The bells ring out in the central square of Vac, and the clock strikes as well, and I had to explain all this to someone who was with me. Why. And what is the difference. When we came from the exhibition, and passed through the dark courtyard into the pitchblack gateway, the gate was locked. We could not get out. There were others as well. We shook the gate a little. We tried, but we it did not open. A little while later though, just as it seemed that it was certain it was locked, an old lady came from the house and opened it. And we could leave. The exhibition space was at the end of the courtyard, an old church, where they no longer hold masses, the exhibition space of a Greek church. There were the TNPU lead bells, and of course, I also would have had to explain why it is not possible to ring them. "Because they are not real bells. They are made from lead." Later it occured to me, that as the church was not a real one, then it was a lead church. Perhaps we were members of a lead sect, there was a lead mass, we could go home in peace, a person could see something and there were no end to the questions.

In 1993 B. talked about Beautiful Darkness. The plan, he said, was to turn down the power supplied to public lighting in Budapest by a half. And to do this five minutes earlier than usual. So not at ten but at nine fifty five. Or something like this. I loved this idea: a work that cannot be noticed, but which people can still see. Large scale, but gentle, since it would have happened five minutes later in anycase. In that five minutes, people could ride buses, drive cars, travel all within a work of art. I didn't take much notice at the time of another part of idea, whereby the money saved would be given to someone, to a charitable cause. The social context did not interest me much.

For example, Rembrandt's Nightwatch has a considerably large social context. It was prepared to order, a group picture of armed hunters. And just how important a role these hunters played in the local societies of Dutch cities is obvious from these decorative processions that occured every night. They patrolled all night, and next day went to work filled with proud civic self-consciousness. Crime was minimal at that time, just the few small time pick-pockets, which are almost inevitable when large crowds gather, it is their nurturing culture after all. The crowds assembled as the streets resounded to the sound of shouting and drumming: people picked up their clothes, ran down the streets, applauded them, thumped the hunters' shoulders. A dionysian criminal expedition. Or rather, we can interpret it, that it was not just a nightwatch, that the picture darkened only with the passage of time. But now that it has been restored, it is much clearer. Travellers have come from there and said it really is not so dark

We have to acknowledge that we have been living in interesting times recently. Before the change of system, during it and afterwards. From a social point of view these were interesting times here. This is what people were mostly talking about... we had pictures of it as well, some one is running in the street, later an MP, some, more, mutilated relics relics are standing in squares. In the town where I was born, there stands a large, yellow pillar, a brick obelisk. As it stands there, no one knows anything about it, what it wants here, it has nothing to say. It is so ugly, that perhaps it should have. Perhaps it does... Behind it, in the proper centre of the cemetry for Soviet heroes, they have stuck a wooden headboard, and the two together, the concrete surface with its face and cyrillic letters, and the headboard, that is also a picture, a story. It is also about something, something entirely different. It is not interesting what they wanted with it. That's tiring. Or rather, what they wanted, and compared to this, what became of it; the forms of fallibility. That at what price does someone dare to be so fallible, and just how well. But let's say this is accidental. There are more heroic forms as well - much more placid, other kinds of alchemies.

A society, let us suppose, is a text. It has in it subject, predicate, figurative meaning. How can it be read? A work of art, let us suppose, is a society. It doesn't want to be beautiful. It doesn't want to use, it wan't to function directly. How is it possible to live in it?

Ferenc Szijj