(Click here to see the gallery.)
(Click here to see Univ TV report.)
When you enter the PTE building on Ifjúság út and head right along the ground floor corridor, you pass a grey iron door, past some mysteriously lit windows, along the elevator and the staircase to the first floor, and you'll almost certainly see the cloakroom on the way. Later, porbably somebody will ask you where the Support Service is, to which you might well wonder, even though chances are you won't know what they're talking about.
However, believe it or not, there is one at the university building. Just behind the seemingly insignificant iron door, which conceals a few offices and a social room where students with learning difficulties can find effective help.
This is where the idea of painting the walls came from: to draw attention to ourselves. We wanted to create something that would be a sign of disability. Not in an intrusive way, but one that would grab attention.
The most important element in the creation process was the involvement of the students themselves. Diversity and unity became key words, inspired by the ideas of several of them. With this in mind, we created the globe and the symbols that fit into it as puzzle pieces, representing different disabilities. The icing on the cake was that most of the silhouetted figures were modelled by the students.
The painting attracted many people: not only students with visual impairments, mobility problems or learning difficulties, but also students from other disciplines whose enthusiasm drove them to us. Everyone unfolded, finding the part that was closest to them.
On Monday 4 December, we held a small handover ceremony, where we sang an updated version of "Bed, Table, TV" from the band "Kispál és a Borz". I think it was the flow of the process, the attunement, that gave the finished work its real value, and it now has a life of its own.
There is only one problem... Having pensively in front of it, I now worry that it might distract the attention of those passing in the corridor from that particular grey iron door.
- András Olessák -