Erdély, Miklós: Military Secret (A reconstruction of the installation made in 1984) (1984/1996)

Miklós Erdély prepared his work entitled Military Secret for the Orwell exhibition in Vienna in 1984, and included the following text in the catalogue: “In this exhibition I attempt to draw attention to the self-perpetuating mechanism of the war industry that subdues everything else. The mind-numbing, personality-destroying consequences of this phenomenon affect the very foundations of human existence in the face of the unknown. I believe that this is the most important aspect of the state of the world in 1984.” In a letter after the installation of the work, he summed up its significance for himself as follows: “After many difficulties, I have succeeded in creating an installation that is close to my original vision. ... I was able to try out some new effects. Thus the consistent use of light, colour and luminous paint. The incorporation of moving text (nice computerised word-processor) in an environment with an ‘arte povera’ atmosphere, etc. These effects suggest an effort towards a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’.” The light emanating from the background behind the scenes, the three red lights, which, according to the instructions given to Dóra Maurer, have an administrative function, indicate that “inside recording is in progress”, i.e. that no one is allowed to enter. The psychological diagrams illustrating the deceptiveness of human perception exemplify the truth of “appearances are deceiving”. And the thesis-like text, scrolling at precise intervals on a “precisely” built-in electronic message display, flashes the full semantic field of the term secret, and the work but does so with a device whose inability to display deeper, poetic thoughts is only apparent. Annamária Szőke