Ironically, Auróra and its peers are descendants of the infamous ‘ruin bars’ of District VII, nowadays given a wide berth by locals for their splashy commercialism and hordes of overbeered foreign stag parties. Back in the Noughties, those junk-decorated DIY spaces existed, too, to promote a cultural agenda which, while less overtly politicised than Auróra’s, gave platforms to artists and performers to highlight and challenge social issues of the day. That district’s mainstream success and rising prices over time pushed those seeking to run community-based spaces into the neglected District VIII, where disused buildings and low rents were widely available.
While visitors are welcome, District VIII’s bars, cafés and restaurants are characterised by a pleasingly homely, by-locals-for-locals vibe. These include the lovely Lumen Café, also HQ to Mindspace, a brilliant social-innovation nonprofit that publishes the sharp District VIII zine 8OLDAL and whose imaginative initiatives have helped local entrepreneurs such as Verkstaden’s silkscreen studio and Hurrikan Press’s print establish independent businesses.
Also hardwired into the life of District VIII’s woke community are the kitschy vegetarian/vegan restaurant Macska, the lively bar Hintaló Iszoda, the intimate, speakeasy-style drinking club Keret and Rauf pâtisserie, which promotes the work of aspiring poets on its walls. Painters Palace, meanwhile, is a donations-funded live-art studio founded by British artist Tomass with a weekly events roster that includes life drawing, creative writing, forró dancing and Friday night ‘Drink and Draw’ sessions.
But Auróra and its peers go a step further, not only serving the local community but actively empowering it to shape its future. Among those peers is Gólya. Housed until recently in a tattily cute, 150-year-old bungalow, whose progressive overshadowing by shiny new high rises served as a powerful symbol of the neighbourhood’s gentrification trajectory, the 12 cooperative members running the multifunctional centre have just bought, with help from investors and a huge mortgage, a much bigger space in a former locomotive factory.
“It was important for us to own premises, if we could, so we can make long-term plans for decades ahead,” says Gergő Birtalan, one of the members, “and hundreds of volunteers and backers came forward to help us buy and renovate the new building.”
Three times the size of the previous centre, the raw industrial space will allow the cooperative to expand significantly its thriving programme of entertainment, education and community services, as well as offer cheap office space to more activist groups.
“We already house eight ally organisations,” says Gergő, “such as the independent political news website Merce.hu, a gym that offers boxing and breakdancing classes for poor local kids and an association that houses homeless people.
“When we finish the renovation in January, we will have a restaurant, a bakery, a crafts workshop, a roof terrace, a music radio station and spaces for the events we host, which range from concerts to film screenings to queer and trans parties.
“So many community spaces have closed down already and the pressures from government and redevelopers only grow stronger. But ours is a hopeful story. We’re not on the defensive; we’re on the offensive right now and that feels very good.”
Two tiny independent contemporary-art galleries also fuel-related agendas, namely Puccs and FERi, a feminist space financed by the nearby vintage clothing store Konfekció. The insanely stylish art historian Kata Oltai, resplendent today in 1980s Day-Glo sportswear and post-modern hair-metal mullet, gave up a prestigious career at Budapest’s premier contemporary art gallery to launch both ventures.
“It was amazing to have a fat curatorial job in the Ludwig Museum, with a collection and huge exhibition spaces,” she says, “but the state-funded mainstream arts scene in Hungary is just not addressing today’s oppressive, super-illiberal political and social climate and there’s no discussion of any kind of otherised identity: ‘Don’t be different’, basically. I wanted to run a space with my own money, so I can host cultural criticism and cutting-edge social-art theory and help artists and others speak out about the topics that concern them today.”
Kata calls District VIII the current home of Budapest’s ‘classic avant-garde’ and says it offers her ‘a small taste of the kind of multicultural capital we don’t have broadly and which the government is doing everything it can not to have’.
“Unlike in downtown, everything happens on the street here,” she says. “Everyone mixes, like in Asia or Africa – which I love. Here, there are Chinese, Jews, Roma, Africans, an intellectual student crowd, old long-term residents, savvy open-minded teenagers and different mentalities and racial and gender identities. Culturally, it’s a very promising mix and I think it makes the politicians afraid.”
www.auroraonline.hu | www.budapestpride.com | www.mindspace.hu | www.painterspalace.eu | www.golyapresszo.hu | www.facebook.com/FERifeministagaleri | www.puccsbudapest.com
Photography by Orsolya Varga, Aurora, Bullet Shih, FERi gallery and Mindspace
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