a postmodern film culture or simulate modernis characteristics as postmodern artist.

As modenist innovation have been commercialized and film theory have neglected the auteur theory, the auteur has also become virtual: they can no longer reflect reality therefore

Further Reading on the Web:

http://cinephile.ca/cfp-contemporary-extremism-8-2/

http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748641604

http://www.cineaste.com/articles/brutal-intimacy-analyzing-contemporary-french-cinema-and-the-new-extremism-in-cinema-from-france-to-europe

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/monatshefte/summary/v102/102.3.halle.html

http://sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/like-tears-in…-brain/

http://prizmafolyoirat.com/2011/11/03/palos-mate-„schmuck-of-ages”-lars-von-trier-a-bun-lelektana/

http://prizmafolyoirat.com/2013/10/03/hit-remeny-pokol-ulrich-seidl-filmjei/

http://www.filmvilag.hu/cikk.php?&cikk_id=11363&gyors_szo=&kep=

http://www.es.hu/palos_mate;freddy_es_a_felszakitott_humanum;2013-08-14.html

http://prizmafolyoirat.com/2010/11/19/anti/

Aesthetics and Politics of Space: the City as “Architexture” Ady, Mária

The research examines the aesthetics and politics of space, focusing on the housing estates and their representations. The latter shows a certain sematizm that concludes in the housing estate as highly negative cultural topos and visual image. However this common place covers quite different interpretations, for one of them understanding the housing estate as the demonstration of the socialist ideology, while the other argues that it is the characteristic materialization of the capitalist production. This contradiction of sematizm and final diversity in the representations raise the question whether the differences are due to actual housing estates differing in an architectural sense, or the alteration between the interpretations are merely produced on an interpretational level. And if there are substantive differences in architectural sense, it is still a question wheter those are the ones occuring in the interpretations. Therefore the two-stage model with the housing estates and their representations seems to be simplifying. Interpretations consist the depiction of the sensational experience on one hand and its intellectual reading on the other. Sematizm is the characteristic of the former momentum, while differences emerge in the latter. Based on the principles of architectural modernism many different housing estates can and are built, but the economical and „rational” mass-produced housing implicates more or less the same technology, scheme and materials to be used. Without reference to the economical, political or social system, this produce an intense, identifiable and unitary sensational experience – an experience that concludes in the housing estate as a negative visual icon and cultural topos. This sematizm covers the divergences of the actual housing estates, while the differences of the interpretations are due to the intellectual reading, that replaces the architectural differences with the ones driven from the cultural, economical, political and social system. The research examines the housing estates in architectural, economical and sociological terms, while it analyses their interpretations and representations in the terms of ideology criticism, sociology, social psychology and aesthetics. Further Reading on the Web:

http://beszelo.c3.hu/cikkek/kiskedvencbol-mostohagyerek

http://mozgovilag.com/?p=5411

http://vladivostokfilmfestival.ru/en/archive/film/1075/

http://keserue.hu/keserue/lekerekiteshu.htm

http://www.ludwigmuseum.hu/site.php?inc=mutargy&muId=86343&menuId=67

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEoZVGlHo6s

http://noemimondik.tumblr.com/page/4

http://emc.elte.hu/~metropolis/9701/GEL2.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwrGLFUYFxI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLf9Yb2nOWs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CspJDrCbow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD3f0YBNkjM

http://www.alternatywy4.net/galeria,1,1.html

Neo-avant-garde tradition in post-1989 art in EasternEurope (Focus: Hungary, Poland and Slovakia)

• In my research I concentrate on the relationship of the post-1989 generation to the neo-avant-garde tradition of the 60s and the 70s. In the context of this phenomenon I examine direct references, ties and the question of the continuation of a remarkable tradition.  My hypothesis implies a broader re-evaluation concerning the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde generation through contemporary artistic reflections, including borrowing, copy as well as appropriation, remake and reenactment.
• Appropriating the works of the “great generation”, re-enacting performances of the “fathers” from the 1970s is an expression of homage or even homage through “murder”. Common pursuit of artists who are referring to the foundations of 60s and 70s conceptual art with critical approach is to point out of the missing elements in the construction of a narrative of Hungarian, Polish and Slovak neo-avant-garde art.  By juxtaposing three different artistic traditions, three different post-communist countries – Poland, Slovakia and Hungary– not only the different relationships, the several ways of reflections, but the diverse institution-driven discourses of the region can also be detected.
• The research contributes to extensive debates and discourses on the neo-avant-garde through contemporary artistic practices, provides deeper understanding of the transitions that Eastern-European art underwent throughout the last more than 40 years and determine the role of the postconceptual trends of contemporary art since the nineties in this process..

News production online: structural changes in journalism. Comparing Hungarian and French newsrooms.

My doctoral thesis is focused on the analysis of online content production of Hungarian and French daily newspapers. The research question is framed as follows: How is the web being integrated into the editorial practices of four long-standing daily newspapers (Népszabadság, Magyar Nemzet, Le Figaro, Libération) in light of their positions in society and of their market and cultural attributes. The comparative analysis and historical examination of the profession highlights the unique logics of each social sphere that determine the possibilities of integration at the level of newsrooms, of content and of professional identity. The overarching question guiding my analysis is how the social network system of news production is being challenged by technological innovation. In order to find an answer to this I combine macro and micro analysis by looking at (1) different discourses on the issue (articles, presentations, manuals, publications of professional organizations, descriptions of journalistic trainings), (2) conducting interviews with Hungarian and French journalists, as well as (3) executing a content analysis of the web pages of the four dailies. The web, similarly to other technologies since the birth of the profession, comes up as an excuse in professional rhetoric for the normalization of journalistic practice or for genre differentiation. Under the current processes, when a suitable market, form and a content model is being sought after, ideologies are reproduced, such as the professional idolization of American examples, while at the same time, the journalistic position due to the rationalization of news production is being increasingly disqualified. Although the newsrooms under examination are less and less hierarchized, online news production and the concomitant technological knowledge and obligatory change strengthen managerial intervention and processes of regularization. What is at stake amidst the reactions to these transformed power relations is the legitimacy of the social position of journalism as such.

Indicative Publications of the Student:

„Le blog-reportage : émergence d’un nouveau genre journalistique”, Les enjeux de l’information et de la communication, Supplément : Journalisme et questions sociétales au prisme des industries culturelles, 2011. http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/les_enjeux/2011-supplement/Zagyi/index.html

„Integrated Journalism in Europe. French Report”, Jacques GUYOT és másokkal együtt, IJIE Life Long Learning Program, 2014. http://integratedjournalism.upf.edu

Selected Bibliography:

BOCZKOWSKI, Pablo J., FERRIS, José A. 2005. „Multiple media, convergent processes and divergent products: Organizational innovation in digital media production at a European firm”, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 597, n° 1, pp. 32-47.

ERDAL, Ivar John. 2009. „Cross-Media (Re)Production Cultures”, Convergences, vol. 15, n° 2, pp. 215-231.

GESTIN, Philippe és mások. 2009. „La production multisupports dans le groupes médiatiques français”, Les cahiers du journalisme [En ligne], n° 20. http://cahiersdujournalisme.net/cdj/pdf/20/04_GESTIN.pdf

KLINENBERG, Eric. 2000. „Information et production numérique”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 134. sz., 66-75. o.

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/arss_0335-5322_2000_num_134_1_2693 PATERSON, Chris, DOMINGO, David (dir.) 2008. Making Online News. The Ethnography of New Media Production, vol.1, New York : Peter Lang.

Záhonyi-Ábel, Márk

Film censorship in Hungary in the Horthy era  

The theme of the research is to analyze the institutional structure of the Hungarian film industry before 1945, especially the working of the film censorship in the Horthy era. Till now the film historiography hasn’t studied this problem in detail enough that is important not only from the viewpoint of the politics or social history, but from the viewpoint of the history of genres or styles also.

In the Horthy era the post-production control of the motion pictures (Hungarian and foreign feature films, documentaries, commercials etc.) was the work of the National Motion Picture Examination Board (Országos Mozgóképvizsgáló Bizottság – OMB). On the one hand this institution was a political instrument of the government (vindication of ideological aspects), on the other hand it was a part of the motion picture scene with that the political power could influence the working of the other film subsystems (production, distribution, projection) also.

The aim of the dissertation is to answer some questions connected with each other depending on archive material (documents of the OMB), memoirs and specialist literature. (1) The analysis of system of the film censorship in the Horthy era. – How did the OMB fit to the political and film institutional structure? (2) The analysis of process of decision making of the film censorship. (3) What kind of ideological aspects were dominant in the decision making? (4) Who applied the various aspects of the examination? Who were the censors?

Indicative Publications of the Student: https://vm.mtmt.hu//search/slist.php?lang=0&AuthorID=10035464

Záhonyi-Ábel Márk: Filmcenzúra Magyarországon a Horthy-korszak első évtizedében. http://www.mediakutato.hu/cikk/2012_02_nyar/12_filmcenzura_magyarorszagon/