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2020 Parallel Hungary I 
At the start, the project was given the working title Parallel Hungary (Margit Koller). The project questioned the relationship between place, i.e. locality and identity, in other words what it means to be at home in a given space, how a given place constructs the identity of the individual (Castells), what social bonds it creates, what it means to be cut off from it, as well as whether the idea of ‘universal homelessness’ or the assumption of the universality of nomadic existence is still valid (Demos).

In the course of more than six months of cooperation, the doctoral students worked on the cultural and social differences between the Hungarian and their own cultures from the critical perspective of their ‘alienness’ [Simmel]. The experience of their own strangeness and the question of cultural identity was of vital importance. These were emphasised because this was what they found themselves fundamentally confronted with in the first period after their arrival to Hungary. In each meeting, the doctoral students shared their impressions and knowledge, which served as a starting point for the works, and through sharing and processing these, they also experienced each other's cultural backgrounds and difficulties, and could work on the question of cultural otherness in a playful and critical way – all in a continuous relationship with the host culture.

The discussions of the theoretical texts (Georg Simmel, Stuart Hall, T. J. Demos) that frame their everyday experience also helped to shape each work and the exhibition as a whole. For the first Parallel Hungary exhibition, playful works were created that operated on multiple interpretive planes, offering a sense of the mutual interpretive possibilities of the cultures on display. Each work presented a different perspective on the experience of cultural strangeness, and the sum of these different perspectives opened up a play field in which the ways of seeing and thinking of people from different cultures and the culture of the host country were presented as different. The themes of the works riveted around the experience of being confronted with the disadvantages of the socio-cultural and political situation of women living outside Europe, which were much more visible in the light of European customs; the shock of the exoticisation of Otherness, which was also a recurrent inner identity conflict for the researcher-artists.

Prior to the exhibition, each young artist and their work was introduced on the Parallel Hungary FB page, and a bilingual exhibition brochure was produced to accompany each work. Importantly, the events accompanying the exhibition were not traditional guided tours, but personal meetings between the artists and the audience, as well as the sharing of experiences and stories.
The first exhibition (MKE Barcsay Aula), which closed the work in progress, coincided with the covid closures in Europe. Consequently, the continuation of the work process was severely limited.


Pallavi Majumder (IN)



IN-BETWEEN
installation, three channel video




Why do we feel that we belong in some places and not in others? Place and identity are inextricably bound to one another. The two are co-produced as people come to identify with where they live, shape it, however modestly, and are in turn shaped by their environments, creating distinctive environmental autobiographies, the narratives we hold from the memories of those spaces and places that shaped us.

In my work ‘IN-BETWEEN’, I have worked with the Indian Community here specially with the women who had have somewhat different life back in India than here. How they had adjusted with the changes and balanced their life with this parallel yet altered world, how the place influences them and what basic differences they face – the acceptances and hardships that they go through; how they compare these two parallel lives...? All these are addressed in my video installation.

The cartons / packing boxes symbolically reflect these shifting identities with the shifting places. I aim to portray these boxes also like windows that enable the viewers to discover the stories and elements portraying this inces- sant attempt to cope up and balance the two parallel lives within which we are oscillating ourselves. There are some empty boxes that represent the void and emptiness that unprecedentedly somewhere exist deep within all these inhabitants. I argue that there is a distinction between settling in a place and within its community, and that as people adjust to life in settlements. This struggle of existing and adjusting 'in between' these two parallel spaces is reflected in my video installation.





Zahra Fuladvand (IR)



Mirror
performance
video 8’10”

Cultural dimension is part of our everyday life in all different countries. The relation between the people and the cultural dimension in the social space in Iran is quite different from European countries such as Hungary. This is what I recognized as a difference between the culture of the Middle-East and European culture when I started my life here in Budapest.

I asked myself, what is the social and personal space and man's perception of it specially in Iranian and Hungarian culture? While pushing and shoving in public places is character- istic of Middle Eastern culture, there is an invisible boundary around people in social spaces such as metro, public buses, taxi etc. Specifically I can mention Iranian women who have this invisible boundary around them- selves since they have to be vailed and be separated from men in a physical relationship. While in Budapest this invisible boundary for expressing emotions with physical contact is not as much hidden as my country.

In this art video entitled "Mirror" performer who is covered totally with veil, appear in metro M2 with the mirror in her hands. The reflection of me, who is taking this video and other Hungarian people in this mirror will represent these two cultural dimensions. The same action will be repeat by the performer during the opening of the exhibition and the visitors can see their live reac- tions in the mirror, beside watching the recorded video.



Manuel F Contreras (CO)



Exotic Fruits
two-channel video installation – 9' each
Juan Pablo came to Budapest several years ago. While eating bananas, a fruit that reminds him of his native Colombia, he tells Manuel how his life has developed as a foreigner. Banana after banana, Juan Pablo eats until revulsion, conveying a feeling of otherness with what is familiar to him, things that now seem to be remote and alien. As in a mirrored performance, the second video portrays Manuel, the creator of the installation who also came from Colombia, telling his personal story of foreignness to Juan Pablo while eating avocados. Both stories belong to the both of them as migrants from an exotic place, and both bananas and avocados are still to some extent exotic fruits in Hungary. The contemporary world order has made it possible to move exotic goods freely across the globe, while on the other hand, human migration has dictated a new and constantly changing understanding of what citizenship and nationalism are.


Volkan Mengi (TR)

Consonance
video installation 3'

The project focuses on how the time passes in Budapest and Istanbul in different situations for a foreigner from Turkey. It aims to reveal some highlights of being a student and shows the transition from being a total foreigner to the recent situation. The starting point of the project is Felix Gonzalez-Torres' ‘Untitled’ (Perfect Lovers) work. As the clocks at his work represent two mechanical heartbeats which fall out of sync, the clocks at Consonance aim to show the time in 2 distinctive cities, how the time passes while being at home or abroad and comparing these 2 personal situations from a perspective of a foreigner. It particularly emphasizes the complexity of living abroad. While using clocks as canvases, it refers to the theory of relativity as the time passes at a different speed in diverse situations, such as while being bored, happy, sad or worried and demonstrates examples by reflecting images, videos, animations on the clocks. The story covers the entire time spent abroad and compares similar and different situations throughout in a video installation form, using video mapping technique.


Tarek Arabi (SY) and Hanan Saif (SY)



Into the Box
installation
>1.5m x 1.5m x 2.2m

Credit to Hideg Dániel, Benner Zalán, Fenyvesi Nóra, Marton Lili, Faten Alshohof, Feras Alshohof, and Bahr Abo Shdeed

Hanan Saif and Tarek Arabi's new project would combine their ideas into one installation. This space construction, the ‘pyramided’ room can be interpreted as a total artwork, as well as an interpersonal model. In the shelter like structure, the audience will be directed into the inside, to share solidarity with the artists, who created this work. The project is in fact an intimate dialogue between the audience, the artist and the artwork.

All the interior walls, floor, and even the entrance where the audience enters this installation is covered with reflecting surfaces with different level of reflectivity. Many portraits made by Hungarian and Syrian children will also be fixed on the inside walls. The purpose is to create an illusion of unsta- ble reflection for the person inside that merge with these portraits and make the audience see him or herself in the eyes of those children.
Only one person will be able to enter our world of probabilities, multiplication, possibilities, hesitance and searching for his or her true reflection.




Cecilia Banderia (IT)



Őr utca
video installation   7'


From my flat located at the 8th district in Budapest, I watch my hometown in Brazil. Joao Pessoa's real time traffic surveillance cameras let me navigate through places that used to be part of my daily routine and others where I've never been.

The incapacity of controlling the camera does not let me follow anyone, the image of those that dare to be in the public space are not exposed in this piece. The camera moves, zooms, spins without my commands, then I end up always coming back to myself. The God's eye view provided by the surveillance cameras simulates my social class's point of view, having the possibility to withdraw oneself from the problems faced by the majority of Brazilians – being raised always protected by a layer (inside a private car, inside a private condominium) that separates me from the public places' ‘threats’.

What started as just an attempt to feel myself closer to home, has triggered a recollection of fears, realizations and doubts. Finding myself in between the two realities, I wonder where would be better to exist.


Tra Nguyen (VN)

The Keys
installation infographics
0.7m x 0.7m x 3.5m

The Keys depicts how people living far 8,000 km away, eastward, on another continent visualize or conceptualize Hungary. What information are they most interested in, which images become representative symbols, what are the first impressions of Hungarian people, culture and politics? The answers to all of these questions seem to be quite obvious through the statistics shown by search engines.

This project started from personal experiences coming from two different worlds (the cyber and the real); when the information has been shaped by the interaction between searching keywords and real key-concerns. The research discovers several factors that affect the internet search results and the personal culture shocks.
In order to record the images of Hungary reflected through the internet on one hand, and the real impressions of a Vietnamese person on the other, the work uses an installation infographic. The information printed on a long roll of paper is divided into two parts. The first part is elevated and passed through three filters that search engines use to manipulate information (search engine vendors, local government censorship and the online action-history of the users). The second part, on the floor, shows the real-life impressions of personal experiences in Hungary.