B EAST Magazine website

By Joel Alas

On a narrow street in Budapest’s vibrant Jewish Quarter, a new design shop offers a glimpse beneath the city’s cultural radar. It invites local street artists to display their designs on the wall, then echoes the motifs across clothing and furniture. Called Printa, the shop is a mix of gallery, café, boutique and screen printing workshop.

A palate of black and white dominates the store. It’s a start-yet-effective colour scheme that allows the art and products to stand out. The clothing range, too, is primarily a two-tone selection, and it works perfectly for the style of design favoured by artists here.

From the clothing racks hang edgy t-shirts, dresses, scarves and even aprons, while around the shop are second-hand furniture items, re-upholstered with smartly printed fabrics. There’s lots of textile recycling going on here: bicycle tubes turned into bags and purses, old washing machine drums revived as cushion-covered foot stools.

Printa opened in November 2009, offering an outlet for Budapest’s dynamic street artists. The city hosts a number of talented designers who began in the medium of graffiti, and have moved toward paper, canvas and sketchbook work. Printa’s founder is Claudia Martins, a Brazilian photographer disillusioned with her medium, who turned to screen printing as a new outlet.

“I always question: Do we need so many images? In photography we are overexposing the world,” Martins says over a café latte in Printa’s coffee corner. “Screen printing is pretty much the same technique as photography. Print shows the internal processes of each person. I’m totally in love with screen printing.”

The engine of the store is the printing workshop at the rear, with a rotating screen printing tree, rinsing basins, work benches, and shelves of old screens in their wooden frames. Here artists create their designs, then copy them by hand onto t-shirts and other fabrics.

There’s a small gallery space at the front of the shop where the designs are displayed in their original form – on paper or canvas, hung on the wall. The same patterns can be seen throughout the shop. As well as walking away with a canvas, you can take the design on a limited-run t-shirt.

Looking out onto the street is a small café area with an adjoining shelf of locally produced art books, plus editions from the ubiquitous Taschen design library and an obligatory Tom of Finland hardcover.

You’ll find Printa at Rumbach Sebestyen utca 10, almost directly opposite the ornately-decorated Status Quo synagogue.

Nearby, in the busy shopping district around the Vorosmarty Square, another creative clothing concept is taking shape. A group of young fashion design students have renovated a cheap apartment space overlooking the busy square, and have transformed it into an atelier and private clothing showroom. Called Kepp, the space is another example of initiative projected by the young creatives of Budapest.

A rack of fashion samples greets the visitor as they enter the small apartment, with designs ranging from simple to experimental. The designers here are all still studying at the local art university, and their ideas about material, texture and shape are fresh and exciting.

Kepp is a private showroom, so you’ll have to arrange a visit. E-mail info(a)keppshowroom.com to make an appointment.

Printa
www.printa.hu
Rumbach Sebestyen utca 10, Budapest VII

Kepp Showroom
www.keppshowroom.com
Vorosmarty ter 3

- By Al Jackson

In a city gripped by recession tighter than most, precocious good-time guys are urging the youth of Budpest to get out, get happy and get partying.

Bence Meyeri, the brain behind Wacky Parties, who together with Andras Eichstaedt, Janos Prorok and Matyas Lendvai of serial party/production/DJ crew Sick As A Dog, have been throwing dynamic pop-up guerilla raves in the metro stations, underpasses, and abandoned buildings of Budapest for the past year.

The likely lads recently hosted iLLFEST, a libertine mid-January weekender who’s first night took place in the concourse of the Astoria metro station. Chosen precisely for the heavy footfall of Friday night revellers traversing busy Karoly Kut avenue, attention was guaranteed and the minimal tech-house pumping from a makeshift DJ booth of trellis tables and ironing boards outside a news kiosk managed to attract quite a crowd.

After a couple of hours, the 100-strong party halted as the power (jacked straight from an outlet in the wall) failed. Perplexed cops looked on while Plan B seamlessly clicked into action and the throng was whisked to a club where the tunes continued to spin.

Hitches and glitches though are simply par for the course for Bence and the boys. Indeed, they seem to revel in the off-the-cuff ethic of what they’re doing. Importantly, the party goers are all plugged-in to the same attitude too and are eager to be part of it.

It’s just as well ‘cos Saturday night’s installment, in a freezing underpass off Ferenciek Square next to Erzsebet Bridge, was hit-up by the riot squad. As tear gas brought an end to a party that, Budapest’s likely lads at the helm, was thriving on its ’stolen moments’ vibe, it was a case of grab a lap-top, korg or ironing board and leg it to the van a few streets away.

However, this being a more focused, recession-era, Budapest, the 200 souls who had been waiting for this all week, or had simply stumbled across it and liked what they saw, were defiant. They were not ready for the authorities to kill their weekend (in addition to their economy). Not even at two thirty in the morning.

Again, exit strategies were already in motion and iLLFEST rumbled on in the eclectic Tuzrakter Cultural Centre. The squat-like former school building an inspired choice to sustain the hi-NRG D.I.Y. fun and keep us hedonists drinking and dancing well into Sunday.

In these troubled times it’s heartening to see that Andras, Matyas, Janos, Bence and associates, are throwing down the gauntlet: underground in Budapest, it’s invention vs recession and it’s kicking off.