Eszter Sipos and Csaba Árpád Horváth: Be impossible, demand the real. Part of OFF Biennale 2017, exhibited at AMATÁR, Budapest.
Curator of the show: Vanda Sárai, Curator (from the Biennale): Róna Kopeczky
Our work reflects on the recent past, politics of memory, and its controversial relationship with the actual experiences, through the history of the transformation of an underground ammunition factory in Hungary. This project deals with Cold War memory by way of the sites of the era (bunkers, factories, and the built environment). The collisions of subjective and collective memory is recurring element of our work. The project commenced with an approach quite close to activism, but due to the secrecy of the subject, and the difficulty in gaining access to the site, we turned to a more lyrical direction. We confronted three positions: that of our generation; that of those who had formerly worked there; and the point-of-view of those who live there. We examine the potential for permeability between these three positions. We produced and worked up ten interviews for the film accompanying the project; we prepared a number of short films from the many hours of material that accumulated in the course of the in-depth interviews.
„Be impossible, demand the real” It was title of the exhibition, also text on an exhibited object
The slogan on our demonstration sign continues a dialogue with one of the most emblematic phrases of the Paris revolt of 1968. By inverting the call, we enter into the school of thought that explores our work by way of the relationship between the Cold War and the present. The installation is a fictive monument to the unrealised demonstration of a Hungarian military factory. We filled the gaps that developed in the story with fictional elements: those parts which we do not know, or we are not allowed to say. As if the location and characters around the secret – kicking up the order of Eastern European State Socialism – would have given voice to their critics. We imagined an event that even with the perspective of our generation, would become an interpretable point of reference.
This chapter of our project was exhibited at two places almost at the same time with different installations. The Invisible Factory / Chapter 2. was also shown at the exhibition: Economize! – Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Curated by Katalin Tímár.
