Dates: 10 April 2025 —12 April 2025 with students of MKE Hungarian University of Fine Arts and students/alumni of Freeszfe Society Realized in collaboration with members of the open art community Pneuma Szöv. (Sarah Günther, Zsuzsa Berecz, Viktor Markos - Pneuma Vizuál, Luca Szabados) Venues: HUFA Intermedia Dpt., Internép (Népszínház utca 26. Budapest, 1081, Hungary) The seminar will embark on a journey towards the potentials of presence at a location. We go beyond our usual understanding of the local, we work ourselves into the in-between. As potential community members, as artists, as entities. Where does our interest lie? In Latin the word inter esse means "taking part", literally "being in-between." When we have an interest, we take part — we are in the space between something and ourselves. During the seminar, we will delve into this notion of in-between presence, experimenting with various stages of presence, of flow, also exploring methodologies of improvisation. We will engage with the surroundings of a specific location in Budapest: Népszínház utca (People's Theatre Street). The block seminar will take place at Internép, an experimental space in Népszínház utca, where a longterm coexistence of artists and neighbours is emerging. Together, we will look into and mingle with practices of locals, district municipality, locals and strangers. The seminar will also be open for students and alumni from theatre-related study programs of the Freeszfe Society. — Regarding the theme, students will be guided to envisage and conduct site-specific research and artistic interpretations within group work. The discourse of the seminar is to link theoretical and practical aspects within contemporary art and embrace the togetherness of local and international students from diverse disciplines and cultures. Prior to the beginning of the seminar, to assist students with their preparation for the program, we will compile a reading list with useful resources (texts, projects, web links). The content of the intensive seminar will consist of lectures and presentations, explorations of the urban space, city walks as well as film screenings, discussions and tutorials to support the realization of collaborative projects by small groups of students. Pneuma Szöv. is an open art community working mainly in Budapest since 2008 with collaborations and temporary exiles internationally. They launch processes that trouble the regimes of our daily lives and re-enchant what seems to be obvious and unchangeable. Their post-dramatic performances meld artistic research, social philosophy, and informal urbanism with various practices of visual art, community art and public art, free pedagogy, and embodied politics of participation, in preparation for a different potential society to come. See the previous themes & projects by Mapping the Local: https://mke.hu/mapping_the_local/index.php The workshop will start at the Internép on the 10th of April, 14:00 Dates of the workshop: 10, 11, 12 April afternoon Prior to the workshop, there will be a preparatory seminar on 20th March at 4 PM. The seminar will close with a public presentation by the group projects and their research (17. April 2025). If you want to participate, please write to us by 15 March at pneumaszov@gmail.com
Author: mokusok
Internép Theatre Season Opening Week
The People’s Theatre in Pest was demolished in 1965, and we have long wondered what a people’s theatre could look like today. Or rather, a theatre in-between peoples and other entities – an internép/interpeople’s theatre. We are circling around cultural institutions like a flock of pigeons, while nesting ourselves in different places and different communities. A year ago we launched a placemaking process in the People’s Theatre street aka Népszínház utca.
And since every theatre has a season opening, we’ll be celebrating ours too, for 1 week! Because we like to open things and then not finish them.
Everyone is welcome (as always). Specifically no specific target audience. Each day of the opening week there will be something to see, do, laugh at and actively participate in.
Patrons of the season opening will be the doves of Blaha square, who are now occupying the empty space of the former People’s Theatre.
“Peace is the alpha and omega of all human friendly activity, all production, all arts, including the art of living”
Bertolt Brecht
PROGRAMME
21 October, Monday
18.30-22.00 Bird Watching – Pneuma TV Party
video picking from the last 15 years’ works of the art network collective Pneuma Szöv.
22 October, Tuesday
17.30-19.00 Reader’s Circle special edition
23 October, Wednesday
Fess konténert akarunk – we paint the containers of our tiny garden (also called ancient forest) in front of Népszínház u. 26.
18:00 Movement in Népszínház utca – contemporary dance workshop led by Beatrix Simkó Trisha
24 October, Thursday
during the day: we prepare costumes and stuff for the Friday opening event
25 October, Friday
16.00 – 18.00 kint: Fura madár contest – weid bird flying fashion show on the dog walk, music, cooking etc.
with the team of Internép Café and everybody who still dreams of flying
19:00 – 22:00 Ki Mit Tudna – season opening feast
concept and realisation by Pneuma Szöv. with Luca Szabados, Csilla File, Zsuzsa Berecz, Viktor Markos, Sarah Günther and Árpád Bőczén (KÖME)
This programme has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under project Recharge (grant agreement No 101061233)
TV Free Europe: The Movie – Berlin Premiere
26 January, 2024, 8pm |
Club der polnischen Versager – Ackerstrasse 169, Berlin, Germany |
¤ Film screening and Q&A with the film team
¤ Live cinema “The Belt” by Gergő Pápai
¤ Party
>> Event part of Vorspiel – transmediale/CTM <<
TV FREE EUROPE. THE MOVIE – film by Gergely Pápai and Pneuma Szöv.
(Budapest +Nova Gorica/Leipzig/Szombathely/Taarnby/Oberwart 2023, 63 min, Hungarian,English+German with English subtitles)
Mari Szürke and Marie Grau met at the Pan-European Picnic in 1989. They traveled together to the present day to understand how to live with the freedom that the fall of communism brought us. This film tells the story of a strange journey in which the characters try to understand what it means to be free. Where did the story or history lead that we, who were born around the fall of the actually existing socialist regimes, are not the creators of, but only the winners or victims of? The TV Free Europe film is also the story of the failure of this impossible undertaking.
The characters in the film stumble around in the shadow of COVID-19, the hollowed out fall of the socialist regimes, the Orbán regime, self-realization, and the expectations associated with success. They are looking for the narrow path that leads between a meaningful life, the compromises made or not made for success, the traps of cynicism, and being losers.
This film tries to get to know its characters, capture our time, and some of the fundamental questions of our generation.
Followed by a special presentation TV Free Europe – The Movie co-director Gergő Pápai’s film project The Belt
THE BELT
cinematic journey with live-act
“What I know as the city is only a very, very small part of what Budapest actually occupies. Concrete channels for streams, logistics systems like railways, warehouse bases, high-voltage wires, outdated heating plants, abandoned factories and the heaps of by-products of former industrial production make up most of the city’s territory. The Belt is a slow film in which we leave behind the well-known sights of the city to see the new stadiums, the the old marshalling yards and the gigantic real estate developments. The film provides an opportunity for a slow, drifting journey where we can meditate on the relationship between ourselves, the city, and the natural environment. This movie is a silent film and I play live music, similar to the pianist who would accompany silent films in the past.” (G. Pápai)
Placemaking experiment in Népszínház utca (People’s Theatre Street)
Since 2008, we have been inhabiting places for shorter and longer periods, but now we are embarking on a long-term process of creating a new place.
In Józsefváros, we have recently (from 2021) rented a workshop office in Karácsony Sándor utca together with KÖME – Cultural Heritage Managers Association. We have been trying to rent a municipally owned space for years, and now we have finally been successful in our bid and together with KÖME we have been awarded the vacant 143 m2 shop space at Népszínház u. 26 for 5 years. We are able to give up our office rented on market basis (though at a friendly price) and move to Népszínház in October 2023!
***
quote from a text which we wrote about this placemaking experiment:
Népszínház street is located in the city center of Budapest, it is part of the 8th district but mentally it crosses much more diverse contexts. This multicultural street could well be a candidate for the title “folks’ street”, and this is not a historical coincidence. The street has always been an important artery of Budapest, serving as a gathering place for the rural and distant population that came to the capital from the 2nd half of the 19th century on, and as a home for merchants, artisans and artists. It connected the first main railway station with the city centre, the outside with the inside, the new with the old, the foreign with the other foreigner, the resident with the foreigner. The street was given its current name in the year after the unification of the city (in 1873), in connection with the great theatre project of the time, which was intended to reach out to a wide range of people and provide them with access to culture. Today, the street, deprived of its folk theatre and cinemas, is best known as the antechamber of the district’s ‘ghetto romanticism’. The local society became even more colourful in the 20th century when African and Asian migrants started to settle down in the neighbourhood. Since the turn of the millennium, an increasing gentrification makes the local dynamics and challenges even more complex.
The focus of the place-making process is the abandoned shop space at Népszínház Street 26. Thanks to the support of the Józsefváros Municipality, we can lease this space for the next 5 years. We aim to transform this space into an inclusive meeting point, a communication hub for Népszínház Street. Our goal is to go beyond conventional cultural representations and “safe spaces,” creating surfaces that can connect the most diverse people despite social fragmentation.
Read the reportage of the daily newspaper Népszava about our opening Népsziasztok! Placemaking Festival here (in Hungarian)
Join our facebook group NÉPSZÍNHÁZ!
More info about Népszínház micropark and the micropark project of Joseph Town here.
Pneumatology – article in Mezosfera
Have a look at the essay by Pneuma’s co-founders Zsuzsa Berecz and Sarah on Pneuma Szöv.’s art and activism. They present a set of tarot cards in Mezosfera‘s issue on Art ‘After’ Activism.
Ravishing tarot design by Dorottya Poór, Luca Szabados and Sarah Günther
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Homepage is in progress. We’re working on completing some infos.
Spectacular Society in Gólya
The Spectacular Society warmly invites you to its political game evenings!
2 and 30 October, 2022, Gólya, Budapest
🥣 Constant supply: capitalist society of spectacle
🍳 Menu of the day: lazy karaoke, mindfucks, shredded sloth
🍟 Who is it for?
Anyone who can spare a little time for laziness.
Anyone who’s under pressure at work.
Anyone who isn’t afraid to put on the glasses we give them (and open their eyes while they’re at it).
Who doesn’t want to spend Sunday evening alone, but not very active either.
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/652034569585675
Spectacular Society
This spring we have been working on a series of workshops based on the situationist Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle. In this book, Debord decribes with unwavering rigorosity and poetical richness the nature of capital that has gotten to a state of accumulation so that it became “spectacle”. By using the word spectacle Debord describes the commodification of all aspects of human life, including love and the most intimate relationships to an extent when illusion becomes the real and the real is only a moment within the illusion.
Starting from chapters of The Society of the Spectacle we set out to find our own relationships to the spectacle. We used different practices, many of them public space observations, some kind of a dérive in the city (as situationists called this kind of method of psychogeography).
From April 29 on we are organising open soirées to share with others the practices used during the workshop.
See the facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/4653022051470467/4660771084028897
TV Free Europe at Ars Electronica
TV Free Europe was presented at Ars Electronica, one of the largest intermedia, new media, digital-cultural, contemporary media and research festivals in the world.
𝗔𝗥𝗦 𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗜𝗖𝗔 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟭
𝗔 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗹8.–12. SEPTEMBER 2021TV Free Europe / Studio Nova Gorica (University NG, School of Arts – Akademija umetnosti Univerza v Novi Gorici) was presented at the “Gardens” section.
“Fear Free”
TV show – created in the frame of a smeinary held by Sarah Günther and Jasna Hribernik
Panel discussion by and with the project’s creators
Links:
GARDEN: https://ars.electronica.art/…/greetings-from-the…/
FESTIVAL – Basic: https://ars.electronica.art/newdigitaldeal/en/
Seeking Resonant Cartographies Beyond States of Insecurity: Borsos Lőrinc’s and Pneuma Szöv’s Critical Fictioning of the Self and the Social in Illiberal Hungary
An MA thesis by Maggie Sava about two Hungarian artist groups: Pneuma Szöv. and Borsos Lőrinc.
You can download it here.
Made in the frame of: MA Contemporary Art Theory Dissertation, Goldsmiths, University of London
Dissertation Tutor: Dr. Janna Graham
Submission Date: 03 September 2019