Titled Birth, Tamás Péli’s enormous piece is a work of art of unparalleled significance in many respects. Painted on fibreboard, the panel painting of nearly 41 square metres was completed in 1983 by Tamás Péli with the contribution of his disciples – including István Szentandrássy. Birth was made on the Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County Council’s commission and it was installed on the wall of the refectory of the children’s home in the Andrássy mansion of Tiszadob, also known as the City of Children. When the mansion was reconstructed into a hotel in 2011, the panneau was removed and hauled in four pieces to the András Jósa Museum in Nyíregyháza. It was stored in the museum’s corridor, covered – safe, but unseen.
Event
29.05
4:00 pm
Ateliers Pro Arts - A.P.A. Gallery (1085 Budapest, Horánszky u. 5.)
A vezetéseken való részvétel regisztrációhoz kötött.
Watch the two video works created as part of the collaborative project NEWS MEDLEY online!
The event is part of the Transperiphery Conversations series organized in conjunction with the exhibition Transperiphery Movement: Global Eastern Europe and Global South at OFF-Biennale Budapest.
Event
26.05
6:00 pm
Ateliers Pro Arts - A.P.A. Gallery (1085 Budapest, Horánszky u. 5.)
A vezetéseken való részvétel regisztrációhoz kötött.
Fuzzy will take part in the MENÜ imaginaire program series with a collective botanical workshop, called NOT QUITE CALIFORNIA WONDER.
Langfang, about 40 kilometers from Beijing, is one of the most polluted cities in China. The city is laced with smoke and exhaust fumes. The local environmental protection bureau is caught between a rock and a hard place; it ought to clamp down on industrial polluters, but they ensure the livelihood for most of the inhabitants. The film confronts us with a burning question of global importance: how can we negotiate the conflict between economy and ecology?
Anna Zilahi, Laura Szári, Kata Dóra Kiss and Gideon Horváth will discuss their works exhibited in the space of ACLIM! Agency for Climate Imaginary.
The hive as an architectural object was born out of the relationship between the beekeeper and the bees. Similarly to architecture, the hive connects those living within and around it. Over time, hives have gradually ceased to replicate the form of tree cavities that originally served as the natural habitat of bees, and have increasingly transformed into contraptions serving the comfort of humans. The balance has thus broken: instead of bees, now humans are the determining factor. Due to the stress caused by the changing of the hives, monoculturalism, and toxic pesticides, bees have become more vulnerable to diseases and parasites. As a consequence, they live in complete dependency on humans, as they have no time or energy to solve their own problems. Modern metropolitan life with its constricted living spaces and disconnection from nature gives rise to a similar crisis for humans. The problem of isolation has increased exponentially over the past year.
6 talks in the course of the Living Room program
Livestream via OFF-Biennale Budapest’s Facebook page
Event
09.05
4:00 pm
Culinary Institute of Europe (1085 Budapest, Kőfaragó u. 13.)
Csilla Hódi
A MENÜ imaginaire keretében látható Matango bár installációhoz kapcsolódóan Hódi Csilla egy gombamatinére várja az érdeklődőket az ujgur gombás szólás hívószavával.
Fuzzy will take part in the MENÜ imaginaire program series with a collective botanical workshop, called NOT QUITE CALIFORNIA WONDER.
For the second time, the rA/Upture thematic conference will be held on the launch of Xenotopia, this time at OFF-Biennale Budapest 2021.
The Roma Visual Lab, which is a critical film program at ELTE Media Department, in collaboration with the Off Biennale Budapest, organizes a screening of Late Birth and a roundtable discussion with guests, like Edit Kőszegi and Péter Szuhay filmmakers, Ágnes Daróczi, who has had a leading role in the Roma movement since the beginning, and André Ratzsch, a contemporary artist.
Mara Oláh (alias Omara, 1945–2020) was one of the most influential, internationally acknowledged Hungarian Roma painters. Her art addressed decisive events that determined her own life: she painted scenes from her life and summarized her thoughts and feelings in messages inscribed onto the image surface. The linking of the figurative and the narrative, coupled with the raw, poster candour of her works, resulted in a unique contemporary language that Omara used to unravel the social reality of her descent and womanhood beyond dealing with her own destiny.
The point of departure for The Little Melting Pot is an actual strategic plan that was never carried out: during the 1849 Hungarian War of Independence, the Hungarian army command ordered the isolation of the Tihany peninsula from the mainland by a moat, so that the remaining corps could huddle up here and continue the resistance, but the operation could never even begin. On account of the circumstances and the faulty assessment of the possibilities, the plan for the “Hungarian Gibraltar” failed.
Rita Süveges and András Cséfalvay will discuss their works exhibited in the space of ACLIM! Agency for Climate Imaginary.
This flag, that models upon its 19th century counterparts, commemorates the alliance of the sibling nations for the common homeland.
The first accompanying event of the exhibition MENÜ is the presentation of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy’s creative air-pollution measuring project Smog Tasting, running since 2011 and recently having been realised in Hungary. The interactive online event will be the first presentation of the air collected from three Hungarian locations in the form of meringues, which we will taste after the introductions of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy (in English), Clean Air Action Group and Green Connection Association, analysing them together with participating volunteers, the audience and the curators of the exhibition.
The poem “A Breath of Air!” by Attila József was written in November 1935. Apparently, it was a time of peace and plenty: Europe—and Hungary—had overcome the crisis of the Great Depression; the order was restored. But what kind of order was it that the poet “didn’t dream of”? The research and exhibition project presents the political and social context of the poem through archival materials, while contemporary artworks offer its possible 21st-century reading.
MENU imaginaire focuses on the future of alimentation: artists, designers, and philosophers raise questions regarding the most pressing problems of food systems. Our lifestyle and consumption habits have a significant impact on the natural environment—the presented works and the speculative hypotheses set forth by them examine the impact of human activity on the environment through the topic of eating.
In a former laundry shop in Budapest's city centre the artistic team of NEWS MEDLEY presents two new video works created in collaboration with the Women’s Choir of Kartal as part of their exhibition for the OFF-Biennale.
Exhibition
23.04
- 16.05
Roma Parlament (1084 Budapest, Tavaszmező utca 6.)
Norbert Oláh
Norbert Oláh builds a large brick wall in front of the former building of the Roma Parliament. The bricks have clearly legible words on them, representing concepts and perceptions that are ingrained and instilled into us. These comprise the wall of anxiety.
Can Hungarian settlers in Latin America, Cuban migrant workers in Hungary, and Afro-Asian students in Eastern Europe have a common history? Is there a shared colonial history of Eastern Europe and the Global South? The exhibition looks at the historical relationships and parallels between the global periphery (Global South) and semiperiphery (Eastern Europe) in the 20th century through the concepts of coloniality, peripherality, and migration.
We reach home, turn the light and the heating on. We use hot water to take a shower and wash our clothes and dishes. We take such things for granted. But what about those who are not given access to these basic utilities and services in Hungary? How do these shortages shape their lives and perspectives? Focusing on a specific segregated setting, with the active involvement of local communities, the project Everyday Shortcomings maps the existing living conditions arising from the lack of public services and exposure to harmful environmental factors, while highlighting the local responses to the given situation.
Whether we are talking about the meteorological phenomenon or the infrastructure of information technology, the formation processes of clouds are influenced by air humidity and atmospheric pressure. For the first type of cloud the connection is straightforward, while for the second type the palpable network holding up the elusive structure is only partially dependent on terrestrial conditions such as the climate.
Are plants capable of eliciting social change or inciting spiritual civil disobedience by wielding strange unknown forces?
Can we grasp the planetary ecological crisis through local issues? What kind of knowledge can an ecological network researcher, an environmental psychologist and an artist formulate together, which can help us understand our present and our possible future? These are the types of questions posed by the Agency for Climate Imaginary! (ACLIM!), founded by the xtro realm artist group. The Agency houses research-based artistic projects and transdisciplinary theoretical inquiries dealing with the most burning ecological questions.
You are welcome to visit “Not Quite California Wonder”, an abstract greenhouse display by Fuzzy artists, Tekla Gedeon and Sebastian Gschanes. The installation engages with the changing fashion of food production and the emerging lack of diversity of crops around the world. We are interested in new ways of cultivating bell pepper and the act of care that surrounds it.