János Sugár

János Sugár (8 July 1958, Budapest) is a Hungarian artist, filmmaker, and a founding member of the Media Research Foundation.

He studied sculpture at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (1979-1984) and was an active member of the Indigo group led by Miklós Erdély between 1979 and 1986. With Erdély he organised the discussion series Gyorskultúra [Fast Culture] between 1984-1988. He was a member of the Béla Balázs Studio since 1985 and a member of its board of directors between 1990-1995. Between 1987-1988 and 1989-1990 he gave a series of lectures entitled Alternative Film School with Miklós Peternák for the Scientific Dissemination Society at the Attila József Free University. In the 1980s he was repeatedly awarded the Studio Prize and later the Derkovits Scholarship, and in 2006 he received the Munkácsy Prize. Since the early 1980s he has participated in numerous major national and international group exhibitions, including the São Paulo Biennale in 1991, Documenta in Kassel in 1992, the Manifesta 1 in Rotterdam in 1996, and, as a development of the latter, together with Yuri Leiderman, at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest in 1998. In 1988 and 1999 he was a fellow of Experimental Intermedia in New York. A selection of his films was shown at the Anthology Film Archives, New York in 1998.

Meanwhile, he is one of the founders of the Department of Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, has been a professor of art and media theory since 1990, and has been head of the department for several years.

In 1994, he was a resident at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the Artslink program.

Founding member of the Media Research Foundation, which in 1994, 1995 and 1996 organized the MetaForum conference series with Geert Lovink and Diana McCarty.

Since 2007, he has been one of the presenters of Tilos Radio’s Alkotás útja, a thematic programme of live discussions and demonstrations on contemporary visual art.

He co-edited two books on media theory, Hyper text + Multimédia (Artpool, 1996) and Buldózer: Médiaelméleti antológia (Media Research Foundation, 1997).

Early in his career he was interested, among other things, in the interactions resulting from the radical fusion of classic graphic reproduction processes. In addition to his art and public actions, he has created post-conceptual installations, films, videos, theatre sets, television and radio programmes. (2022)

He lives in Budapest.

Publications

• editor, Hyper text + Multimédia, notes & afterw. János Sugár, trans. Ágnes Ivacs and Gabriella Bartha, Budapest: Artpool, 1996, 64 pp; 2nd ed., corr., 1998. Anthology with texts by Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, George P. Landow, Ian Feldman, Chuck Clifton, and chronology. (Hungarian)
• editor, with Agnes Ivacs, Buldózer: Médiaelméleti antológia, intro. János Sugár, pref. Geert Lovink, Budapest: Media Research Foundation, 1997, 220 pp. Anthology of contemporary media theory, derived from the Metaforum conference series and Nettime mailing list. (Hungarian)
• editor, Digital Identity / Digitális identitás, trans. Béla Zsadon, Budapest: Media Research Foundation, 2000, 28+28 pp. Texts by Felix Stalder, Alan Sondheim. [1] [2] [3] (English)/(Hungarian)
• "Reciklált figyelem", Balkon 8, 2004. [4] (Hungarian)
• "Schrödinger’s Cat in the Art World", in East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe, ed. IRWIN, London: Afterall Books, 2006, pp 208-221. (English)
• PST (Public – Street – Tactical). The Public Art Practice of János Sugár, ed. Eszter Szakács, Budapest: tranzit.hu, 2017. Texts by Dóra Hegyi, Sándor Hornyik, János Sugár, Eszter Szakács, Andrea Tarczali. [5] (Hungarian)/(English)
• more

Interviews

• Ágnes Ivacs, János Kurdy Fehér, "Egy csomag vasdrót, néhány vessző, farostlemez, egy pici gipsz és néhány cukorkás doboz: riport Sugár Jánossal", Gondolat-Jel 5, 1995, pp 48-59. (Hungarian)
• Geert Lovink, "Intermedia: The Dirty Digital Bauhaus. An e-mail interview with Janos Sugar", Nettime, Feb 1998.
• Geert Lovink, "The Typewriter of The Illiterate. Interview with János Sugár", Nettime, May 2003.
• István Hajdu, "A jelentés a lojalitáshoz kapcsolódik, ami a jelentés keresésére indít. Sugár Jánossal beszélget Hajdu István", Balkon 5 & 6, May & Jun 2005, Part 2. (Hungarian)
• Zsuzsa László, "János SUGÁR, visual artist, 1958", in Regime Change: An Incomplete Project, Budapest: tranzit.hu, n.d. (English)/(Hungarian)
• Szilvia Seres, "„Akkor már lehetett tudni, hogy a számítógép létezik és valahogy a jövő errefelé vezet, és végre ideológiamentesen lehetett valami korszerűt propagálni.” Seres Szilvia beszélgetése Sugár János képzőművésszel", Digikult.hu, 22 May 2014; reposted, Artmagazin, 23 May 2014. (Hungarian)

Literature

• Beáta Hock, "Vremenska patrola, populistički slušatelj" / "Time Patrol, the Populist Listener", trans. Larisa Petric, Frakcija 33-34, Zagreb: Centre for Drama Art, and Academy of Drama Art, Winter 2004/2005, pp 104-113. [6] (Croatian)/(English)
• Márton Orosz, "Tanárok a Képzőművészeti Egyetemen IX. - Sugár János", Artmagazin, Nov 2013. (Hungarian)

Links

• Profile on the Hungarian University of Fine Arts
• List of exhibitions
• Profile in Artportal Lexikon
• Biography, 1996
• Wikipedia-DE