Extended Present – TRANSIENT REALITIES

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born, in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” (Antonio Gramsci)

Nowadays, the instability of the individual has become a certainty and a close experience that has made him directly involved in global trends that have hitherto been seen as a process outside the level and reality of the individual. In the words of the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, we are experiencing an ‘absence of epoch’, a serious rupture of human existence and a general loss of orientation, not least due to the incompatibility of technological evolution as well as social and biological systems. In the light of a future that looms as an apocalyptic endgame, however, this ‘interregnum’, ‘age gap’ – an interstice, ‘vacuum’ – can also be compared to a prolonged state of transition. Thus, the notion of temporality, on the one hand, carries the potential of choice and the possibility of change and, on the other hand, can also describe an artificially maintained ‘state’ whose main purpose is explicitly to perpetuate and consolidate this temporality.

The chronology of transitions is a specific experience, characterised by the appearance of breaks in continuities, of ruptures within a homogeneous time. It is a temporal focus that expands the present time dimension (extended present) to an extreme and totalizes it. How can we capture the experience of the disappearance of a previously solid temporal order, the dissolution of faith in the linear order of things, the emergence of a state of transition, the anticipation of an uncertain future?

The exhibition focuses on the state of permanent transience: it captures the moment in a process in which the present time dimension expands and the characteristics and inner events of this state can be observed closely by means of visual arts. It is as if we were seeing all the simultaneous processes of a point of condensation (the present) in one and the same continuity, capturing the penultimate moment as a kind of stretched-out present. The works on display show that, in addition to the need to process the past, the problematisation of the future is becoming increasingly pronounced in visual art practices, insofar as it offers the opportunity to understand and critically examine our uncertain present as a transitional period, partly through an analysis of the possible future.

The artistic practices and creative processes presented in the exhibition offer possible alternatives, individually, yet through a common denominator, in the light of our ever-changing everyday lives.

The concepts used to develop the exhibition concept are ideas that gain meaning through their interaction and resonance, so we want to give visitors the opportunity to create their own conceptual web. We have highlighted six notions that we feel are particularly important and printed them on boards, so that new connections can be made freely in space and between works. The boards are movable; feel free to move them around if you find another place for them.

In the preparation of the exhibition, the curators sought to present some of the material outside the walls of the museum, embedded in the fabric of the city – in reference to the extendedness implied by title of the exhibition – so that the site-specific installations, which are an integral part of the concept, also extend the exhibition in space. The planned projects will take place throughout Budapest at various times during the exhibition (from 8th April to 4th September, 2022).

This is not the first time that an international group exhibition offers the visitor the opportunity to explore a cross-section of a sharply defined idea, developed by a curatorial team, which, in terms of its topicality or relevance, goes beyond the curators’ professional and individual concerns, allowing for a multi-layered approach.

Curators: FEIGL Fruzsina, KÁLMÁN Borbála, KÉSZMAN József, MAJ Ajna, TIMÁR Katalin, ÜVEGES Krisztina

Exhibiting artists:
Tsuyoshi ANZAI, Nina CANELL, Jeannette CHRISTENSEN, David CLAERBOUT, Nathalie DJURBERG & Hans BERG, EJTECH*, FELSMANN István, Matthias FRITSCH, Cyprien GAILLARD, Fabien GIRAUD & Raphaël SIBONI, Hiwa K, Oto HUDEC*, Richard IBGHY & Marilou LEMMENS, KORONCZI Endre, Jill MAGID, Dane MITCHELL, Yuko MOHRI, Cornelia PARKER, Nika RADIĆ, Mika ROTTENBERG, SUPERFLUX, Andrea ZITTEL *Külső helyszínen elérhető művek: a részletekért kérjük, nézze meg weboldalunkat.

Download the exhibition booklet HERE.