Parallel Hungary Collective
Projects
© 2024
2023
The exhibition explores the concepts of presence and absence via various perspectives. The concept of presence relates to the state of being physically located inside a certain geographic area, including a nation, a cultural milieu, a societal framework, or an ecological system. How do individuals from diverse cultural, religious, or ethnic backgrounds see or encounter the notion of “home” inside their nation of origin, as well as within the country where they are pursuing their education or engaging in professional activities? How can they achieve the state of being present, being visible?
To the manner in which an individual's presence in a novel setting influences their interactions, both with themselves and with the larger community, and on the process of developing, altering, and adapting. In what ways do they undergo reciprocal transformation via their interaction? Or how nostalgia plays a role in the narratives of the individuals or the community? Our proposal is inviting visitors to actively engage with these artworks, generating their own responses and contemplating the concerns presented within them.
dr. habil Tünde Varga
dr. Margit Koller
Curator Assistant
Sára Bodor
Photos by
Julianna Nyíri
Zahra Fuladvand (IR)
Back to our childhood
videoinstallation
2023
I used to play with children and create dramatic play based on our stories. The moments of being in their world gives me the feeling of being in new presence. The feeling of forgetting the sense of time and place and being in their new dimension, gives me new perception of being present in this world.
My 3 years old daughter, combing my hair and putting her clips in my hair. This is the main action of this video installation that invites audiences to join this childhood presence for a while in the absence of all their everyday concerns.
In this video installation, the shadow of the real objects will swing in the childhood world like the images of our childhood which are present in our mind.
Visitors will receive letters from the children, each bearing a character's name. These letters will invite the audience to interact with the objects, making their shadows come alive, if only for a moment, and rediscover the magic of childhood.
Tra Nguyen (VN)
Cyber-colonialism
performative lecture,
video, duration: 13 minutes
2021, Première: Bucharest Biennial (RO), 2021
The performance enacts a traditional Vietnamese storyteller who shared her concerns and warnings on data privacy with her villagers while outlining the short history of how technology and colonialism have been tied together throughout the centuries. The tone of the narration intentionally fluctuates between an academic presentation and an entertaining fable.
The work was inspired by an actual elderly storyteller image in Vietnam; even today, a female village leader still circulates traditional stories, telling legends to the people of her village every night. Collective awareness and memory formed through oral retelling is the most primitive form of human communication, and it remains a precious and important form of social communication in some places.
The structure of the presentation is divided into three parts. While the first part describes the historical context of colonialism, the second part explains cyber-colonialism appropriating data resources, and the third part introduces how technology corporations are connecting the real and virtual worlds to control the personal lives of their residents in the global village. The performance refers to principal forms of communication in human history: oral communication, written communication, internet communication, social network communication, and communication with virtual characters through electronic devices.
Mansour Forouzesh (IR)
The Presence of the Memories
photoseries
2023
The issue of being present or absent can be interpreted as an existentialist issue. Probably, we have proposed this statement to ourselves many times that if we were not here, what would change in the world around "here". This question focuses on the "self" of man. But the question I have in this regard is that if in "here" where we are, there were other phenomena besides these phenomena that are around us, what change would be made in us? For example, if the earth was located where Mars is, what changes would be made in the life of humans and creatures? Or if the place of the forests and plains on the planet were to change, what changes would occur in the lives of the current inhabitants of forest or desert areas.
Was our understanding of the phenomena different? In the photos that I have brought in this exhibition, I seek to ask this question whether an object being present around another object (or us) does make any difference in our interpretation of the world. And how the meaning we find in our life is based on things being coincidently connected to each other? And how our interpretation of these coincidence makes us brave to create values and a narrative of truth based on abstract and [In]Visible relation?
Nuruzzaman Khan (BD)
Precarious Horizons
video
2023
Certainly, we perceive presence as an act of inhabiting a space. Transitioning from one specific space to another introduces an additional layer of absence. Isn't this a constant aspect of our existence on Earth, this perpetual movement through spaces? Yet, for some, this game of hide and seek has evolved into a haunting ordeal. "Tenuous Realms" explores the journey of a Bangladeshi migrant worker, tracing his passage from the present to an unsettling absence. The narrative silently unfolds, revealing how this odyssey transforms into a nightmarish distortion of his aspirations.
This artistic installation delves into the paradox of these individuals being physically present as workers in Europe while their voices remain conspicuously absent, ensnared by societal barriers that make it challenging to articulate their profound experiences. At the core of this narrative is Abdul (45), who embarked on a clandestine sea voyage from Bangladesh to Europe in pursuit of a brighter future. Escaping the devastation of a flooded hometown, Abdul and his family reached Dhaka, only to face the hardships of an undocumented life in Europe, all in search of a renewed hope. Denied legal employment and confined within the continent's borders, Abdul's past and present intersect, weaving a disconcerting tale of presence interwoven with absence, ultimately spiraling into an unsettling nightmare.
Pallavi Majumder (IN) with Margit Koller (HU)
Windblown Nostalgia
videoinstallation
2023
The absence of something once so palpable leaves a void, an emptiness that resonates with a sense of loss and uncertainty. In those initial moments, there is often disbelief, a refusal to accept that which was so certain is now gone. It's as if the mind plays tricks, searching for any sign of that missing presence, grasping at memories and traces left behind. Questions arise, and we find ourselves pondering the nature of our attachment. What did that presence mean to us? How did it define our sense of self or our daily routines? In its absence, we confront the depths of our feelings and the intricacies of our dependence. There's a persistent longing for the return of that presence. But as time passes, the edges of the void may soften, and the rawness of loss can transform into a cherished memory. We carry that absence with us, as an imprint of experience, a reminder of the impermanence of all things.
This site-specific videoinstallation is based on an intimate experience where two paths suddenly drifted apart: Pallavi, the great friend of Margit, has moved back to India for living – probably forever. The two artists have united their artistic tools and created this little symbolic space together with the unpredictable wind of nostalgia, emotions and memories.
Enkhtaivan Orchibat (MGL)
2. Presense, absence
sculpture
2023
Can Nationalism and Western liberalism exist together? It is a work showing the process in Mongolia in the last 30 years. What are the good and bad effects of the post-socialist society?
One part is brainwashed by Western culture and the others talk about nationalism and identity. It's about fake characters and "raw brain" that fill your brain with various knowledge and information from outside. Another part is true faces hidden under the religion, this is with an empty brain, but is the truth appearance. These two parts together are whole, but they do not exist at the same time. Just like the opposite poles of a magnet to push each other.
Erekle Chinchilakashvili (GE)
Archive of Absence
Installation
2023
“Act of archiving is an attempt to resist transformation or in other words to strengthen the memory of a specific state of being.”
– An unknown source, early 19th century,
(from the Letters of the Shiibeediiom).
He entered the room. The floor was wooden and loud, making high-pitched screechy sounds under his feet. The room was a Biodiversity Section of the Historical Museum of the Shiibeediioom. He could feel the odorant molecules of pastness, the smell of archival chemicals and dust in the air. The room was full of arid, preserved plants and taxidermied creatures of the past.
These flora and fauna, which seemed drying and decomposing in front of his eyes in a hanging manner, were definitely here, in front of him, in this particular room. They were being held by steel, the steel by screws. The artifacts of the exposition were part of the space, that specific constellation of walls, floor, and ceiling, which mapped the borders of that room in his mind.
The presence of these artifacts in this particular space also creates an absence in their original areas of existence, where they were grown and taken from. This absence is also a kind of existence, he thought. But the empty spaces they left behind in the soil were probably now being overtaken by the over-growth of weeds, by new flora, new molecules. Therefore, their absence, their only remaining trace of existence in the area of their origin, was also ceasing to exist.
The archive of absence. The floor was made from wood, and as he walked, he could hear it under the rubber soles of his shoes.
Audette Hyder (SYR)
Connectedness
installative painting
2023
As people in Society from different cultural Backgrounds and different nationalities, just like (Triangle, Square, and Circle) but each group forming one line as we adapt in this society to be a unity, and the human feelings bring us together..
I invite you to feel the artwork and to interact with it by picking up one of the strings which fixed to the shapes prints and attach it to one of the paintings that may can express your feelings towards presence, absence ...and Home...
Manuel F. Contreras (CO)
documentary, 95 min
2022
When his girlfriend says she wants to have kids, Manuel starts filming his own life. He wants to be free. Thirty years earlier, his father died shortly after leaving his wife to start a new family. Years later,
Manuel’s dying mother tells him to travel and enjoy life. Manuel knows that his need for “freedom” is simply hiding his fear of re-living what happened in his family. He decides to look up his half-brother,
exposing the family secret. That meeting brings unforeseen changes, revealing the complex emotional legacy the dead leave behind for the living.