From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy)
An exhibition by Szabolcs KissPál
20 December 2016 - 20 February 2017
Opening: 20 December 2016, 7 pm
tranzit.ro/ Cluj,
Brassai Sámuel St. 5
Opening speech by Zoltán Kékesi
In a fragmented and polarized Europe, in which the politics of exclusion are framed and legitimized as the duty of devotion towards national interest and its mythical (in fact pragmatic) calling, the reappearance of nationalist and chauvinist discourses is no longer a matter of taboo.
Presented in the framework of Fiction, Rhetoric, Facts program developed by tranzit.ro since 2012, the project From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy) by artist Szabolcs KissPál is an investigation into the recent developments of Hungarian state policy, namely its new and instrumental articulation of an old political religion. The project consists of two docu-fiction videos (Amorous Geography and The Rise of the Fallen Feather) and a fictitious museum setting (The Chasm Records) aimed to reveal and problematize the specific cultural and political aspects of the idealization of one nation’s mythical origins. Through references to historical moments, objects and relics dating from Hungary’s interwar period, the political formation of the ethnic nation is revealed, as a deliberate and politically charged process of construction through perpetual exclusion and self-purification —a process still under way in contemporary Hungarian society.
Produced with the help of Stipendium für Medienkunst of Edith Russ Haus and Stiftung Niedersachsen.
The main partner of tranzit.ro is ERSTE Foundation.
