2022, Tardos red limestone, iron, galvanised metal sheet, ambrotype, video; dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist, © Albert Ádám
Photo: József ROSTA

Whether personal, communal, or societal, the scope
and the scale of trauma is definitely unquantifiable. Both the
experience itself and the process of handling it, unfold in time
in a performative manner, with disruptions, discontinuity, and
breakdowns. In many instances, the given trauma fossilizes at
a certain stage and cannot be brought forward or – similarly
to lost and buried archival materials – retrieved. This fossili –
zation results in a sense of not belonging: the individual trau –
ma-source is not able to place the components of the trauma
into one narrative framework. As it is the case with sedimenta –
ry stones (that people often misidentify as marble), there is no
metamorphosis that would result in the stone’s transformation
to marble, the constituting elements (e.g. water lilies, sponges,
unicellulars) remain discrete and recognizable. The approxi –
mately 200-million-year-old stone functions as a small ceme –
tery of these once living organisms. The microscopic character
of human life is diametrically opposed to the ungraspable life
span of the limestone.
Within the installation, the piece of limestone can be
associated with a lack of water, while the semi-abstract object,
takes the shape and size of a DIY water vessel, heated by the
sun. Similarly to the stone, this object is paradoxically both ab–
stract and concrete, its representational qualities rely precisely
on its non-representational aspects. This ambiguity allows the
viewers to take the installation as a catalyst to the archaeologi–
cal process vis-à-vis their own traumas. The splitting of the stone
boards in the video is not only an allegory of the release of bad
conscience but alludes to the mythic three wishes one might
make at a jinn.
Katalin TIMÁR

2016, colour video, sound; HD, 16:9; 45’56’’
Courtesy of the artist and Nagel Draxler Galerie
Kader Attia is represented by galleries Galleria Continua, Nagel Draxler, Krinzinger, Lehmann Maupin.
Photo: József ROSTA

Kader Attia’s dual French-Algerian cultural background
has served as a point of departure for his dynamic art practice,
which reflects on the aesthetics and ethics of different cultures.
The main focus of his research is the particular perspective of
each society on its history and the evolution of collective mem-
ory in the light of tradition and modernity. Central to Kader Attia’s
work is the reparative approach (Repair) as a constant factor of
human nature.
One of the most complex encounters of his intercul-
tural and interdisciplinary approach is his video work Reflecting
Memory, which was the main element of his exhibition at the
Centre Pompidou, organised in the scope of the Marcel Duchamp
Prize, which he won in 2016. The video focuses on the phantom
limb syndrome in people with amputated limbs and the issue
of phantom pain. In the film, Attia features scientists working
to “repair” people who have undergone amputations: looking for
answers on how to understand the phantom limb phenomenon,
where it comes from and how to cure phantom pain. The video
is ultimately a philosophical metaphor embedded in a documen-
tary: what happens when the phenomenon of the phantom limb
is transposed from the individual body to society as a whole, to
the level of civilisations that have experienced traumas outside
the norm. Attia interprets as yet unmourned civilizational traumas
that remain in denial as social phantom pains, and in doing so,
he subtly smuggles into his film the mirror box theory of neuro-
biologist Vilayanur Ramachandran, which uses the reflection of
the whole limb to mourn the amputated limb of a patient. Attia
makes this scientific discovery the visual leitmotif of the video,
supporting his concept of reparation as a constant factor that
defines the human being.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

Time Out (Temps mort), 2009
colour video and sound; 18’05’’
© ADAGP Mohamed Bourouissa
Courtesy of the artist and galerie kamel mennour, Paris

Time Out, untitled (Temps mort, sans titre) n° 32, 2008
Silver print on Diasec, mounted on aluminium – 92.5 x 114 cm; Ed. 2/5
© ADAGP Mohamed Bourouissa
Courtesy of the artist and galerie kamel mennour, Paris

Time Out, untitled (Temps mort, sans titre) n° 83, 2008
Silver print on Diasec, mounted on aluminium – 86 x 106.4 cm; Ed. 4/5
© ADAGP Mohamed Bourouissa
Courtesy of the artist and galerie kamel mennour, Paris

Time Out, untitled (Temps mort, sans titre) n° 43, 2008
Silver print on Diasec, mounted on aluminium – 86 x 106.4 cm; Ed. 3/5
© ADAGP Mohamed Bourouissa
Courtesy of the artist and galerie kamel mennour, Paris

Time Out, untitled (Temps mort, sans titre) n° 38, 2008 Silver print on Diasec, mounted on aluminium – 97 x 119.5 cm; Ed. 2/5
© ADAGP Mohamed Bourouissa
Courtesy of the artist and galerie kamel mennour, Paris
Photo: József ROSTA

Mohamed Bourouissa could be described as an active
witness of his time: known for his photo-based installations, the
artist is primarily interested in leaving a mark for his generation.
He studied technical drawing and, alongside his considerable
activity as a graffiti artist, completed a degree at the Paris Col-
lege of Art, a dream that had previously seemed out of reach for
him. Since a large proportion of his classes were devoted to a
strongly Western-centred art history underpinning a “white nar-
rative”, Bourouissa found it a more meaningful vocation to re-
cord his own environment, the everyday life of the Parisian sub –
urbs, and to visualise the poetry of the street, a largely avoided
medium. In his works, he often confronts individuals with –
dress, social, official – codes, crossing the divide between “high”
and “local” culture, a divide he finds unintelligible: he rewrites
(art historical) codes through his own cultural aspects. Most of
his works act as catalysts in their context, using the overflow of
stereotypes pouring forth from the press to make the spectator
challenge them.
His Time Out was a two-phase work. First, the pho-
tographic elements were completed. It all started with an MMS
sent to him by a friend who was in prison. Bourouissa asked
him – still communicating via SMS – to send more documenta-
tion from inside. He then reworked these: the drawings he sent
back inspired the set-ups his friend then made inside. On the
one hand, the process was about questioning the authenticity
of authorship, and on the other hand, it intended to capture the
mental space and loneliness of confinement. This was followed
by a second phase in 2009: when his friend was about to be
released from prison, Bourouissa asked him to slip the unau-
thorized device to a fellow inmate, who would take on the role
of intermediary. The correspondence between the incarcerated
and the free man was a learning process, resulting in double
authorship, now in the context of video documentation. This
performative approach in fact elevates the work to the status
of resource, since it opened up a new perspective for the pris-
oner in confinement, to whom the plot of broadcasting gave
new purpose in a state of timelessness.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

2014–2022, installation
jacquard carpet, traditional Hungarian ladies’ gala-dress, ring,
archival photos, documents, cut out photographs
Courtesy of the artist, © Chilf Mária

Photo: József ROSTA

Based on a piece of material heritage, a traditional Hungarian ceremonial dress, the work of Mária Chilf takes us on a journey of research into her family history, branching out in numerous directions and then reconnecting at several points, while delving into questions of personal experience, processing and understanding the revealed past. The journey of the dress is intertwined with the development of the family’s fate, and research turns into a personal story. The artist began to explore, almost as an outsider, the personal fate of ancestors unknown to her, in a chain of significant and often tragic historical events in the course of the twentieth century. As the details are revealed and the connections are unravelled, the distance between the artist and the sources is gradually reduced. By revealing transgenerational patterns and family wounds, the work becomes part of the artist’s identity while also shaping it, and the intellectual heritage of the material artefacts is inextricably linked to the present. Chilf’s work is not only revealing but also reparative, linking the broken continuity of past and present. She weaves a narrative that not only moves the pieces of family history, but also reflects on her own present and past through the work of understanding and self-awareness. She explores the impact of the fates revealed behind the objects on herself, while reworking the memories that emerge. The work is open-ended, even irresolvable, as from time to time another detail of the past is revealed to the artist.

2010, HD video; colour and black & white, sound; 35′
Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / LA
Photo: József ROSTA

We don’t like to think of the regime change of 1989–
90 as a traumatic historical event, but rather as a kind of eu-
phoric triumph. To this day, a nuanced assessment of the after-
math of these events, whether we are talking about the fate of
individuals or social groups, is almost considered a violation of
taboos. In his videos, Phil Collins often works with representa-
tives of various social groups (Turkish and British reality TV stars,
Mexican telenovela stars, Kosovar refugees, Palestinian disco
dancers, a symphony orchestra, prisoners, etc.). In the case of
marxism today (prologue), he interviewed teachers of Marxism-
Leninism from the former GDR and supplemented these with
relevant excerpts from archive films.
The identification of the interviewees’ occupation as
a key aspect provides a particular backdrop to the theme of re-
gime change, i.e. the transition from socialism to capitalism. The
privatisations that followed in ‘89 left hundreds of thousands of
people unemployed. For these people, coveted capitalism was
a huge disappointment, because their lives were not improved,
but in fact significantly worsened. In the case of teachers, far
fewer were affected by the transition, but the irony of fate is that
regarding school subjects considered ”ideological”, it was the
former political economy teachers who were facing unemploy-
ment or a change of profession. As the first interviewee tells us,
not only did the system change almost overnight, but the country
where she was born and where she had lived until then (not to
mention the traumatic events in her private life) disappeared as
well. Collins reveals these sources of trauma in a collaborative
process with his interviewees, making the potential resources
clear to the viewer. The work also serves as a catalyst for further
processing traumas in our blind spots.
Katalin TIMÁR

Alma (Soul), 2019
single channel audio record; 68’
Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Continua

Sin titulo (Untitled), 2002 / 2022
giclée print (based on analogue photograph); 5x (cca. 75 x 50 cm); exhibition copy
Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Continua
Photo: József ROSTA

Alma (Soul)
Delahante Matienzo has defined herself as a perfor-
mance artist for almost twenty years, focusing her expressions
on her own body, soul and past, projecting these leitmotifs
into broader historical and social contexts, including decoloni –
sation processes.
Decades of police brutality, systemic injustice and in-
equality against African Americans in the United States provide
the framework for this sound installation by Delahante Matienzo.
Her audio work Alma (Soul) is the documentation of a perfor-
mance that is a reparative experiment through sound: in terms
of its overall effect, it is an unrepeatable improvisational musi-
cal event in which the artist connects the past and the source
of trauma through the musical experience of the participants at
the performance site.
In 1967, Detroit became the scene of one of the bloodi-
est riots in 20th century North American history. Delahante Mat-
ienzo’s performance is a tribute to the band The Dramatics, who,
among many others, were the accidental victims of an exception-
ally brutal police action between 23 and 25 July. After a concert
at the Fox Theatre, the band, seeking refuge from the riots, rent-
ed a room at the Algiers Motel, where a police action happened
to take place, still shrouded in an array of unclear circumstanc-
es – subsequent trials have not resulted in the conviction of any
of the officers. Founding members Cleveland Larry Reed and
Roderick Davis survived the police action, while Fred Temple, the
band’s clearly unarmed valet, a mere 18 years of age, was shot
dead by the police. The two survivors left the band afterwards.
The performance was filmed at the site of the hotel in Virginia
Park that was demolished in 1979 as part of a rezoning project.
The improvisation of soul and bolero style music with local Afri-
can American musicians will remain as a resource for the future:
the artist intends to use music to create a positive message for
young African Americans in Detroit, moving past the unjust racial
preconceptions that have been embedded in society for decades.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

Sin titulo (Untitled)
Susana Pilar’s performances create quite radical sit –
uations to visually explore and articulate deep-seated psycho –
logical ruptures and social inequalities; in addition to decol –
onization processes, her works predominantly seek symbolic
solutions and personal responses to a long history of violence
against women. Two of her works are included in Emplotment
(the other at the entrance).
Sin titulo unfolded as a background project for her
university thesis: at first glance it seems like raw documen –
tation, but it is quite the opposite. The images reveal trauma:
Delahante Matienzo uses visual art to delimit the unspeaka –
ble trapped in an emotional vacuum, and her artistic perfor –
mance creates an opportunity for second witnessing (Nadine
Siegert). Although it is a series that has eventually remained
incomplete, for this work is a fundamental starting point for
her later expressions. According to the official narrative of the
early 2000s, violence against women within the family “did not
exist” in Cuba; it would have compromised the spirit of the
revolution. Starting out from her own environment, she tack –
led the national problem with her own independent research
– unofficially, of course – within the Havana Criminal Institute.
Although she was able to look at multimedia documentation of
violence victims with the help of a doctor, she did not have ac –
cess to the actual files and evidence. To underpin her project,
she created a series of scenes based on her own imagination,
reconstructed from real stories. With this turn, she wanted to
act as a catalyst to speak out for women who were unable
to speak out publicly because of their deaths. In the spirit of
performativity she used her own body for the double-exposure
images, which were made by a completely analogue procedure
at the time.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

2016–2021, digital photograph; dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artists
© Andrii Dostliev & Lia Dostlieva
Photo: József ROSTA

Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev’s collaborative works focus on issues of trauma, memory and representation. Their work Licking War Wounds is a performative piece that takes place over 240 weeks. The photo series shows a – gradually disappearing – salt lamp from a souvenir shop in Bakhmut. Famous for its salt mines, the town in eastern Ukraine, was invaded by separatists (DPR) in 2014, but was successfully retaken by the Ukrainian army within a short time. Unusual tank-shaped salt lamps appeared in the city’s shops after the liberation. Such decorative objects had always been an important part of the local souvenir industry, but after the attack, the objects designed to emit a warm glow for a pleasant mood took the form of a robust military vehicle. In their revealing work, the artists show that these objects are only small signs of the severe traumatisation of an entire society, caused by war to this day. Dealing with trauma is a very complex process that can take years, decades or even a lifetime. Forced to leave Donetsk because of the war, for five years, Dostliev and Dostlieva continued to lick the lamp, which symbolised the wounds made by the war, recording its changing condition day after day. “In July 2021, we have finished this project. Hoping that the war would also end soon giving all of us the chance to finally lick our wounds. But instead, on February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. And all art suddenly became futile in the face of bombs falling onto peaceful Ukrainian cities.” (Andrii Dostlieva & Lia Dostliev)
Fruzsina FEIGL
 

Serious Games I: Watson is Down
2010
video, colour, sound; 8’
Courtesy of Harun Farocki GbR

Serious Games II: Three Dead
2010
video, colour, sound; 8’
Courtesy of Harun Farocki GbR

Serious Games IV: A Sun with no Shadow
2010
video, colour, sound; 8’
Courtesy of Harun Farocki GbR

Serious Games III: Immersion
2009
video, colour, sound; 20’
Collection of the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest.
Purchased from funds provided by Peter und Irene Ludwig Stiftung, Aachen, 2010

Photo: József ROSTA

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be caused by traumatic events that are outside the scope of everyday human experience. Examples include military combat. In PTSD, the natural stress response continues to occur after the traumatic event, and the disorder becomes prolonged. Exposure therapy in virtual reality (VR) is widely used by the US military. The technique involves presenting the patient with a controlled visualisation of the environment and situations that trigger the symptoms, until the patient’s reaction to them is attenuated. Made up of four video installations, Harun Farocki’s revealing work not only presents the video game technology used on military bases to train soldiers and treat veterans, but also provides a critical documentation of their application, the blending of virtual and real warfare. The footages include a virtual simulation of an ambush attack, an exercise performed with extras and a demonstration of Virtual Iraq.

In all cases, the simulations are based on real cartographic data, and the computer-generated environment accurately represents the Middle Eastern landscape and local geography. The “game” used in training is designed to provide a virtual picture of the war before the soldiers even travel to the theatre of operations. In the footages, the soldiers experience their own deaths, but the experience is reduced to a minor annoyance, as the operation can be restarted at any time, as in computer games. Virtual Iraq, by contrast, is an example of the therapeutic use of virtual tools. In the scope of the workshop, the patient navigates in a desert or urban environment, but the events are chosen by the therapist, who can make the soldier a victim of an attack or a witness to horrific events. Thanks to the split-screen format, the spectator both sees the simulation from the inside, witnessing the actual events, while also coming face to face with the process of reconstructing real events. In the final chapter of the series, Harun Farocki highlights an important difference: the software used for rehabilitation is cheaper than the state-of-the-art version used for training. The most striking difference is that in the cheaper version there are no shadows.
Fruzsina FEIGL

2004–2006
10 large pictures: C-Print, acrylic, alu-dibond, beech tree frame; 170 x 135 cm
5 small pictures: C-print, alu-dibond, beech tree frame with glass; 88 x 70,5 cm
Courtesy Daniel & Geo FUCHS
© Daniel & Geo FUCHS
Photo: József ROSTA

In the early 2000s, Daniel & Geo Fuchs embarked on
a series intended to explore and reveal the surviving sites of the
former GDR’s notorious Ministry of State Security (Stasi). Some
of the buildings have been given new function, while others are
either memorials or remain completely closed and untouched,
preserving their past condition. Since these places were closed
to the public not only during the socialist era but remain so to-
day, revealing and processing the past can only be partial in the
case of the Stasi, since only imagination, rather than concrete
facts, can provide the community with pointers. When Daniel &
Geo Fuchs show us the actual spaces, we can almost grasp all
the atrocities committed by these authorities directly against the
detainees and indirectly against the entire society of the time. We
have verbal accounts of the tortures and the conditions of deten-
tion, but these are augmented and made even more striking by
the visual content of the photographs.
Daniel & Geo Fuchs endow their photographs with
a formal aesthetic quality that allows for the performative
engagement of the spectator. In the case of the large format
images, the spectators can have the feeling of being present in
the very space, walking through the deserted spaces, or even
being the prisoners themselves, captured and awaiting inter-
rogation or imprisonment. Although the photos are not staged,
the photographers chose a standardised point of view. A for –
mal solution that was intended to create the most objective
way possible of presenting the spectacle conveyed by their im –
ages. The uniform, impersonal lighting of the spaces also con –
tributes to the evocation of the photography of the so-called
Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).
Katalin TIMÁR

Ekzaminimi (Examination)
2013, video-recording of the performance, TV-archive, 2′
Courtesy of the artists

Wild Beast
2018/2022, sound recorded during performance,
vacuum-cleaners, LED scrolling text display; dimensions and length variable
Courtesy of the artists
Photo: József ROSTA

Ekzaminimi (Examination)
Public space in Kosovo has traditionally been
male-dominated, a place for political meetings, public councils,
demonstrations, where women have not usually been allowed to
express their opinions. In addition to instituting “life in the public
space”, men have historically been able to exercise control over
the fate of women and the rules of their public appearance. The
establishment of the HAVEIT group was prompted in 2011 by the
Diana Kastrati case: along with another thousand women per year
on average in Kosovo, Diana was a regular victim of domestic vio-
lence, but Diana died as a result of her husband’s abuse and the
crime remained largely without consequences. According to the
Kanun, the Albanian social code, a woman’s blood is worth less
than a man’s: it is common for the authorities to remain silent
in such cases. HAVEIT’s activism is aimed at eradicating violence
against women and raising awareness; feminism to them is rad-
ical action, because it all starts with fundamental rights – they
want to ensure equal, humane treatment for women in particu-
lar. In the light of the above context, it is not surprising that they
choose the open street as the venue for their performances.
Ekzaminimi is also linked to this process of revealing: it is esti-
mated that 20,000 women were raped in the Kosovo war. For a
long time, they remained completely ignored and shamed, endur-
ing in silence the trauma they had suffered. Years after the war,
the idea of state support was finally mooted among members of
parliament, but soon turned into a dispute: one MP demanded
that the women undergo a gynaecological examination to make
sure they had been raped. HAVEIT’s performance takes place in
front of the Parliament building: the hammer refers to legislature,
the white sheet to the gynaecology clinic and the apple to the
charming Albanian songs and sayings in which the apple symbol-
ises feminine beauty and freshness.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

Wild Beast
Kosovo’s public opinion is dominated by long-estab –
lished social and religious codes (Kanun, Islam) and is slow to
allow less traditional and less patriarchal thinking to emerge.
Nevertheless, the young generation is increasingly keen to
break out of this rigid system: at the forefront of progressive
young contemporaries, the HAVEIT collective is a catalyst,
often openly challenging issues considered taboo, taking a
strong stance on gender issues, among others. Their critical
performances are considered provocative in the Kosovar com –
munity, making them spokespersons for the (visual) arts scene
that is demanding change. The two pairs of siblings that make
up HAVEIT organised their first performance more than ten
years ago: since then, their main venue has been the public
space, the street, as this is where they can reach the largest
number of “ordinary people” indiscriminately, whom they wish
to address with their revealing, confrontative actions. The
performance entitled Wild Beast explores a collection of curs –
es used primarily within the family, highlighting the weight of
the uttered word, which accompanies people from the earliest
age. There are many versions of these curses – the highlight –
ed seven were chosen by the members of the collective from
their own experience. Although decreasingly in use within the
society, curses are verbally very deeply imprinted and passed
down from generation to generation. Traditionally, women are
responsible for housework and child-rearing: curses are most
often uttered when housework is (not) done, so the noise of
the vacuum cleaner is “clearly” intertwined with the sound of
curses. These two sounds are deeply imprinted on the rebel –
lious “wild beast” child – but when written down, the harsh –
ness of the sentences, which have permeated everyday life
and are not even noticed any more, becomes much more tan –
gible and sheds light on this barely perceptible yet still heavy
psychological burden.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

A Show of Hands
2012/2013 – ongoing, plaster casts and multimedia, dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: ©Than Kyaw Htay

A Show of Hands
2017, video, 32’
Project Manager: Bo Bo
Camera Operators: Banyar, Ne Lynn Aung, Moe Gyi, Nang Saw
Editor: Pe Maung Sein

Photo: József ROSTA

Htein Lin, who since a young age has had a long and
painful experience with the military rule, initiated A Show of
Hands aiming to create a visual and symbolic formulation of the
atrocities faced by civilians in Myanmar due to censorship. Htein
Lin took part in the 8888 Uprising (1988): he was detained in
a refugee camp in India for two years; he then escaped, fighting
for months as a guerrilla in the jungle, then was captured and
tortured. Years after, working again as an artist and actor – origi–
nally he was a law student and trained in traditional theatre – of–
ficials came to take him away one night in 1998. He was jailed for
almost seven years because his name was mentioned in a letter
sent by another ’88 protester. Htein Lin, who had never received
the letter, strengthened his artistic skills in prison and came back
to the scene as a reinforced painter and performance artist. After
leaving Myanmar for personal reasons, he returned in 2012/2013
and started his project: A Show of Hands. He decided to give
voice (literally and individually) to once jailed political prisoners
said to have been at least around 3000 between 1988–2012 only,
but that’s probably just an underestimated number. The project
still continues with the aim of reaching 1000 individuals: Htein Lin
contacts or is contacted by the individuals (from old artist friends
to writers, intellectuals…). He sits down with each former prison–
er and casts the forearm of the person while talking to him/her
and recording their conversation – casting is a symbol of healing.
Today he has almost reached 500 casts.
As part of Htein Lin’s installation, in this room of the
Ludwig Museum, around two hundred plaster hand-casts on
the shelves should be representing the thousands of Myanmar
civilians who are still behind bars as political prisoners. Arrange–
ments were made earlier this year for the shipment from Yangon,
but the state of war since the military coup on 1 February 2021
and the brutal retaliation that continues to this day led the art–
ist, in agreement with the curators, to seek an alternative way of
presenting the ongoing project, both for his own safety and for
the safety of the material imprints of the “oral archive” that had
been under construction for a decade (the hands travelling in the
wooden box could easily have been confiscated by the authori–
ties at any point, with inconceivable consequences owing to the
theme of the work).
The timely political context and the tragic repetition of
history (there are more prisoners today than in the last decades
combined) prompted the artist to prepare his next performance
with a young artist who was released in June 2021 after three
months in prison, and to continue the project specifically with
regard to the framework of Emplotment (no new casts have been
made in the last two years due to the pandemic and the coup).
In this way, the five-fingered position of each hand in Htein Lin’s
project has been reduced to three fingers in the case of Moe
Satt, which is a symbol adopted by the uprising that continues
to this day.
The performative and performance-based project,
which has been developing since 2012/2013, with the material
recorded through audio or visual documentation during the in–
dividual plaster castings, has a significance far beyond the visual
arts scene due to its ‘oral history’ character: in addition to being
a resource for future generations, it connects imprisoned con–
temporaries and creates a singular relationship of mutual trust
within the framework of society. In the words of Htein Lin, the
most important aspect for him and the community involved
in the project is to be able to deepen their maturity as human
beings. By engaging the audience to witness these perfomances
with the former prisoners, thoughts banned from an official nar–
rative emerge and the perfomative séance becomes a cyclical,
living act as continuity is ensured. The artist hence can reach out
through his work, basically becoming healer of traumas and bind–
er of communities – art operates as a therapeutic tool.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

The Rwanda Project – Field, Road, Cloud, 1997
3 pcs cibachrome – 101.6 x 152.4 cm each; 3 pcs black and white prints – 15.2 x 22.8 cm each
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin. © Alfredo Jaar
Photo: József ROSTA

Over the past thirty years, Alfredo Jaar has been one of
the most engaged and trailblazing artists in the field of process-
ing severe civilisational trauma by means of art. In his Rwanda
project (1994–2000/2010), he processed sources of trauma from
a completely new approach and motivation, as an actual cat-
alyst, all this in the mid-nineties. Through his multidisciplinary
and performative practice, he confronts us with multimedia
content and the way we consume images and news, usually fed
by the press. “Philosophical essays on representation” is how
he describes the twenty-five units of the Rwanda project, all of
which he considers to be doomed to failure, although for him
they were all learning processes: he sees them all as attempts
at representation. Jaar got involved in a civilisational trauma as
an outsider: his will to help and his helplessness, mixed with the
horror he had experienced, had prolonged the completion of the
project for over six years.
He was led to Rwanda by the apathetic and indifferent
attitude of the international press and the extent of the world’s
silence on the genocide. Although he took three thousand photo-
graphs on the spot, they did not seem to him to be an appropri-
ate medium for conveying the radical experiences he had wit-
nessed. In the end, he reduced reality to a particular detail in all
the works of the project, helping the viewer to identify with it and
to evoke an intellectual connection.
The three landscape fragments of Field, Road, Cloud,
with the three drawings alongside them, sketched in 1994, to-
gether point to a specific geographical location and the number
of people murdered there (500). The number of Tutsis killed with
extreme brutality at the Ntarama church is subsequently esti-
mated to have been ten times higher. In Jaar’s work, the viewer
is stunned by the emphasis on the invisible and the unspoken
attempt at a possible way to deal with the geographical location
that remains an eternal witness to the genocide.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

Unearthing. In conversation
2017, 1-channel video, colour, sound; 13’
Courtesy of mumok – museum moderner kunst stiftung ludwig wien
© Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński

Schebestas Schatten [Schebesta’s Shadow]
2017/2021, 3 digital C-prints on paper; 10 x 15 cm each

Photo: József ROSTA

Unearthing. In conversation
With her background as a researcher, Belinda Kazeem-
Kamiński has developed a unique artistic practice that is both re-
search-based and process-oriented. The performative character
of her work derives from the nature of research as a process and
the viewers’ encounter with the work when they inevitably need
to take a standpoint in relation to what the artist presents.
Unearthing. In converstation enters into a dialogue
with a variety of actors and participants from the past, the
present, and the future, creating an intertwining exchange
among them with the mediation of the artist. The main role of
the conversation, though, is to reveal and expose those dis-
ruptions, disparities, and displacements that define the coloni-
al condition. The paradoxical character of unearthing lies in the
fact that on the one hand the colonial agents (photographers,
ethnographers, missionaries, etc.) are always in the way, hin-
dering the process of revealing history, yet, on the other hand,
without the photographs the artist uses, there would be no
visual information on the colonial system itself.
In order to allow the viewers to focus on Kazeem-
Kamiński’s performative intervention, the video employs an aus-
tere visuality as a strategy to avoid unnecessary and unwanted
associations. The artist mentions the telling example of her use
of blue, yellow, and red shapes that are the constituting colours
of the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet members of
the art scene took them as instances and the influence of Pop
Art, minimalism, or conceptual art. In an act of epistemic dis-
obedience (Walter D. Mignolo) these shapes allow the artist to
reframe the colonial past, enabling her to retell a visual story with
an oppositional gaze.
Katalin TIMÁR

Schebestas Schatten [Schebesta’s Shadow]
In the work Schebestas Schatten [Schebesta’s Shadow]
(2017/2021), three black-and- white photographs in postcard for-
mat are each partially covered with a blue, yellow, or red colour
field and placed in a vitrine. What remains visible from the origi-
nal photographs, in the uncovered parts, are some shadows cast
on the surface of the photographed people’s bodies and clothes,
delineating the blurry contour of a double hat – actually two hats
piled on top of one another. The shadow seems to be the unin–
tentional signature of the photos’ author, Paul Schebesta (1887–
1967). The archive of the Austrian National Library holds hundreds
of photographs attributed to the Austro-Czech missionary, au–
thor, educator, and ethnographer, probably brought back from his
travels to what is today known as the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. The majority of them depict people he encountered, ob–
served, and arranged in staged scenes, thereby presenting them
as embodiments of “Otherness” and ultimately feeding the West–
ern racist colonial narrative. Following these objectives, the pic-
tures feature the photographer himself only rarely. Paul Schebes–
ta was likely conscious of the advantage of being absent, allowing
him to act as a sort of invisible creator. But some photographs do
feature him – or his shadow, at least. And these are the ones Be–
linda Kazeem-Kamiński chose to include in her work. In deciding
to focus on a tiny but foundational detail – the shadows cast by
the hat(s) and the body of the colonial photographer – the art–
ist changes invisibility to visibility in both directions: the invisible
author becomes visible, and the hypervisibilized and subjugated
models receive protection through temporary invisibility.
Belinda KAZEEM-KAMIŃSKI, Anne FAUCHERET

National Textbook
2010–2022, Project documentation; dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist. © Keserue Zsolt

Photo: József ROSTA

The National Textbook is a performative project based
on research and collaboration, which ran from 2010 to 2019, but
will continue to be presented in accordance with different con-
texts. The selection now presented at the museum has been
created with the specific framework of this exhibition in mind.
This complex project reveals the nationally deter-
mined character of previously objective history writing through a
research – controlled partly by volunteers and partly by chance
– that has resulted in the National Textbook, which is in fact a
collage. It is a collage of information, opinions and frameworks
brought together by an extensive international collecting project.
It presents Hungarian historical events that have been included
in the textbooks of other countries, revealing not only what is
considered important to mention about Hungarian history in a
given country, but also the differences in perspectives present-
ed by these books. The historical traumas that seem obvious
to us are minor or even unworthy of mention from the point of
view of other nations.
Logically, the book was later augmented with a col –
lection of stereotypes, where the participants compiled a
collection of drawings, videos, animations, scale models and
videos based on less canonised, everyday sources and oral
accounts. During certain phases of the project, data was col –
lected and processed at different workshops (e.g. at the Sziget
Festival). Throughout the project, Keserue worked with groups
of mainly students using the participatory method of critical
pedagogy, initiating and catalysing the exploration and reveal-
ing of traumas.
Katalin TIMÁR

Solitude, 2020 / Stuttgart – Akademie Schloss Solitude
Double Bond, 2018–2020
giclée print, mounted on Dibond, framed; dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and INDA Gallery
© Neogrády-Kiss Barnabás

Untitled 46, Untitled 47, Untitled 48, 2022
giclée print, mounted on Dibond, framed; dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and INDA Gallery
© Neogrády-Kiss Barnabás

The works were realised with the sponsorship of szabadonbalaton-BALATORIUM-Európa Kulturális Fővárosa Veszprém-Balaton 2023.

Photo: József ROSTA

In 2020, Barnabás Neogrády-Kiss won a residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude and he was awarded the Capa Grand Prize for his work Double Bond in the same year. The photo series explores his personal experience of his altered perception of the world, with his vision in focus. Neogrády underwent a brain tumour operation when he was still a teenager, which left him with a capacity to perceive only the left half of the field of vision in both eyes. During his recovery, when he had to relearn everyday movements such as walking, speaking and writing, he turned more seriously to photography as a potential means of self-expression. The artist constantly revises, reworks and interprets his own perceptual processes and his relationship to them. He does not illustrate; that is, he does not attempt the impossible – to show how he sees the world through his images, but rather, he turns to questions and observations about himself as a point of departure to explore deeper connections and create peculiar narratives. He also uses his experiences as a resource, treating them as part of his identity rather than taboo. He himself is visible in many of his works, standing on the other side of the camera and making himself the subject of his photographs. The final setup, the moment of the photograph’s creation then becomes unpredictable, partly contingent. Randomness and intuition are important elements not only in the creation but also in the presentation of his work. His performative works make sensitive use of space, creating loosely connected systems and situations that challenge our perception, encouraging us to follow the rhythm and logic of the work in our reception of the spectacle.
Fruzsina FEIGL

Bite Yer Tongue
1997-1998, pen on paper, 7 pieces, 36.7 x 28 x 2.4 cm each
Courtesy of the artist. © Janette PARRIS

Catching Up
2020, animation, 5:51
Courtesy of the artist. © Janette PARRIS

Photo: József ROSTA

Janette Parris’s work explores the most ordinary topics
in seemingly ordinary ways. The Bite Yer Tongue series presents
episodes from the artist’s life in the form of short, text-based
drawings. Parris presents these mini-narratives in the first person
singular; as in literary fiction, the viewer is left to imagine the de–
tails of the story (the locations, the characters, the circumstanc–
es, the emotions) based on the available textual information. The
drawings go beyond the traditional opposition of image and word
by presenting the text’s role in visuality, serving to convey the
experience, as something self-evident. In the stories told by Par–
ris in the first person singular, as a recurrent motif, the narrator
attempts to attenuate the unpleasantness and awkwardness, the
angering and sometimes humiliating outcomes of the situations
and relieve the tension within herself by consuming comfort food,
but the repetition of the motif suggests that this release can only
be temporary. Paradoxically, however, by revealing these instanc–
es to us and placing us in the performative position of witnesses
who listen to the traumatic experience, she also opens up the
possibility of trauma processing. The series proves that Parris is
able to look at these stories as resources and transform these
situations into works of art.
In Catching Up, a short animation with music, the art–
ist places an equally familiar urban situation in the present-day
pandemic era. Acquaintances (including the artist herself or her
alter ego) bump into each other on the street and catch up, talk–
ing about the rough patches their creative careers have hit and
how they are coping with the challenges of the home office.
Parris collected the elements of the dialogues from her personal
acquaintances and broader environment. The material pitfalls of
the freelance artist’s life were only aggravated by the lockdowns
associated with the pandemic, which is a source of prolonged
internal tensions that are even more difficult to resolve in today’s
success-oriented society. Both of Parris’ works expose this issue
with disturbing honesty.
Katalin TIMÁR

2003–2005, video; 43’
Courtesy of the artists

Photo: József ROSTA

Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir’s joint video series explores power relations while playing on their disruption. Shot in Tel Aviv, the trilogy explores and reveals the impact of militarism on the identity of Israeli youth through propositions regarding objectification, possession and the recording of these. The country, which is in constant military conflict, operates a strict military system in which all citizens of legal age are conscripted for military service. This common, identity-forming experience is embedded in all spheres of life and has a significant impact on private life and the functioning of human relationships. While recording the footages, the artists are actively involved in shaping events and giving rise to various situations: seducing men in the bathrooms of bars, organising intimate encounters on dating sites and inviting prostitutes to their hotel rooms. The participants of the meetings do answer the artists’ questions, but the informal conversations in the almost reality-show-like scenes, mainly broaching on sexual topics, sometimes take unexpected and serious turns. The work reveals the intimate intertwining of sexuality and military-political identity and shows the impact of the traumas of violence and war on the experience of pleasure and on the need and ability to create intimate relationships.
Fruzsina FEIGL

2014 – ongoing
HD video; 8’58’’
Courtesy of the artist
© Selma Selman

Photo: József ROSTA

Selma Selman is a Roma artist and activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her art practice is informed by her own life story, family background and heritage, as well as the narratives of the Roma community. The artist was quick to recognise and problematise her experience of belonging as a woman to one of the most marginalised minority groups in Eastern Europe, but she is able to use her background as a resource to build her autonomous creative work and to pursue her long-term, socially engaged goals.

The focus of I Will Buy My Freedom When is the institution of forced marriage, which still exists today in many Roma communities around the world, based on a long history of customary law. According to tradition, girls, often underage, are sold by their parents to the groom’s family, which is a significant source of income. The tradition also runs in the artist’s own family, where her mother was married off as a child. For five years, Selman filmed her family’s daily life, and the resulting video shows her efforts to discover and define the value of her life and the price of her freedom. That amount is $11,166. In her ongoing project, Selman is selling her artworks, clothes and hair to buy her freedom. Her goal is to free herself and her family from the burden of tradition and to help future generations achieve collective self-liberation.

Selman has been an important catalyst in reducing discrimination against women in her local community, and in 2017 she set up a foundation to support the further education of Roma children in Bihać through scholarships. A key part of the programme, which mainly targets girls, is to help families and end the practice of early marriage to give children the opportunity to continue their education.
Fruzsina FEIGL

2000–2003
9 pcs C-print; 122 x 157 cm each
Courtesy of Kunststiftung DZ Bank, Frankfurt am Main
© Taryn SIMON

Photo: József ROSTA

Since its inception, directly or in a convoluted manner, photography has been concerned with investigating representation and its relation to the documentary, i.e. pictorial truth. Already in 1850s, photographs were used by various institutions of the modern state (the police, mental asylums, schools, etc.), where “the political technologies of the body” (Foucault) were invented and developed in the following decades. In these cases, photography was a technical means of recording, observing, and analysing human subjects either for scientific reasons or for reasons of control. The police started to use photographs as evidence and proof for the identification of criminals in the 1840s, but the visuality of these pictures was standardized only in the late 1880s. The schism between photography as art on the one hand and its everyday, instrumental use on the other is as old as the technology itself, while its critical reassessment received new impetus from the artistic practices and critical theory of the 1980s.

Much of Taryn Simon’s use of photography can be linked to the exploration of the basic premises of this medium within a wide range of social and political contexts which are often related to those institutions of power that started to use photography in the first place (governmental authorities, science, education). In the early 2000s, Simon produced a series (The Innocents) photographing men who – mainly on the basis of misidentification – had served time in prison for violent crimes they did not commit. With the development of science and DNA evidence, these men were exonerated and released, often decades after their conviction. Simon revisits the significant locations with these men – the scenes of the crime, the place of their arrest, the location of their alibi, etc. – and photographs the victims of the malfunctioning law enforcement system at these sites. The series demonstrates the ways in which the objectivity of photographic representation on the one hand, and the objectivity of its usage on the other are deeply intertwined in the social application of the medium.
TIMÁR Katalin

X-Position
2013, video, 2:27
Courtesy of the artists

Sostar, Sostar, why are you Sostar?
2014, video, 5:23
Courtesy of the artists

Photo: József ROSTA

“The Sostar group aims to change, reject, and rethink
the schizophrenic conditions that, among other things, force
also the group members to take on ethnicizing and moralizing
roles. Further objectives include taking a critical approach to
the functioning of the art scene and bringing about a change in
perspective, as well as to point to the missing terminology that
can facilitate a reinterpretation of Roma art, which is current-
ly only present in the canon as an ethnic category. In projecting
this change, the Sostar group’s writers and artists of Roma de-
scent will, in the future, define themselves as part of the canons
of Hungarian contemporary art and literature, freely owning their
European mentality, as well as their Roma and Hungarian identi-
ties.” (André Raatzsch: Report on the results of the event entitled
{roma} The contract to sell the ethnicity, tranzit.hu, 2014)
With its creation in 2013, the Sostar group attempted
to define its artistic, social and political status, thereby clari-
fying its social and artistic position. Although this was preceded
by the intellectual work and circle of acquaintances of the found-
ing members, the time span of the group’s activity was framed
by clearly definable events and happenings: their art praxis can
be dated mainly to the period between 2013 and 2014. Sub-
sequently, although the dissolution of the collective was never
announced, their activity ceased. In this sense, the group is not
featured in Emplotment as an active artistic contributor: this
position is also emphasized in the selection of works, the aim
of which is neither historical retrospection nor a monographic
summary. In this way, the exhibition integrates the group’s role
in the Hungarian art scene into the concept with a documentary
approach. The presented videos are intended to represent the
collective’s statement and thus to shed light on how the group’s
performative, revealing and reparative approaches have been
put into practice.
One of Sostar’s main objectives was to shed light on
the exclusion of the Roma from the discourse on the Roma and
to challenge the rigid definitions of identity. The members wanted
to shift their own (visual) identity towards duality. The performa-
tive art praxis of the collective (see the event {roma} The contract
to sell the ethnicity, held at the office of tranzit.hu, in the boxed
section) helped the inclusion of pressing issues from the pe-
riphery: despite their short active period, the problems raised by
Sostar generated serious debates; their initiatives and formula-
tions significantly augmented the Hungarian scene as a whole. Al-
though there is no direct continuation of the collective’s ideolog-
ical trend, its resolved and singular stand for self-representation
without stereotypes has been an inspiration for later work.
When observed in an international context within the
exhibition at the Ludwig Museum, nuances emerge that help to
draw interesting analogies with decolonisation processes, bringing
them closer to Hungarian reality. More importantly, the responsibil-
ity of the closed system of institutional structures, the role of the
“authorized heritage discourse” (Laurajane Smith) with regard to
erased, silenced narratives becomes clearer; the scars caused by
the absence of these narratives point to the layers that have dis-
appeared from collective memory, the exploration and evocation
was one of the missions of Sostar almost a decade ago.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

2012, colour video with sound; 2’52”
with the contribution of Norbert Tihanics
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: still from the video

The video Reminder by András Kállai, one of the found-
ing members of the Sostar? group, preceded the formation of
the collective by a brief year. This was the work he presented at
the show An die Grenze Gehen (Beyond Borders) in Berlin, where
he was featured along with André Raatzsch: although the exhibi-
tion specifically addressed the encounter between “Eastern and
Western European” Roma artists, Kállai’s revealing work goes
much deeper: he uses his fingerprints, red with his own blood,
to challenge the discourse that has developed around Roma
identity, subverting and overruling the cultural context whose
narrative is exclusionary for him. With this video, Kállai intends to
draw attention to double and flexible identity, emphasising that if
artists of Roma origin are always referred to as “Roma artists”, all
that strengthens is exclusion at best, as the artists in question
are practically deprived of their Hungarian identity. With this video,
Kállai refers to the common history, the double national/ethnic
identity and the lack of a healthy experience of it. In his lengthy
2014 essay on the work, Árpád Bak writes that Kállai is “searching
for a new language of common self-definition.” By visiting sites
considered emblematic in a Hungarian context, he “marks” them
in the scope of a performance, introducing one of the basic ges-
tures of Sostar?, the proposition of a “counter-narrative”, the act
of “countermarking”. According to Krisztina Varga, researcher at
Minor Media, Kállai’s performance can be interpreted as a claim
for reparation against exclusion, in order to revise the Hungarian
institutional canon and to properly establish the role of the Roma
people in the Hungarian national past as well as the historical
or artistic approaches to it. Kállai, who graduated in 2006 from
Tamás Körösényi’s class at the University of Fine Arts, was a par-
ticipant at the first Roma Pavilion of the 52nd Venice Biennale.
Borbála KÁLMÁN

2010, colour video with sound; 6’26”
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: still from the video

Rewritable Pictures, like Kállai’s video, was made before
Sostar? was formed, but it perfectly illustrates the group’s aim to
integrate the culture of Roma diaspora into the hybrid European
canon. André Raatzsch grew up in Komló in a Hungarian-German-
Boyash Roma cultural environment and holds a double degree
from the University/Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and Ber-
lin. For more than a decade, his research has focused on the (in)
visibility of Roma identity and the power of dominant and domi-
nated realities: drawing primarily on photographic documentation
and the discourse accompanying it, he has explored the re- and
deconstruction of Roma identity through representation.
In his first video work, Rewritable Pictures, he inter-
preted documentary elements as participatory performative art
practice organised in the form of a workshop. The video is a crit-
ical reflection on the visual representation of the Roma in Hun-
gary: Raatzsch’s project is based on a selection of photographs
from the Museum of Ethnography, intended for an imaginary
independent Roma Photo Archive. While in the video, the imag-
es are broken down into chapters by a structure projected onto
Edward Said’s postcolonial theory, the workshop’s participants
reappropriate these images: re-enacting reality, they reinterpret
the context of their making and the relationship between pho-
tographer and subject.
In this video, Raatzsch is most concerned with the
afterlife of Roma identity clichés: how to responsibly engage as
a viewer with visual documentation that is taken out of context,
that is brought to life independently of its original context, and in
which the subjects are negotiated and made visible as a “group
constructed” according to their “function and role in the domi-
nant relations of power and visibility”; this in turn “makes partici-
pation and visibility impossible for them as individuals.” (Raatzsch
– Marett, 2014). Self-representation free of clichés, the possibility
of control over self-identity, is essential for a community’s sense
of reality in Bourdieuian terms; depriving a community of this can
result in a profound (cultural) rupture in its continuity.
Borbála KÁLMÁN