The ARTeria Foundation has become a 2024 partner of the international literary and cultural festival PesText, organised in Budapest by MISZJE – the Hungarian organisation for the management of copyright in the field of literature.
This year’s edition is centred around the theme ‘Text-World-Literature’, and the festival itself is organised from 12 September to 31 October 2024 in Budapest. The festival will be inaugurated with the opening of an exhibition of children’s book illustrations from Central and Eastern Europe at the Deák17 Gallery entitled ‘IN THE SAME TIME, IN THE SAME PLACE’. The exhibition presents works by contemporary artists from Hungary, Transylvania, Romania and Slovakia.
In turn, the Három Holló cultural centre will host a series of author meetings and other literary events.
PesText is organised in cooperation with the Petőfi Cultural Agency, with the support of the Visegrad Fund, the Petőfi Literary Museum and various cultural institutions from across Europe. Our main sponsor is the Hungarian Culture Foundation (Magyar Kultúráért Alapítvány). It is a partner event of the Budapest International Book Festival, making it a key platform for literary and cultural exchange in Central Europe.
As part of the PesText 2024-2025 festival, a programme has also been prepared, in cooperation with the ARTeria Foundation, entitled ‘V4 BORDERS AND BRIDGES LITERARY FESTIVAL: Enhancing cultural dialogue across the V4 region’ funded by the Visegrad Fund.
The project aims to build ‘bridges’ for the creation of long-term partnerships across the V4 region focused on contemporary literature, increasing awareness of cultural diversity and cross-border intercultural dialogue. Our main theme is raising awareness of the artistic and socio-cultural values represented by the book culture of the V4 region and the importance of book translation.
Activities include the creation of the V4 PesText Fanzine (link), the official presentation of which will take place during a concert by ZSÜJA, an active participant in the Budapest electronic scene and a student of electronic composition at the Liszt Academy of Music. Also planned are a literary illustration workshop, an exhibition of works by Aneta Františka and a meeting with editor and translator Flora Peťovská.
Anna Ochmann, president of the ARTeria Foundation, took part in the V4 Partners Brunch: Connection, which was organised on 27 September 2024.
On 28 September, a meeting was held in Három Holló under the motto MOSTY – A V4 POETRY AGENDA, with František Hruška (CZ), Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało (PL), Sergej Timofejev (LV), Miroslava Ábelová (SK), Miklós Borsik (HU), Mátyás Regős (HU) presenting their poems, which they had specially written based on the motto (‘bridge’) of this edition of the Festival.
Another activity was the V4 Roundtable debate organised in Szeged on 27 September 2024 under the motto ‘Central European zombies’. The evening will bring together the poet and writer Peter Šulej, editor of the magazine and publishing house Vlna, whose novel Together (Tiszatáj, 2024) was recently published, and the young Czech poet Jan Těsnohlídek. The discussion will focus on the possibilities of Central and Eastern European literature after the fall of communism, how young contemporary Czech and Slovak literature has forged its own path, and the joys and pitfalls of publishing. We will also try to answer an important question: what would Central Europe look like in a zombie film? The translator of the evening will be the eminent literary translator Judit Dobry, and the discussion will be moderated by Roland Orcsik.
Parallel to the PesText events, a Book Fair took place in Budapest, during which Hungarian readers had the opportunity to meet, among others, the Polish poet and writer Łukasz Barys, and the interpreter of the evening was Viktoria Kellerman, with whom ARTeria Foundation cooperated, among others, on the translation of Małgorzata Lebda’s poems as part of the Poets of Today – Voices of Tomorrow project.