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Szabolcs KISSPÁL: The Rise Of The Fallen Feather

Film Screening

13th of October, 2017, 7 pm

tranzit.ro/ Iaşi
Al. Lăpuşneanu street, no. 7-9

The Rise Of The Fallen Feather
Video HD, 19 min, 2016
From Fake Mountains To Faith (Hungarian Trilogy), Part II

From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy) is the overall title of a complex docu-fiction project by Szabolcs KissPál completed in 2016. Through several different media and representational techniques he revisits and manipulates a series of problematic and ever changing symbols that supposed to create a homogenous and rather oppressive idea of the nation. In the center of his investigations stands the authoritarian ‘illiberal’ Hungarian state policy: the project aims to analyze, describe and translate internationally the anatomy of the actual political and cultural philosophy, which stands as an ideological basis for it.

It is composed of two docu-fiction videos (Amorous Geography, The Rise of the Fallen Feather) and an installation as a fictitious museum setting (The Chasm Records), which establish interconnections in a larger historical and cultural framework between the three major elements of the above mentioned philosophy: the symbolism of ‘ethnic landscape’ and political geography, the romantic historiography of national myths of origins, and the ‘turanism’ as a reemerging form of political religion.

The associative chain of historical references of the video, The Rise of the Fallen Feather (19”), looks at how the symbolics of a totem bird called "Turul" affected twentieth-century Hungarian history through an amnesic, yet magic, collective memory, from very early times, through the founding of the Turul Fellowship Association in 1919, and up to the present ideology of ‘blood and motherland’. The video follows the structure of the Turul’s iconography as something that steps out of historical time and into the realm of political mysticism. (Szabolcs KissPál)

Szabolcs KissPál (Marosvásárhely, 1967) lives in Budapest, Hungary. His main field of interest is the intersection of new media, visual arts and social issues. He has been also teaching at various universities in Romania, Slovakia, Germany, currently working as assistant professor at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest (Intermedia Dpt). His works of different media have been presented among others at the Venice Biennial, Kunsthalle Budapest, ISCP and Apexart New York, Stedelijk Museum, Seoul International Media Art Biennale, and other venues, and are part of the collections, such as the Ludwig Museum for Contemporary Art, Budapest, Ostrobothnian Museum Vaasa (FIN), Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest (RO), Paks Collection (HU), Kadist Art Foundation Paris (FR), Muzeum Współczesne Wrocłav (PL).
He was recipient of various grants and scholarships (Munkácsy Prize, ISCP New York, Kulturkontakt Austria, Stipendium für Medienkunst am Edith Russ Haus, Stiftung Niedersachsen). Between 2012-2015 has been actively involved in various activist projects including museum occupations and civil disobedience actions.

This screening is part of the project RE-IMAGINED COMMUNITIES organized by 1+1 in partnership with tranzit.ro/ Iaşi and „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Iași and it is co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how project results can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.