Dominika Trapp’s project is an attempt at an interpretation of the heritage of traditional culture along critical considerations but also at bridging the progressive strains of contemporary art and a new generation of the Táncház Movement in the form of collaborative work based on extensive research.

Throughout this accompanying research, emphasis is placed on the study of the works of artists collectives – one could say progenitors – that with progress in mind found inspiration in the culture of Hungarian peasantry. Beside the founding musicians of the Táncház, the research focuses on movements of the early Hungarian avant-garde, particularly on the young activists coalescing around Lajos Kassák, who, influenced by the revolutionary thoughts of Bartók, turned their attention to vernacular culture, towards an indisputable evidence of unity between ’nations incited against each other and commanded onto battlefields’ – as well as on representatives of an ’other Hungary’, in which Bartók recognized the possibility of intellectual renewal.

The project’s title is a further reference to this period: Peasants in Atmosphere is a poem by József Lengyel, premiered in 1917 at the first arts matinee of Lajos Kassák’s MA journal with i.a. Bartók and Schönberg pieces. With the title as an act of self-criticism the group acknowledges that, just in the case of the above-mentioned movements, serving different ideologies the culture of the defenseless peasantry is yet again being appropriated and arbitrarily staged as part of a certain atmosphere.

During the project a conceptual band will be set up, whose primary influences are the authentic performers of Hungarian folk music, the subversive character of Bartók’s figure, his musicological oeuvre and the musicians and artists following in his footsteps.

supported by Erste Stiftung

special thanks to Péter Éri, Márton Éri, Zsófia Frazon, Ló Kék, Ágnes Ménes, Bence György Pálinkás, Balázs Prokk, Ferenc Sebő, Örs Tari, Zsófia Tamara Vadas

Hide and Seek program