Preservation, Attempts
installation, mixed media
2018
I too am thinking of leaving Budapest to go elsewhere for a longer while. But for me, this is still the only place to discuss some particular things. I would set up an exhibit about words facing extinction. Those that will die out with the generation now aged 90-100, like my grandparents. Every object and photo is an attempt at preserving a memory, at keeping it. The focus issue of these collected works is whether one can have a humorous approach to the objects of memory, to leave the familiarly beckoning mood of melancholy behind. Using my personal memories and objects in my keeping, I call upon particular words and turns of phrase to summon up an era. The space is a minimalistic museum environment’s meeting place with cozy memories of shared family meals and kitchen intimacies. Kitchen utensils like jam jars and cutlery, are mementoes of a real life scene, our family’s recently sold house in Balaton. A space, even left empty, will have an imprint of the people who lived there in objects and their arrangement. I use these utensils to remember these people, as well as to furnish my own space. Also featured among the objects is a strange phenomenon documented in photographs: how the aging fruit trees in the yard, after years of undernourishment, started drying out from the bottom up, which instead of stopping their branches growing, resulted in a tapering of their trunks. The exhibition is set in the Konkoly Observatory’s meridian house. This had been home to the device that measured astronomic bodies’ passing the meridian, to determine the time.
(translation: Dani Dányi)
The creation of these works was supported by the National Cultural Fund of Hungary.
Photos by Ágnes Kocsis
‘and lead us not into temptation’
As the exhibition was set in the Konkoly-Thege Observatory I organized an event when visitors could see the works and could use a huge telescope to observe the sky.
photos by Attila Zérczi
