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2022 Parallel Hungary II


The third joint project again aimed to work together and organise the second Parallel Hungary exhibition. With the closing of 2020, the scholarship students were stuck in the country for a long time, away from their families, and some of them had babies in Hungary. The new situation presented them with even greater challenges: not only did they have to cope with the strangeness of another country's culture, but they had to adapt to a situation that brought them unforeseeable changes for the future, with significantly more unpredictable circumstances, both in their daily lives and in their prospects as artists.



The problems explored in the previous exhibition, such as cultural otherness, ‘universal homelessness’ or global nomadism, questions of one's own alienation in a changed environment, were seen from a different perspective. The new exhibition therefore focused on the problem of possible futures, with a more ecological focus. The artists reflected in different ways on their vision of the future, on uncertainty, vulnerability, and possible re-planning in the changed circumstances. 
The common work was to process this, to discuss it, to look for possible ways forward through ongoing meetings. An exhibition of the results of this process was held in the Profil Gallery, HUFA, Budapest again accompanied by community events. These were perhaps all the more needed by the doctoral students as the post-covid period resumed. The artists and their works were again published on the FB page in a companion publication.





Atsushi Kuwayama (JP)



An Exercise for Freedom
Video intallation

The advancement of technology, as well as a growing belief in artificial intelligence, is throwing doubt on the future as something open and unpredictable. Everything and everyone, nowadays, appears to be calculable using pre-existing data sets. This is the context in which Atsushi aspires to operate, in accordance with thinkers such as Achille Mbembe, who claims that the purpose of art in our day is to produce living experiences that cannot be computed.

In Hungary, the Japanese amateur artist-researcher encounters one particular corner of his university studio in Bajza street. The corner made of glass windows framed with metal bars and lights coming through it first gave him double impressions of church and prison, transcendence and immanence, self and other, past and future. The corner has mediated and reflected the light and life of various modern writers and painters, ethnologists and multiplicity of objects and materials, each one obsessed with the question of name and identity, who they were, where they came from, or what they could become? The form of the corner triggers another line of thoughts.

In Japanese, freedom is written with two Chinese characters 自由 (pronounced as Ji-yu) composed of ji（自）meaning self + y (由）– ”based-on, according to, caused by,” with both letters being made of grid-like frames. Atushi attempts to materialize the visual and semiotic contradiction of the word freedom, and asks how freedom is possible both within and out of strictures and confinement represented by straight grids, metallic bars or fixed frames. This video is an animated sketch and part of his ongoing re-search project that searches again and again a sitespecific history of the place in relation to the notion of freedom.


Cecília Bandeira (BR)



Avoiding Future
6', Video installation
An audiovisual exploration of uncertainty; an attempt to stop time from being drawn away by its own gravitational pull. 

Hungary runs parallel to Brazil. As I near the end of my planned stay here, I'm caught in the middle of these two lines that appear to never meet (despite my efforts to bend them). I'm bouncing back and forth between the two, while juggling the benefits and drawbacks. Weighing them in feels impossible. Choosing between the two countries/lives would be a failure in and of itself, because there would always be a lack. When any decision means a separation, there isn't even the smallest concept of continuity.

The safest place to be is in the moment's inertia, laying down in the present where no decision has been taken and the options of going back or staying are still open. This inner state is often annihilated by the rush of outside noise, an entangled web of arrowlike questions concerning the future bursting the safe bubble of being solely in the stillness of the present.


Enkhtaivan Ochirbat (MGL)



Wrongly Made Ax Handle
Video installation

In my work, there is a tall chair with an ax on one leg. Also, the chair's back is not in the proper position and the screen is on the wrong side, under the chair. Audiences will be able to observe the video by raising their heads from beneath the tall chair, which represents a person's future position, job, and wealthy destination. We'd like to sit higher up, but we can only see from the bottom. It's like gazing down from above at a chair. It's about some folks sitting at inappropriate heights.

It's like getting elected by the people and then taking a bribe and looking at it incorrectly, yet karma is real and ready to strike. The ax is cruel, it divides and breaks things, but that's what people do. If we don't do the right thing in the future, the future will see us as wrong.



Erekle Chinchilakashvili (GA)



Stains of Dust
Installation 

I wanted to become more conscious of how everything around and inside me is constantly changing, how the universe is constantly moving and fluctuating on micro and larger stages.

I wanted to embrace the ridiculousness of the process of observation while working on the installation and moving picture. I did not know how the project would turn out before I started it. Nothing was pre-planned. I knew there was a possibility of a failure. After all, it’s only an attempt to capture the complexity of the processes.

I didn’t want the work to be sensible. Rather, I wanted to invite the experience of the unknown, of the absurd. After all, the modern world is prone to over-rationalization. The desire to simplify all the information we receive from the world is continual. This constant translation process gives very little room for uncertainty.

The human intellect, with its clear limits, is incapable of processing all information. This is the beauty of it: that we are not the protagonists of this world, but a little, ever-changing, non-essential, and on a bigger scale, insignificant particle of dust.



Hanan Saif (SY) & Tarek Arabi (SY)



And Then
An artwork collaboration between Hanan Saif and Tarek Arabi. It is about the life changes we all face in our life, it’s about how we can in an instant lose our personality to earn another perspective, and it’s about the unexpected in the days and years ahead.

Hanan and Tarek are artists and a couple who have a little daughter. Because they can't get as much spare time as they used to, they decided to collaborate and create this artwork while the other was playing hide and seek! 

They believe that after having a child, they change, and try to see their future via a painting that speaks louder than words. They believe that after having a child they have changed, and they attempt to see their future through a painting that can speak louder than words. Each of them would give the audience a trip inside their minds while working on this piece by writing down their ideas in the process of making this artwork.


Khan Nuruzzaman (BD)

We All Are Refugees
What does the term refugee mean to me? I perceive uncertain migration as both an alien and complex adaptation process. What does the term homeland mean to me? I see a land where natives share a language, a cooking style, and a sense of fashion.

We, humans, are like a river, always changing with the flow or being changed by the flow. In some ways, we are all refugees in today's world. But my quest is to learn how uncertainty affects our cooking habits, or how we adapt to an alien situation by making our native food with the ingredients and environment of a foreign land, or what became our primary food habits as a result of resource scarcity.

I've been following different people with refugee status around the world for the past six years, and it differs from country to country. It also depicts global politics and views toward a specific group of people. Culture, religion, and colour are crucial factors of acceptance. The food and cooking environment reflects this as a whole, and it is simpler to find the migrating nature of human beings if we look at the human history of development. In fact, the way we are born is also a sperm migratory process.

Finally, this time I've chosen the Rohingya Refugees' eating habits. Due to ethnic cleansing, about one million people flew from Myanmar to Bangladesh in 2017. I attempted to illustrate their everyday food patterns or habbits based on the relief they receive.


Özgür Ilter (TR)

Re:place
Installation 

Physical experiences shape the way beings perceive the tangible terrene, and their sense of belonging arises from the memories brought along. 

A single place, in its essence, might be apodictic. But when shaped through an individual’s perception, it is incomparably idiosyncratic. In this context, crossing into others’ bubbles of reality elevates one’s level of consciousness.

From the earliest times of history, the desire for closed space, in which humans have sought refuge to protect themselves from natural harm, has become an integral part of everyday life. Through these instincts and the interactions that follow, the identity of place shifts its notion in a universally unique sense.

Home, stripped from every notion outside of its door when it's shut, is what each individual finds within, carries along, and cultivates throughout their journey. Therefore, the concept of location is futile. Be that as it may, the impact of the whereabouts of individuals molds their persona irreversibly  through acquired memories.



Pallavi Majumder (IN)


My work for this exhibition embodies a series of 30 pieces of prospective writings with threads on canvas cloths, that from a distance seem legible and eloquent. The closer you get to them, the more unintelligible, illogical, and indecipherable they become showing all signs of ‘stress and strain’. Here I basically aim to portray the contingencies of our plans in respect of the perplexing uncertainty that the present time offers us, which is even heightened with the concept of ‘future’. 

The body of work focuses on the ‘interval’ of predictability and doubts, on the volatility in between the evident and indefinite; it questions the distance to be traveled for the inarticulate to be comprehensible or specifically the other way round as in the case of our intentions and future plans. The work also brings with it an alter ego. The back-side of each piece, the unplanned, the accidental, the unforeseen, and the involuntary seems to be simpler, orderly, uncluttered, and more regulated than the deliberate, premeditated, erratic mess in the front. This somehow accentuates the randomness of our actions that are planned or unplanned, the duality in between the expected and unexpected. 


Tra Nguyen (VN)



Parallel Predictions
Installation
12  objects, 12 tarot cards  


Predicting the future has been a sort of cultural practice related to everyday living in various cultures. They all conduct predictions as an attempt to find the future, from Greek oracles to prophets of diverse religions; from African priestesses performing ritual ceremonies to Asian monks in Buddhist temples. Predictions can aim at both large social issues and specific personal issues. Many of these activities are still used today. Furthermore, numerous traditional forms of divination and fortune-telling have also been turned into digital applications. While the majority of historical fortune-telling practices rely on the interpretation of randomness in natural patterns, shapes, forms, or occurrences, these applications work rather differently. 

They have another tactical intention; to collect user data for a completely different prediction purpose – that control interest, manipulate imagination, and limit randomness. Giant servers employ personal data mining to collect demographic and psychographic information about users in order to track their personal intentions and predict their interests in order to meet future demand. This is capitalism's main source ‘energy’ for making predictions and creating specific future scenarios for users, thus serving the interests of enterprises, corporations, or groups.




Vitor Silva (BR)

Fever Dream
Installation, surgical masks


As part of a larger framework of artists reflecting upon the future, the work is a typographic installation made from surgical masks. The intention is to consider how the pandemic has interfered with our projection of the future. Either by shaping our perception of time, waning our ambitions, capturing our attention and/or manipulating our emotions, anyone who’s been through a pandemic knows how information and delusion create a fertile ground for anxiety, much like those “unusually vivid dreams [someone has when] trying to sleep off an illness.” We were constantly forced to contemplate several versions of possible futures – and got to live in one of them.

In parallel to that, contemporary design production and consumption are increasingly confined within digital spaces. In order to counteract that tendency, my interest drives towards a manual approach to the design process as an attempt to resist the crushing impulse of the digital age. By doing so, I’m encouraged to examine my own practice and reflect upon my over reliance on digital tools in the creative process.





Zahra Fuladvand (IR)



Rootedness
4' - 6', Video art
4', Performance

Camera and editing
by Manuel F Contreras



This video art was shot in different places such as my home as an intimate place, and the public space of the street where my house has been located.

In this video, the performer will hold the green grass (Sabzeh)1 with roots in the air. With closed eyes, she will spry the water on the roots and cut the green grass with scissors. These actions and the reactions of random people around will be recorded by mobile phone and will be edited for the final show at the exhibition.

For the opening of the Parallel Hungary II exhibition, the live performance will be happening in the MKE Profil Gallery space. During this short performance, the same action will happen while the recorded video will play as a background.

1 Sabzeh is the sprouted wheat grown for the Persian New year celebration. Sabzeh Nowruz is the symbol of rejuvenation and new life, and it is one of the ever-present items in this very ancient ceremony.