Whilst in Budapest, I was able to indulge my obsession with public bathing, and an exploration of saunas in particular as democratic spaces. I use this term in the Arendtian sense: that is, as spaces that allow individuals to come in to contact with others, providing the opportunity for them to ‘act’.
Kiraly Baths is one of the oldest thermal baths in the city. Floating in the dark, steam decayed, crumbling walls of the thermal bath I saw people bathing alone / with their significant other / in a small group of friends / sat silently next to an acquaintance. Dipping in and out of thermal pools, we split and re-grouped, before we all squeezed in to a hot (warm) tub in the garden to discuss Hannah Arendt and Leonard Koren’s takes on democracy and soaking. The line between regulars, first timers, residents, visitors weren’t well defined and I didn’t feel like a tourist. I started drawing parallels with the collective model put forward by Off Biennale (see previous post). The baths too were built to support a cyclical life span, a collective birth, death, re-birth, a supportive vessel of potentiality for people to populate through bathing / talking / sitting together.
Whilst each bather went on their own embodied journey, the fact that they shared the act of bathing rather than a standardised private experience made it at the same time a collective act of psychological and physical rejuvenation. Maybe that could be considered an act of defiance, too; another kind of civil courage which re-configures the way bodies are usually performed in public.
Drawing these comparisons between Kiraly Baths and OFF-Biennale, I was able to understand saunas as both a way to mirror an almost utopian version of the art community, as well as a resource which could help sustain it collectively. A space for people to meet, dipping in and out and sustaining their own practice.
Another return train recommendation came from John Powell Jones (thanks John); since back in Manchester I’ve followed this up, returning to Alan Kaprow’s 1966 ‘How to Make a Happening’. Excuse me for the long quote, but the following seemed applicable (questions aside about happenings and audiences).
If you happen, you can’t be on the outside, peeking in. You’ve got to be involved, physically. Without an audience, you can be off on the move, using all kinds of environments, mixing in the supermarket world, never worrying about what those out there on the seats are thinking. And you can spread your action all over the globe whenever you want. Traditional art is like college education and drugs. It’s fed to people who have to sit on their butts for longer and longer amounts of time to get the point, and the point is there’s lots of action happening somewhere else, which all the smart people prefer to just think about. But Happeners have a plan and go ahead and carry it out. To use an old expression, they don’t merely dig the scene, they make it. [1]
[1]You can listen to Kaprow’s full reading here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iCM-YIjyHE
