At various points in the city of Pécs, portraits and sometimes texts of Hungarian authors appear. We managed to get to PaintTheTownPécs, the person behind the literary street art project, who told us about his work - keeping his incognito, of course.
"It all started with a book. During the first wave of the virus, a friend of mine recommended Attila Bartis's book A Nyugalom. Reading gave me an experience that I couldn't keep to myself. As a result, I was amazed at how many people in my circle of friends read and what kinds of things they read, yet we only talked about it superficially" - this was the creator's personal motivation, which immediately spurred him to action. "It so happened that in 2020, the year of sweet disability, in addition to reading, I thought of using another old-new hobby of mine to entice back to reading those who, like me, for some reason already had a book in their hands a long time ago and were perhaps just waiting for such a sign. "
Since street literary portrait galleries have popped up in several neighborhoods, we were curious about the concept. “This project is characterized by controlled chaos rather than purposeful awareness. As a rule, my current readings determine who ends up on the switchboard, so it is possible that in the near future, the attentive passer-by may come across a portrait of Lajos Nagy Parti, Ádám Bodor, Péter Závada or László Bertók. I like to talk about books and this also has an effect on whose portrait I blow up, and others give voice to a literary experience that is important to them in a different way. For example, the Attila József quote on Hunyadi út cannot be directly linked to me, but I know the perpetrator". In this way, public literature can be organized into a movement along the lines of Paint The Town Pécs, whose works it is virtually Instagramon we can also follow. The name of the project also refers to the English expression that the mysterious culture manager translates into Hungarian, or rather Pécs, as: "Beer made in, Tubi in the living room, then Est".
