Our exhibition Re:Re aims to explore the functioning and mode of existence of artistic re-enactments as well as their anthropological, sociocultural, (art) historical and theoretical contexts. These are performative processes based on participation and cooperation (evocation, distortion, adaptation, imitation, variation, alteration, iteration, repetition, etc.), when the artist brings an event that has already taken place to the fore, revives an event that he or she has not experienced directly but which is part of cultural memory, or perhaps re-enacts or re-contextualises an (art)work. In this case, the reference to the past is not merely a confirmation of history and what has happened, or even an arbitrary re-experiencing and reliving, but also a critical rediscovery of a memory that is always accessible and experienced in a different way from the point of view of the here and now. Instead of the monolithic nature of the great narratives, the exhibition puts the emphasis mainly on the importance of the plurality of stories told.

           The exhibition approaches the local from the perspective of global themes, starting with the collective and moving to the personal: it begins with Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller’s re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave, one of the most referenced works in artistic re-enactment, and continues with works by Zbigniew Libera and Irina Botea Bucan, who explore issues of media representation, then, after examining
archives that focus on social and family issues (Miklós Erhardt, Dániel Misota, Judit Flóra Schuller, Lola Arias) and the memory of the public space (Katharina Roters, Société Réaliste, József Szolnoki, Péter Pettendi Szabó), leads the visitor to liturgical (Kinga Tóth) and cultural evocations (Ingela Johansson, Péter Esterházy) and finally to personal reworkings of transgenerational experiences (Károly Hofgárt) and re-enactments of solitary living spaces (József Tasnádi).

           Compared to previous re-enactment exhibitions abroad, which have mainly  focused on performance art and multimedia actions, Re:Re—in an unusual way—attempts to present installations (Kis Varsó, Takahiro Iwasaki, Lóránd Bögös) that work with exciting changes of scale, which, through their medial complexity, technical and material variety, illustrate the diversity of this artistic strategy and question the limits and possibilities of the endeavours that fall under the term artistic re-enactment. The rhythm of the multimedia works is structured by installations in the second-floor exhibition space of MODEM, all of which, instead of arbitrary recollections of historical events, are individual artistic revisions: they encourage the mobilisation of individual and collective memory, the re-understanding of the past and the re-thinking of memory techniques, mapping the boundaries of the real and the fictional. The exhibition focuses on Central and Eastern European works and artists, emphasising thus the importance of regional relations and discourses.

Artists of the exhibition:

Lola Arias (AR) / Irina Botea Bucan (RO) / Bögös Loránd / Jeremy Deller (UK) / Erhardt Miklós / Esterházy Péter / Hofgárt Károly / Takahiro Iwasaki (JP) / Ingela Johansson (SE) / Kis Varsó / Zbigniew Libera (PL) / Misota Dániel / Pettendi Szabó Péter / Katharina Roters (DE) / Schuller Judit Flóra / Société Réaliste (FR-HU) / Szolnoki József / Tasnádi József / Tóth Kinga

Curator:

Süli-Zakar Szabolcs