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Artistic re-enactments, the art of re-enactment

MODEM’s exhibition Re:Re aims to explore the functioning and mode of existence, anthropological, socio-cultural and (art) historical contexts of artistic re-enactments.

Such performative processes, which are based on participation and cooperation, where the artist brings to the fore an event that has already taken place, or revives an event that he or she has not necessarily experienced directly but which is part of cultural memory, or perhaps re-enacts an object or artwork in a new context. 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 and tradition that is always accessible and experienced in a different way in the here and now.

The exhibition approaches the local from the perspective of global themes, starting from 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 goes on to archives that focus on social and family issues (Miklós Erhardt, Dániel Misota, Judit Flóra Schuller, Lola Arias), the memory of the public space (Katharina Roters, Société Réaliste, József Szolnoki, Péter Pettendi Szabó), religious re-enactments (Kinga Tóth), cultural evocations (Ingela Johansson, Péter Esterházy) and finally leads the visitor to personal reworkings of transgenerational experiences and re-enactments of solitary living spaces (Károly Hofgárt, József Tasnádi).

Compared to previous reenactment exhibitions abroad, which mainly focused on performance art and multimedia actions, Re: Re – in an unusual way – attempts to present installations (Kis Varsó, Takahiro Iwasaki, Loránd Bögös) that work with such exciting changes of scale, which through their medial complexity, technical and material variety illustrate the diversity of this artistic strategy, and also question the limits and possibilities of the endeavours marked by the term artistic re-enactment. Thus, 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 revisions that encourage the mobilisation of individual and collective memory, the re-understanding of the past and the rethinking of memory techniques, mapping the boundaries between 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) / Bögös Loránd / Erhardt Miklós / Irina Botea Bucan (RO) / Jeremy Deller (UK) / Esterházy Péter / Hofgárt Károly / Takahiro Iwasaki (JP) / Ingela Johansson (SE) / Zbigniew Libera (PL) / Kis Varsó / Misota Dániel / Pettendi Szabó Péter / Katharina Roters (DE) / Société Réaliste (FR-HU) / Schuller Judit Flóra / Szolnoki József / Tasnádi József / Tóth Kinga

Curator:

Süli-Zakar Szabolcs

The exhibition can be seen from April 22 to September 17, 2023 at MODEM.

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