Past

Sights and Sounds: Hungary

Mar. 27 – Apr. 30, 2015

Sights and Sounds: Hungary features new work by Katarina Šević and Tehnica Schweiz, László Csáki, Anja Medved, and Csaba Nemes, selected by Tijana Stepanović.

In contemporary society, any kind of professional activity is a transdisciplinary articulation of complex relationships. In my curating I emphasize openness, rigorous criticism, and reflexivity. I create exhibitions (I prefer to call them situations) based on these principles. I focus on socially charged issues, expressed through multiple perspectives, combined in innovative ways. My Serbian and Hungarian origins have given me valuable insights into diversity, as has my experience in activities independent of curatorial work, such as social psychology, screenwriting, teaching, and even digital technologies.

The video medium allows a very immediate artistic reflection, which flows directly to the audience. After the end of the Soviet Union, in the nations formerly behind the Iron Curtain, video art became an effective, relatively cheap tool for documentation, analysis, and critique. Video artists continue to use a range of means to comment on political, social, economic, and cultural context and change—performances, edited and moderated documentations, puppet shows, and animations, among many other approaches. This selection shows the diversity of which the medium is capable, in works that deal with personal doubts and social conflicts related to national identity, exile, family, and history.

Tijana Stepanović
Curator

Tijana Stepanović (b. Budapest, 1980) is curator of the first OFF-Biennale Budapest (2015). Previously, she was artistic director of acb Gallery in Budapest (2013–2015) and head of ACAX, the international projects department of Budapest’s Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Arts (2006–2013). She was one of the curators of Transitland: Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe, 1989–2009, an archive project that focused on video art of the post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Stepanović holds degrees in art theory, literature, and psychology.

About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video

This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.

Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.

Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.

The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.

Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs

#sightsandsounds

Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.

Exhibition highlights

Katarina Šević and Tehnica Schweiz, still from Gasium et Circenses (Gas and Circuses), 2013, video, sound, 17 min., Artwork © Katarina Šević and Tehnica Schweiz.
László Csáki, still from My Name Is Boffer Bings, 2012, chalk animation, sound, 19 min., 50 sec. Artwork © László Csáki, provided by Umbrella.tv and NextArt Gallery, Budapest
Anja Medved, still from Memory Clinic, 2010, video, sound, 13 min. Artwork © Anja Medved, provided by the artist and Kinoatelje, Gorizia and Šempas