'MANAMANA PROTEST SONGBOOK'

WHAT?
As part of the Budapest representation at 'Rotor' in Graz, Austria, Budapest based art /political paper, 'Manamana': Varnagy Tibor, Fogarasi Andras, Miklos Erhardt and Dominic Hislop are preparing an installation/performance/discussion event as an inquiry into the connections between artistic/musical creativity and political engagement. As part of an installation we will make in the gallery, we plan to present a number of song titles and lyrics that will be collated from suggestions, some of which (we hope) will be given to us by responses to this e-mail.

WE'D LIKE?
We'd like to ask you to contribute by suggesting a song (artist and title) to us that (in the past or in the present) either had an influence on your own political outlook or in some way simply resonated with your own views. The song itself needn't necessarily be explicitly political in its content. It could be that it has or had political connotations only in a certain
context or it could be that the production and distribution of  the song was a manifestation of a certain political approach that you appreciated.

We would also like to ask that for the song/songs you choose, you explain a bit, in a few sentences (or more if you have time), the context of the song and some reasons why in your opinion it had some special relevance to you, was important generally or how you think it was successful / effective.

WHEN?
Sorry this is so late notice, but we'd like to ask that you send this before Friday 11th July as we'd like to try to find the relevant lyrics (if relevant) on the internet (if it's not too obscure), include them in the installation alongside your comment about the song. The exhibition will open on the 12th of July at 'Rotor' in Graz and will include a musical performance event at which we'll attempt to work with some of the material sent to us. Therefore, a swift response would be very much appreciated.

ALSO
On Friday 11th July between 8pm and 9.30pm (CET), there will be a radio program hosted by Graz based independent local radio station, Radio Helsinki, (92,6 MHz in Graz and in the surrounding area or live streaming at
http://www.helsinki.at/live-stream.php) which will feature music and phone interviews with some activists, artists and musicians about the above mentioned topic.

PAPER
Documentation from the discussion and song contributions will be collated to produce a special 'Manamana Protest Songbook' edition of the paper.

FORWARD
Please pass this mail to anyone else that you think may be interested in contributing.

THANKS,
Manamana:

Manamana is an irregular, Hungarian-language, free paper (format A4, 20 pages, b/w, 400 copies) initiated by Tibor Várnagy in Budapest in 2000. Manamana began as a reaction to the social environment in Hungary in which 10 years after the political changes, aside from irrelevant illustrations of pseudo-struggles between national political parties,  there was virtually no
reflection in the press displaying and commenting on international oppositional politics and there were almost no demonstrations except for small ones that attracted negligible numbers of people. Launched during the 'Service' exhibition at the Mucsarnok in Budapest in September 2000, we sought therefore to develop a paper that directly connected the art-scene to the domains of civilian activity and political activism.
The four subesquent editions of the paper have contained contributions on artistic practices dealing with social and political themes, corporate globalization, excerpts from block-buster books unavailable in Hungarian (e. g. Empire or No Logo) and other unedited translations from the international dissident press, reacting to events like the G8 summit in Genova or the
September 11th attacks (e.g. Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Michael Hardt / Toni Negri, Robert Fisk, John Pilger, Arundhati Roy, Bifo and others). The project is also online, accessible through the web site of Liget Galéria at www.ligetgaleria.c3.hu (see also www.indymedia.hu).
Due to the relatively broad response (also from outside the art-scene), we think that the Manamana project succeeded to contribute to the formation of a network of different groups of people engaged in independent activities and, not least, to open up new channels of communication between different social groups.