Title of collection:
AnnART (1990–1999)

Accession ID:
aa

Date range covered:
1990–2000

Description:
The AnnART Archive comprises the documentation of the AnnART International Performance Festival, held at Lake Saint Anne between 1990 and 1999. The AnnART Performance Days were initiated in 1990 by Imre Baász and a group of young artists from Sfântu Gheorghe. Baász, a renowned artist, distinguished himself among other things by organizing the 1981 exhibition Medium – an event that sought to map experimental visual art in Romania – followed in 1990 by Medium 2, which already included an international outlook and a strong representation of emerging tendencies in contemporary art, such as video and installation. 

After the unexpected death of Imre Baász, the organization of the performance festival, as well as the Medium exhibitions (held every three years), was taken over by Ütő Gusztáv. Under his leadership, the AnnART festival experienced significant growth and increasing visibility, becoming an important catalyst for the development of the contemporary art scene in Sfântu Gheorghe, as well as a reference point internationally through the performance art network in which local artists were integrated. 

The organization of the festival and its related events involved numerous individuals, NGOs, and public institutions, helping to broaden the horizons of contemporary culture in the region—both for the new generations of artists participating as volunteers and for cultural policymakers at the county level. 

Over the ten editions of the festival, a total of 148 artists participated (many attending two or three times), producing 205 performances or ephemeral artworks.

The AnnART Archive is based on the archival materials collected by the festival’s principal organizer, Ütő Gusztáv. These include, in addition to extensive photo and video documentation of the artistic actions, a large collection of written documents, graphic materials, and artifacts. The archive also contains documentation of the institutional development behind the festival and includes records of the Artemis Foundation, initiated by Imre Baász and renamed the Baász Foundation after his death, as well as documents of the ETNA Foundation and the ETNA artistic group initiated by Ütő Gusztáv. The archival fonds were complemented by additional photo and video materials collected from the public. The archival process was further expanded through an open-archiving methodology, which included over 20 interviews with former organizers, volunteers, participating artists, and audience members. These interviews provide contextualization through oral histories that illuminate both the artistic actions and the organizational work behind the festival. 

The archiving of action-based artworks is an ongoing process, involving continuous cataloguing and supplementation through correspondence and dialogue with the artists — an effort initiated and carried out by the MAGMA Association with the aim of facilitating the future museum presentation of these works. 

Language of materials:
Hungarian, Romanian, English, French

Extent:
The fonds of the AnnART Archive are organized into Record Groups corresponding to the festival’s 10 editions, structured into Series by medium type (photography, video, written documents, artifacts, publications), and further divided into thematic Sub-series.

The digitized collection contains 1,033 photographs, 1,216 written documents (including graphic materials), and seven catalogues totaling 505 pages.

From 87 hours of VHS/SVHS video material, 90 individual video clips have been catalogued. 

Arrangement:
The physical collection is organized into boxes corresponding to the 10 Record Groups, 42 folders representing the Series based on medium type, and 106 folders corresponding to the thematic Sub-series. Each box and folder has been assigned a unique identification ID aligned with the structure of the digital archive. The arrangement follows, as closely as possible, the system initially developed by Ütő Gusztáv for the physical archive.

Photographs were stored separately and, where possible, grouped into sub-fonds according to their authors. Video materials stored on VHS/SVHS tapes were fully digitized (sometimes up to three hours per tape), then segmented into content units corresponding to the original production process, with duplicates removed during the process. These materials may include recordings of television programs, copies of documentaries and news reports produced for various broadcasters, video montages created for festival editions – with text inserts listing artist names and performance titles, documentaries produced by the festival’s official videographers, or unedited documentary footage. All videos were catalogued in their unedited form and are linked to the specific performances appearing within them solely through metadata, thereby preserving the full context and sequence of events. Time cues may be introduced at a later stage.

Written documents were arranged by recurring content type: Baász Foundation and ETNA Foundation records; Festival planning records; Correspondence and manuscripts; Artist applications and documentation; Catalogue production files; Printed materials; Ütő Gusztáv personal records. In cases where documents were grouped together, a single archival record was created with multiple media representations – for example, documents spanning several pages, including recto–verso. 

Each media representation of an archival object includes both a Preservation Copy (uncompressed image or archival-quality video) and a compressed Access Copy. Each archival object receives a unique Access ID, structured as follows:

1990-aa-01-d-00023
| year | collection | record group | series | unique number within series |

For objects with multiple representations or pages:

1990-aa-01-d-00024-001
| year | collection | record group | series | unique number | sequence number |

Scope and contents:
The formation of the AnnART Archive arose partly from the need inherent to performance art which – being ephemeral – requires parallel documentation. The archiving work was carried out systematically by Ütő Gusztáv and incorporates the contributions of many individuals from the festival’s broader organizational circle. It also aligns with alternative institutionalization practices developed in the spirit of Fluxus, where the preservation of ephemeral objects, mail-art correspondence, and network-building function as essential components of creative activity. Even the graphic emblem of the ETNA Foundation originates from mail-art correspondence, pointing to a proto-network active since the 1980s. The archival activity initiated by Ütő Gusztáv can be compared to similar well-known initiatives such as Artpool in Budapest or the archival practice developed by Boris Nieslony / Black Market International. This tactical form of creative institutionalization is also illustrated by instances in which these structures occasionally mirrored state bureaucracy – for example, when the ETNA Foundation, as part of a wider network, temporarily became the “Embassy of Nomadic Territories,” from which passports could be obtained.

The extensive body of materials accumulated through Ütő Gusztáv’s archival practice also served as a pedagogical tool: the documentation of the AnnART festivals, together with materials gathered through the performance network, was used in the public screening program ÉLŐ TÉKA [LIVE THEQUE] (1996–2003), which provided an alternative educational platform for students of the Art High School in Sfântu Gheorghe. The creation of an open social context for alternative artistic practices and the dissemination of information were initiated already by Imre Baász and have been continued by younger generations in the city, who carry forward the “development of the human medium” (Baász, 1991) as an intellectual legacy and as an anchor point for their own activities. The long-term maintenance of the archive by Ütő Gusztáv has likewise functioned as an instrument of continuous institutionalization in the field of alternative, experimental, and contemporary art – a tendency reflected in many such initiatives as the Transylvania Nemzetközi Előművészeti Központ [Transylvania International Performance Center], developed within the ETNA Foundation (1999). The digitization and systematic processing of the archive continues this effort and opens up this shared learning process to the public, facilitating researchers’ access to the materials. 

Given its nature and complexity, the archive is relevant not only to art historians and artists but also to scholars in the human sciences studying the development of civil-society organizations in the 1990s or examining the funding systems and cultural policies of that period. 

To support the development of this research infrastructure, the archive also includes a structured bibliography and a glossary of terms.

Ownership and rights:
All artworks and related documentation are protected by copyright. The rights holders include the creators of the works, the authors of the photo and video documentation, the authors of written documents, as well as the ETNA Foundation and MAGMA Association.

We have made every effort to contact each author individually regarding the inclusion of their materials in the archive.

If you hold the rights to any of the artworks or documents and wish to request restrictions on public access, please contact us at: annart@magma.ro

Conditions governing use:
Archived materials are marked either as public-access documents or as restricted-access materials requiring authorization. 

Materials may be consulted exclusively for research. Reproduction, publication, or use in editorial, academic, or exhibition contexts requires prior permission from the copyright holders.

Any commercial use is strictly prohibited without written authorization.

For permission to use these materials, please contact: annart@magma.ro

Repository:
The core collection of the AnnART Archive is part of the archival fonds of the ETNA Foundation, maintained by Ütő Gusztáv. The ETNA Archive is currently housed in the House with Arcades, within the Székely National Museum.

Archival fonds gathered through the public campaign undertaken by the MAGMA Association as part of the digitization and cataloguing project belong to the respective fonds holders, and their physical preservation is the responsibility of the owners. The storage location of each sub-fonds outside the core fonds is indicated individually at the sub-fonds level. 

Collection processed by:
The collection was processed and digitized by the MAGMA Contemporary Medium Association under the coordination of Szilárd Miklós, with materials supervised by Ütő Gusztáv. The project team included Kispál Attila, Kispál Ágnes Evelin, Koter Vilmos, Izsák Előd, Ördög Gyárfás Ágota, Toró Attila, Zajzon Noémi, and Seprődi Attila. Institutional partners comprised the Székely National Museum and the ETNA Foundation. 

Processing information: 
The processing of the AnnART Archive was carried out through a project co-financed by AFCN in 2025. Funding was obtained by the MAGMA Contemporary Medium Association, and the project was carried out in partnership with the Székely National Museum – including its financial support – and with the ETNA Foundation, which made available part of its collection. 

For processing the AnnART Archive, the materials were temporarily moved to MAGMA Labor, the research laboratory for recent art developed by MAGMA in the basement of its exhibition space.

Digitization and cataloguing will continue in 2026, during which approximately 1500 additional documents and 300 photographic negatives will be added to the database. After the completion of digitization and cataloguing, the archival fonds will be returned to the ETNA Foundation, organized, labeled, and stored in new archival boxes.

Subjects:
Visual arts; Performance; Civil society

Locations:
Sfântu Gheorghe; Lake Saint Anne