30.09 2:00 am
Hide and Seek Event

The Curfew

street play

Venue: all over the city

Motto: “Don’t save your skin, get it off your back!”   

The street play The Curfew is an alternative form of public demonstration. A troupe roves the streets of Budapest. They push in front of them a three-meter high egg-shaped, multiplayer megaphone. They make great noise. They stop at busy public squares to perform their play as a speaking choir about the transfiguration of a group of security guards. The members of the group vow to give back the voice to the people from whom they previously took it away. With their presence, the troupe, in and of itself will be proof that today Budapest’s streets and public squares can indeed be spaces of independent self-expression.

During the play performed on the streets, the speaking choir recounts the origins of the transfiguration of a group of security guards: how they miraculously come to realize that all along they had only been, blindly, the thugs of the powers that be. They had intimidated, and silenced their peers in the name of the mighty. In the wake of their revelation, the guards turn their back to their destiny and decide to give back the people’s voices. They are helped by the magical “talking egg” in which the voices reborn and amplify. They vow to protect the egg and bring it onto the streets to the people, to spread the gospel.

In the past ten years artists Katarina Šević and Gergely László (Tehnica Schweiz) have worked together on several occasions. They realize their projects through groups of objects, accompanied by performative situations and events,  combined usually with text and narration. Their works are often presented outside of the gallery space, in public areas. They are propelled by the surrounding social dichotomies of today, and their artistic methodologies are based on complex working processes.

supported by
The main cooperation partner of this year's OFF Biennale is GfZK – Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig. The cooperation project is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

Participating artists: Gergely László (Tehnica Schweiz); Katarina Šević

Participating curators: The curatorial team of OFF-Biennale

composer Dóra Halas, Soharóza Choir, poet Krisztián Peer, actors Krisztián Simó and Balázs Várnai, The Heroes of the Shaft Company

Route:

1 pm Rákóczi tér

1:30 pm Blaha Lujza tér

3:30 pm II. János Pál pápa tér

4 pm Keleti pályaudvar

Hide and Seek program