The Seeker

Trafó Gallery  05.11.2023 – 07.01.2024
An exhibition by Katarina Šević and Gergely László (Tehnica Schweiz)
Co-authors: Viktor Bátki, composer and Péter Rákosi (TSCH)

Curator: Borbála Szalai, Judit Szalipszki / Trafó

Contributors: Tilmann Dehnhard, Pablo Ferro Živanović, Antje Tina Lass, Gergely Pohárnok, Gábor Ripli, András Sarkadi, Balázs Simon, Zsolt Sőrés, Kornél Szilágyi

Special thanks: Archive Dokumentacija Radio Beograd, Raphaël Grisey, Balázs Mezős, Dragana Milosavljević, Dávid Pap (FabLab), Gergely Pohárnok, Balázs Simon, Dániel Sipos, Soma Uliczki

Exhibition handout

Musical performance and video 10”18’

Tector Quartett, 2023
A Project by Gergely László (TSCH) and Viktor Bátki

Video recorded on 11.09.2023

Performed by: Viktor Bátki, Katarina Šević, Zsolt Sőrés, Dehnhard Tilmann

Camera: Gergely Pohárnok
Sound: Gábor Ripli
Editor: Gergely László, Antje Tina Lass
Colorist: Levente Salma
Drone: Kornél Szilágyi
Data manager and GoPro: Mózes Cseh

(Photo: The Refreshment Point, 2022)

Madaras József Square is a green island in a hidden corner of Budapest. Its location makes it an invisible zone, unknown to the people of the capital. It is a resting place for local children, some pensioners and residents of the surrounding homeless shelters.

It is a space that the city has almost abandoned. Empty of attention. Out of reach, invisible and unknown, a protected enclave and a space of possibility: in a repressive, authoritarian regime, such a public space is a peaceful refuge because, by its very nature, no one looks there.

A 350 metre long track surrounds Madaras József Square. This track was probably laid by the municipality in the mid-2010s for rehabilitation/recreational purposes. Since then its use has been very low, with 2-3 people running on it every day.

We organised a 60 hour relay race on this track and occupied the square for the duration of the event. We used found materials to build our refreshment point, kitchen, bench and changing rooms. The baton was a gong and the runner rang the gong after each lap. We occupied the square inside the magic circle for as long as the relay lasted. Over 1500 laps were run by around 100 volunteers for 60 hours without a break. The square became a place of unexpected encounters for even more visitors. Everyone was welcome to enjoy our Eternal Soup and Eternal Lemonade.

The project was realised in the framework of Public Art Ferencváros.

The Blue Room – The book is ready!

Booklaunch
in Budapest on 27.11.2021 at ISBN
in Berlin on 11.12.2021 at Yellow Solo

About the book:

Texts: Hedvig Turai and Margaret Tali
Editors: Eszter Lázár & Tehnica Schweiz
Graphic Design: Till Gathmann
Translations: Dániel Sipos
Publisher: Archive Books

Berlin/Budapest, 2021

The project and the production of this book was made possible by the kind contributions
of: Péter Barta, Attila Brezoczky, Gábor Pados, Péter Szauer, Domokos Kuny, acb
Gallery, FabLab Budapest, MOME – Moholy-Nagy University of Art, Proton Cinema

More about The Blue Room

PICTURE THIS
selected pasts, subverted facts

BUDAPEST GALLERY
1036 Budapest, Lajos utca 158.

23 October – 1 December 2019

Curated by:
NIKOLETT ERŐSS AND FLÓRA GADÓ

Exhibiting artists:
BANI ABIDI | ADÉLA BABANOVÁ | ANCA BENERA AND ARNOLD ESTEFÁN | IEVA EPNERE | MARCELL ESTERHÁZY | KATA GEIBL | MYKOLA RIDNYI | AYKAN SAFOĞLU | TEHNICA SCHWEIZ

When looking at the world around us today, we may begin to have something of an aversion to fiction. The alternative facts and conspiracy theories which have been gaining ever more ground in public discourses may prompt us to distance ourselves from it. The quest to learn the truth and have direct experiences with the real world has acquired ever more importance, and the reconstruction of facts as an alternative judicatory method is part of many artistic practices. Parallel to this, however, a number of artists have twisted this tendency and have considered fiction for its artistic potential: they use fictitious stories, places, objects, and methods of editing to contradict the notion that fiction is necessarily about getting around reality. Building on this approach, this exhibition brings together artworks which use fiction as a tool with which to explore reality, works in which the use of fabrication as the bonding material of imagination is visible, as are new manners of assembling the mosaics of memories and the creation and recreation of objects and pieces of evidence which bear witness. In these works, fiction refers not only to imaginative visions of the future, but also to a means with which to uncover the present and the past. It appears as a strategy which helps shift our perceptions of the past as a closed system and the present as the necessary consequence of this system. It looks at it as a dynamic variable where the use of fiction prompts us to rethink our reality.

The imagination which fills in the gaps in family histories, the methods which freely rewrite scientific methods, and the ideas and narratives which are being excluded from the most prominent political and historical discourses provide the background of these works. Fake documents, fictive evidence, memory collages, and time-travelling objects appear so that their fictionality can become a real experience.

(The title is a reference to Joseph Heller’s book of the same title)

Gergely László (Tehnica Schweiz) and Katarina Šević: The Curfew – Prague Iteration
02.09.-15.10.2019 Artwall Gallery, Prague

Exhibition documentation: Martin Micka

The collages on view at Artwall by Gergely László and Katarina Šević pose the distorted and grotesque body as the metaphor for the rise of violence and militancy apparent in today’s society. The artists draw their inspiration from the tradition of bouffons – jesters known from many cultural traditions – epitomised by physical theatre of Jacques LeCoq – a French performer and founder of the school of physical theatre. According to him these monstrous figures “come to show us in a multitudinous manner, very much like a parade, our own follies. They play our society, the themes of power, of science, of religion, in ‘follies’, which are organized according to strict rules where the craziest directs the others and declares war because he’s bored.”

In such manner, the figures that gesture at us from the stone frames under Letná, speak from the upside-down world – unfortunately not so different from ours – where the powerful hire private militias and various civil guards “protect order”, but in reality they pose a threat and spread violence and aggression.

“The series of bouffonesque figures juxtaposed onto urban surfaces are storyboards for a possible street theater act in Prague, an act that confronts the normalisation of militancy, aggression and toxic masculinity that is highjacking liberties in public spaces in our cities today,” explain the artists about their project.

The exhibition is an iteration of The Curfew project, a street-performance that took place in Budapest in 2017 using grotesque humor, in order to celebrate freedom of expression, acting against a mood of political and civic frustration and passivity.

Curator: Zuzana Štefková

The project is organized within the framework of Fotograf Festival

An artist talk will take place on October 9th, 2019 at 7 pm in the Centre of Contemporary Art, Dukelských hrdinů 500/25a, Prague 7.

The Blue Room – Exhibition at Decad, Berlin
18 July – 21 September 2019

Opening hours:
Thursday – Saturday
from 2pm to 7pm

Address:
Gneisenaustrasse 52
10961 Berlin

The Blue Room / an exhibition by Tehnica Schweiz (Gergely László and Péter Rákosi) at the Church Hall of Kiscell Museum
Vernissage: 18 June 2019 / 18:00

Opening remarks: Hedvig Turai, art historian

Venue: Kiscelli Museum – Municipal Picture Gallery, 108. Kiscelli u., 1037 Budapest

On view: 19 June – 13 July 2019

The artist duo Tehnica Schweiz (Gergely László and Péter Rákosi) have been collaborating for more than 15 years. They are interested in stories, buildings, locations and communities with a relation to cultural identity. Their research-based ‘conservation’ work is more than a mere analysis of the patterns of collective memory: in the course of diverse collaborative creative processes, they make attempts at the playful recollection.

The Blue Room is aimed at the re-examination of our relation to architectural and material cultural heritage, merging two stories: on the one hand, the story of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Arts’ 19th century plaster cast collection of antique sculptures, and on the other hand, that of the 18th century synagogue of Tata, which served to house the exhibition of life-size copies of antique sculptures for more than forty years.

The Blue Room comprises a film and an installation at the former synagogue. In the film, conservation specialists are seen detaching the plaster sculptures from their pedestals before disjointing and boxing them to be hauled away. The building is gradually evacuated, only to be occupied anew by a group of art students who transform the space into an atelier to craft small porcelain copies of the antique sculptures, giving rise to an entirely new collection from the accurate miniature replicas of the plaster copies.

The film documents an artistic intervention that repurposes the empty building, transubstantiated into a memorial of itself once the collection is moved out, with a new temporary function: a porcelain manufacturing workshop. Purchased with public funds in the 19th century, the antique replicas also used to serve educational purposes: art students copied antique sculptures in order to acquire the formal features of a universal beauty ideal. Today, however, young artists are engaged in a workshop of entirely different character; the sculptures once inhabiting the building appear in a different quality (material, size).

The project by Tehnica Schweiz was first exhibited at the former synagogue of Tata, incorporating various discourses related to the place. Before World War 2, 10% of Tata’s population of 12 thousand residents were of Jewish origin, with several craftsmen and merchants amongst the members of the assimilated community. The better part of Tata’s industry, including the carpet-, leather-, and brick factories, was in the hands of Jewish tradesmen. A prominent figure of the town was the Jewish factory owner Mór Fischer (1799-1880), the man who brought the porcelain factory of Herend to success.

The installation now moves to a new location, the Kiscell Museum’s Church Hall.

A subsidiary of the Budapest History Museum, the Kiscell Museum is a repository of colourful objects and artworks from the capital’s history. Serving to host temporary exhibitions, the limited edition porcelain figurines enter into relation with the massive dimensions of antique plaster statues as well as the vast space. The synagogue is represented not only in the film, but also in the church space: the architectural scale model built as a display stand for the porcelain statuettes evokes the former abode of the antique replicas in terms of both its material and design.

Through the theme of multiple transfer and recycling, the, The Blue Room demonstrates the constant transformation of the vestiges of our history and art, while attempting to reexamine our complex  relation to cultural heritage.The porcelain sculptures were made under the guidance and with the contribution of Edit Kondor, Zsuzsa Bokor, Mónika Csák, teachers of the Product Design Department at the MOME University, by MA students Henrietta Bodnár, Gabriella Farkas, Bernadett Fúró, Boglárka Nagy, Ágnes Nagy-György, Barbara Szőke,.

Composed by violist and composer Viktor Bátki, the music of the film is a fusion of ancient Greek and Hebrew melodies. Its leitmotif is a combination of an ancient Greek enharmonic tetrachord scale of four notes (two major thirds and two quarter tones) and an ancient Greek tune fragment. The music was recorded by Bátki using an acoustic viola and a six-string electric viola, with effects pedals. With the help of these instruments, he imitated ancient plucked string and wind instruments as well as atmospheric noises. The bass track pulsating through the first section of the score comprises the phrase TATA in terms of both rhythm and pitch (in solfege terms: 2 quarter notes = TA-TA; in relative solmization: the B note can also be referred to as ‘TA’).
Curator of The Blue Room exhibition: Eszter Lázár, art historian

Related events:

22 June 2019. 16.00 – 18.00

The Blue Room at the Night of Museums
Adaptations for The Blue Room: materials, qualities, stories

Participants:

Péter Rákosi (Tehnica Schweiz) and Eszter Lázár
Richárd Káldi, conservator – Replication of antique masterpieces – conservation of antique replicas
Dávid Pap / FabLab  – Statues shift scale – giant plaster statues in desktop 3D
Edit Kondor, ceramic artist -  Secrets of “antique” porcelain

5 July 2019. 18.00

Exclusive guided tour with author Gergely Péterfy

Special thanks:

Máté Birkás, Edit Kondor and the 2nd year students of MOME (Henrietta Bodnár, Bernadett Fúró, Boglárka Nagy, Ágnes Nagy-György, Barbara Szőke), Katarina Šević, Léna Kútvölgyi, Dávid Pap / FabLab, Gábor Pados, Viktória Petrányi, Richárd Schmidtmayer, Dániel Sipos, Zsuzsa Toronyi, Tamás Végvári / Liget Project Budapest, Dániel Zafir

Supported by:

Péter Barta, Kuny Domokos Museum, Tata, acb Gallery, FabLab Budapest, Karmazin Studio, Péter Szauer, MOME Product Design Department, Proton Cinema, SILKEM Hungary kft., tranzit.hu

The Blue Room / Installation and video 18″

The Blue Room is the result of a project started in 2017, aimed at the re-examination of our relation to architectural and material cultural heritage. The project merges two narratives: on the one hand, the story of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Arts’ plaster cast collection of antique sculptures, and on the other hand, that of the 18^th century synagogue of Tata, which served to house the ‘temporary’ exhibition of life-size copies of antique sculptures for more than forty years.

Before World War 2, 10% of Tata’s population of 12 thousand residents were of Jewish origin, with several craftsmen and merchants amongst the members of the assimilated community. The better part of Tata’s industry, including the carpet-, leather-, and brick factories, was in the hands of Jewish tradesmen. A prominent figure in the history of the town was the Jewish factory owner Mór Fischer (1799-1880), the man who founded the porcelain factory of Herend and brought it to success.

After 1945, Jewish-owned properties, including the factories were transferred to the state, the synagogue used as a warehouse during the war was sold by the Jewish community to the City Council of Tata.

The damaged building was renovated in 1977 and repurposed to accommodate some of the Museum of Fine Arts’ late 19^th century plaster copies of antique sculptures. In the summer of 2018, the sculptures were hauled away for conservation and to be exhibited with other plaster copies at the Csillag Fort of Komárom.

The Blue Room project comprises a film and an installation. The film takes place at the synagogue, showing the conservation specialists of the Museum of Fine Arts as they detach the plaster sculptures from their pedestals, before disjointing and boxing them to be hauled away. The building is gradually evacuated, only to be occupied anew by a group of art students who transform the space into a temporary atelier. The young artists craft small porcelain copies of the Greek and Roman sculptures, giving rise to an entirely new collection from the accurate miniature replicas of the plaster copies. Transubstantiated into a memorial of itself, the building is eventually given a new function, and the sculptures once inhabiting it appears in a different quality (material, size).

The film documents an artistic intervention that repurposes the building once the plaster copies are moved out, as a porcelain manufacturing workshop. Purchased with public funds in the 19^th century, the antique replicas also used to serve educational purposes: art students copied antique sculptures in order to acquire the formal features of a universal beauty ideal. Today, however, young artists are engaged in the completion of tasks at a workshop of an entirely different character. The linear narrative of the film tells the present-day story of the building’s metamorphosis: the dismantling of the exhibition of antique sculptures, their removal, followed by the arbitrary occupation of the synagogue’s space and the manufacturing of copies of copies, and eventually the exhibition of this new collection.

The porcelain sculptures were made in collaboration with Edit Kondor, Zsuzsa Bokor, Mónika Csák teachers, and Henrietta Bodnár, Gabriella Farkas, Bernadett Fúró, Boglárka Nagy, Ágnes Nagy-György, Barbara Szőke, MA students of the Product Design Department at the MOME University.

Composed by violist and composer Viktor Bátki, the music of the film is a fusion of ancient Greek and Hebrew melodies. Its leitmotif is a combination of an ancient Greek enharmonic tetrachord scale of four notes (two major thirds and two quarter tones) and an ancient Greek tune fragment. The music was recorded by Bátki using an acoustic viola and a six-string electric viola, with effects pedals. With the help of these instruments, he imitated ancient plucked string and wind instruments as well as atmospheric noises. The bass track pulsating through the first section of the score comprises the phrase TATA in terms of both rhythm and pitch (in solfege terms: 2 quarter notes = TA-TA; in relative solmization: the B note can also be referred to as ‘TA’).

The curator Eszter Lázár has collaborated with Tehnica Schweiz on The Blue Room project throughout the
production.

Special thanks:

Máté Birkás, Edit Kondor and the 2^nd year students of MOME (Henrietta Bodnár, Bernadett Fúró, Boglárka Nagy, Ágnes Nagy-György, Barbara Szőke), Katarina Šević, Léna Kútvölgyi, Dávid Pap / FabLab, Gábor Pados, Viktória Petrányi, Richárd Schmidtmayer, Dániel Sipos, Zsuzsa Toronyi, Tamás Végvári / Liget Project Budapest, Dániel Zafir

Project supported by:

acb Gallery, Péter Barta, Kuny Domokos Museum, FabLab Budapest, Karmazin Studio Budapest, Product Design Department – MOME, Proton Cinema, SILKEM Hungary Ltd., Péter Szauer, tranzit.hu

The Blue Room /video 18″

Directed by: Tehnica Schweiz (Gergely László & Péter Rákosi) / Camera: Péter Rákosi / Camera assistance: Dániel Zafir
Edited by: Antje Tina Las / Music: Viktor Bátki / Sound design: Gábor Ripl / Post production: Máté Birkás

The Blue Room
an exhibition by Tehnica Schweiz (Gergely László and Péter Rákosi)
Vernissage: 18.05.2019, 16:00 – 20:00
On view: 20.05. – 23.06.2019
Venue: Former Synagogue exhibition space / Kuny Domokos Museum / 7. Hősök tere,  2890 Tata / Hungary

The Blue Room is the result of a project started in 2017, aimed at the re-examination of our relation to architectural and material cultural heritage. The project merges two narratives: on the one hand, the story of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Arts’ collection of antique sculptures, and on the other hand, that of the 18th century synagogue of Tata, which served to house the “temporary” exhibition of life-size copies of antique sculptures for more than forty years.

The Blue Room project by Tehnica Schweiz comprises a film and an installation. The film takes place at the synagogue, showing the conservation specialists of the Museum of Fine Arts as they detach the plaster sculptures from their pedestals, before disjointing and boxing them to be hauled away. The building is gradually evacuated, only to be occupied anew by a group of art students who transform the space into a temporary atelier. The young artists craft small porcelain copies of the Greek and Roman sculptures, giving rise to an entirely new collection from the accurate miniature replicas of the plaster copies. Transubstantiated into a memorial of itself, the building is eventually given a new function, and the sculptures once inhabiting it appear in a different quality (material, size).

The porcelain sculptures were made in collaboration with Edit Kondor, Zsuzsa Bokor, Mónika Csák  teachers and Henrietta Bodnár, Gabriella Farkas, Bernadett Fúró, Boglárka Nagy, Ágnes Nagy-György, Barbara Szőke, MA students of the Product Design Department at the MOME University.

The music of the film was made by Viktor Bátki, violist and composer.

The next exhibition of the project will take place from 19th June until 14th July 2019, titled The Blue Room at the Kiscell Museum (108. Kiscelli utca, 1037 Budapest)

Program of the vernissage:
16:00 – 16:30

The Blue Room project is introduced by Tehnica Schweiz and Eszter Lázár the curator of the project.
16:30 – 17:30

Discussion related to the exhibition with:

- Edit Szentesi PhD, art historian, Institute of Art History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

- Dr. Péter György, aesthete, director of the Institute for Art Theory and Media Studies – Eötvös Loránd University

- Richárd Káldi, stone sculptor and conservator, professor of the Conservation Department at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts

Opening hours:

Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays: 10.00 – 18.00, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays upon appointment  (+36 34 381251)

Closing event:

23.06.2019, 16:00
Guided tour with the artists and city walk with Mónika Kövesdi art historian, revealing the Jewish cultural heritage of Tata.

Special thanks:
Máté Birkás, Edit Kondor and the 2nd year students of MOME (Henrietta Bodnár, Bernadett Fúró, Boglárka Nagy, Ágnes Nagy-György, Barbara Szőke), Katarina Šević, Léna Kútvölgyi, Dávid Pap / FabLab, Gábor Pados, Viktória Petrányi, Richárd Schmidtmayer, Dániel Sipos, Zsuzsa Toronyi, Tamás Végvári / Liget Project Budapest, Dániel Zafir

Project supported by:

acb Gallery, Péter Barta, FabLab Budapest, Karmazin Studio Budapest, Product Design Department – MOME, Proton Cinema, SILKEM Hungary Ltd., Péter Szauer, tranzit.hu