{"id":2079,"date":"2020-01-07T15:00:35","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T07:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brack.sg\/?p=2079"},"modified":"2020-01-13T21:04:09","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T13:04:09","slug":"brackchat-art-authority-and-political-change-with-balint-komenczi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/2020\/01\/07\/brackchat-art-authority-and-political-change-with-balint-komenczi\/","title":{"rendered":"Brackchat: Art, authority, and political change with Balint Komenczi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Anthea Julia Chua<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Arts for Good Fellowship (A4G)<\/a>, organised by the Singapore International Foundation<\/a>, is an annual programme organised to grow the Arts for Good ecosystem by fostering a community of practice that harnesses the power of arts and culture to create positive social change. The A4G Fellowship brings together artists, arts administrators, creatives and programmers from the social sector from around the world to take part in an exchange of ideas and best practices across a four-month period. <\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
The fellowship consists of a series of webinars, as well as two exchange programmes in Singapore and Delhi, India. This year \u2013 the third iteration of the A4G Fellowship \u2013 focuses on the theme of Creative Empowerment for Children & Youth. In November, 26 Fellows from 11 countries joined 7 Fellows from Singapore for four days of co-learning that would spark collaborations which will grow and evolve over the coming weeks before the Fellows reconvene in Delhi in February, for their second exchange programme.<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balint Komenczi<\/a><\/strong> had been in Singapore for just a few days, but he navigated the streets around the YMCA hostel with remarkable ease. Confidently leading the way and cracking jokes as our group made our way to a nearby food court, it\u2019s clear he is well-liked. It\u2019s not hard to see why. Eloquent, personable and warm, he has a quick grin, kind eyes, and a knack for making people feel comfortable. Hailing from Hungary, Balint is a sociologist and a musician. As part of Auton\u00f3mia Foundation\u2019s community building projects, he leads community music workshops for Roma children and teenagers in Hungarian segregated villages, and also in small towns where Roma are living as minorities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Roma are an itinerant ethnic minority who are spread out across the world, principally in Europe. Historically and globally, they have faced centuries of persecution, violence, and discrimination. Before the presence of borders and states, Balint says, they travelled and roamed more freely, working in professions which facilitated that \u2013 for instance, as traders, or craftsmen and coppersmiths. In the 18th<\/sup> century, in the region now known as Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian empire conducted a census, forcing the Roma to settle down and urging assimilation. Under the Communist regime, there was a large focus on heavy industries, which employed many Roma people in iron mines, leaving them jobless after the bloc dissolved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet even then, during the Communist era, Roma communities were segregated, made to live away from the cities, or, if in the cities, separated from the majorities, in ghettoes. Having grown up in a countryside town, Balint remembers that a nearby Roma ghetto in the city housed Roma people and people living in poverty. In modern-day Hungary, most Roma people continue to live in the countryside. They face structural disempowerment that prevents them from integrating into the rest of society: ghettoization, widespread unemployment, lack of education and healthcare access, prejudice, and racism. Politically disenfranchised, they lack representatives in parliament \u2013 the one representative there is, Balint says, has openly misused money and is a \u201cfriend of the government\u201d infamous for misrepresenting the Roma. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Communist bloc dissolved, as new parties took power, Balint explains, the state tried implementing a spate of new programmes, none of which were well-designed. \u201cNo one was clever enough to imagine a holistic solution,\u201d he says, shaking his head. \u201cNo one could deal with the segregation, the school segregation, the segregated ghettoes. But at the same time, I think no one wanted <\/em>to. There wasn\u2019t the will<\/em> to do so.\u201d Instead, poorly-planned nation-wide programmes about eliminating ghettos and school integration continue to operate, while simultaneously perpetuating victim-blaming narratives that frame the Roma\u2019s exclusion from the rest of society as a result of their own laziness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balint was in Singapore for the Singapore International Foundation\u2019s Arts for Good Fellowship and we met for a quick chat over dinner about his arts practice. \u201cHow has it been?\u201d I asked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis was a really really powerful and groundbreaking experience to travel 2000 kilometres from Europe to meet artists from Australia, from India, from Cambodia, from Vietnam \u2013 from places I\u2019ve never been!\u201d Throwing his hands up, he confesses to not having been able to sleep the night before because he was so overwhelmed by how many new ideas and perspectives he was encountering in dialogue with other artists. \u201cAnd how\u2019s Singapore?\u201d I ask \u2013 \u201cWell, there are a lot of signs telling you what to do, and what not to do!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was particularly curious about how Balint\u2019s work as a sociologist and a musician informed each other. Hurriedly taking bites of his meal between sentences, his passion for the work he does is self-evident. \u201cMusic is really important to my life.\u201d He regales me with stories about travelling around Europe for festivals, smiling fondly at the memories of playing in different bands \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m too old for that now,\u201d he chuckles. Having previously worked with the Roma people as a sociologist, when a friend of his from Auton\u00f3miaFoundation approached him to craft a community music workshop, it felt natural to say yes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe just told me that they were starting a community project in Sz\u00facs-b\u00e1nyatelep, a small village in Hungary. It\u2019s around 100 people \u2013 really small \u2013 and the majority are Roma people. It\u2019s an ex-mining village in the hills. They have no school, they have no shops, they have no bank. They only have one public place \u2013 the community building.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo was a big experiment. In the beginning, I was alone. I didn\u2019t have too many ideas what to do!\u201d He tell me about how during the first workshop he conducted, he stood in front of a silent and sullen group of children who hated the musical exercise he\u2019d asked them to do, and swore under his breath as he tried to figure out how to proceed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThere was a guy that wrote really brilliant lyrics and raps so we decided as a group, this will be the lyrics, and we will do something. We thought we could maybe write more lyrics and complete it, or maybe write a verse or refrain to sing, because there were girls, also, who sang well. We tried to shape something that was about music and lyrics. Nobody played any instruments \u2013 there were guys who had some notions about rapping, and there were girls who could sing. There were children who just wanted to do something, and there were children who just didn\u2019t care. We had to find a balance.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter a while, a friend, Bal\u00e1zs R\u00f3zsa, who also works with Auton\u00f3mia joined me. We formed a community music project named, \u2018Give youngsters a voice\u201d. We always sit down before a workshop at least one day before a workshop and design it, shape it to the needs of the group. It\u2019s a really complex thing because we have the music and the children have the music, which is our joint language. Every youngster listens to music even if they don\u2019t necessarily play music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can art do, then, in the face of structural disempowerment? Balint segues into the topic of education, telling me that in Hungary, it is common for the teacher to be seen as an authority figure who forces students to learn facts. He calls it \u2018frontal learning\u2019 \u2013 \u201cAll of my youth, and most of my adulthood, I\u2019ve spent trying to overcome the disadvantages that I got from this education system.\u201d What he\u2019s describing hits close to home \u2013 having grown up in a Singaporean education system focused on standardised testing and hierarchical teacher-student relationships, I too feel like I\u2019ve spent a lot of time trying to undo the training that I grew up with, knowing that I will be a better collaborator and art-maker for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What he tries to do instead is to conduct the community workshops democratically. \u201cThe children have lots of things to tell,\u201d he says, \u201cthough it can get very chaotic sometimes!\u201d And if no one can play any instruments \u2013 which is often the case \u2013 they use electronic modes of music-making instead, downloading royalty-free tracks off the Internet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWriting the lyrics and selecting the track are also democratic processes \u2013 everyone writes together. We try to use these workshops to involve everyone who wants to take part in a collaborative creative process and wants to spend their free time more meaningfully.\u201d
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have to forget about playing authority. Working in sociology helps me to overcome the impulse to approach the children in a paternalistic way because I can see a lot of paternalistic approaches from other organisations that try to help. They try to help in a way that indirectly says \u2018you\u2019re losers\u2019 \u2013 we help you, we collect second-hand things for you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which then begs the question \u2013 how does he know he\u2019s helping? Like Balint, I am often sceptical of NGOs that provide such workshops for marginalised communities, particularly when their engagements are one-off rather than sustained. Many end up replicating skewed power dynamics that continue to disenfranchise the communities they claim to help. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balint offers a different perspective on the workshops, though, that I continue to ruminate on after our conversation concludes. \u201cThe youngsters who don\u2019t have a cultural programme for Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon, or after school, they just hang around \u2026.it\u2019s visible and obvious that once we are there, these youngsters enjoy \u2013 that we had a good time and they value our time together.\u201d There\u2019s often little-to-no sense of community or collective self-esteem in Roma settlements, and Balint\u2019s workshops can perhaps change that, though such impact is intangible and immeasurable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tells me about the music video that they wrote, recorded, and produced, how different members of the community came together to play different roles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCommunity music workshops can help change the mindsets of youngsters. You can supply them with the experience of co-operation \u2013 they don\u2019t meet otherwise. You can make positive steps forward, but it\u2019s always like\u2026it\u2019s a conceptual thing. It\u2019s a notion. It\u2019s not like a school curriculum that you give out the numbers or the degrees for the students, and it\u2019s not a controlled situation that you can measure. You can only hope that you contribute positively. But I hope they think that I contribute positively, and if not, at least we had a good time together!\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n