Curators of OFF-Biennale 2025

We’re announcing the curatorial team for the fifth edition.

 

We are pleased and proud to announce the curators of OFF-Biennale 2025. Many of this year’s team have been involved in the creation of previous editions from the very beginning. It was also important to involve new professionals to give even more and fresh perspectives.

Curators of the fifth edition:

Nikolett Erőss

Rita Kálmán

Eszter Lázár

Edit Molnár

Veronika Molnár

Kata Oltai

Lívia Páldi

Hajnalka Somogyi

Borbála Soós

Katalin Székely

Call for Volunteers

OFF-Biennale Budapest is an international contemporary art event and Hungary’s largest independent, civil arts initiative. OFF-Biennale operates as a grassroots organization based on artistic, social, and scientific collaborations, functioning in a networked structure. It creates new artworks, exhibitions, publications, events, and educational programs; supports Hungarian artists’ work, and brings the international art scene closer to local audiences. It’s not hosted in traditional art venues but rather takes place in private homes, empty shops, industrial buildings, and public spaces, inviting audiences to explore the city. Its aim is to use the tools of visual art to engage in social dialogue on public affairs and to strengthen the culture of democracy.

The first OFF-Biennale was held in 2015, with subsequent events in 2017 and 2021, and it also featured at documenta fifteen in 2022.

The fifth edition will be held from May 1 to June 15, 2025, coinciding with OFF’s tenth anniversary: a decade since the self-organized international “garage biennale” was launched in spring 2015. The theme of the upcoming OFF is “Safety”—a fundamental human right and instinctive need, yet one increasingly inaccessible for many, despite heated political debates and the growth of the security industry.

Why We Need Volunteers

For years, our work has relied on the involvement of numerous volunteers. We’re looking for individuals interested in contemporary art, motivated by responsible work that requires both teamwork and autonomy. Volunteers collaborate with experienced professionals in their respective fields, offering opportunities for mutual learning.

When?

We need your support from January to the end of June 2025. The busiest period will be leading up to the opening, but there will be plenty to do throughout the Biennale and even after it concludes.

How to Apply

Fill out the application form, where you can also upload your brief CV and motivation letter. Applications are ongoing!

First Volunteer Briefing: Mid-February 2025.

For any questions, contact us at .

Areas Where We Need Your Help

Leadership Assistance

  • Supporting the director’s work: coordinating with teams, international
    professionals, event organization, and administrative tasks.

Production

  • Art Project Coordination: Preparation and organization of new productions for OFF, liaising with artists, venues, and all stakeholders and supporters involved in the projects.
  • Event organization, creative content development, and event execution.
  • Infomediation: Welcoming visitors at exhibition venues, providing information
    about the artworks, and managing exhibition technology (turning it on/off).
  • Exhibition setup, carpentry, AV technology, and assisting with setting up the OFF-Biennale community space (from moving furniture to painting).

Volunteer Coordination

Organization and Financial Assistance

  • Handling contracts, collecting and managing invoices, preparing records, and organizing artwork transport, travel, and accommodation.

Communication

  • Communications Campaign Assistant: Preparing press events, assisting onsite, requesting quotes, managing printing, editing newsletters, and supporting social media communications.
  • Managing the press center, book, and media library at OFF’s central location.
  • English translation.
  • Hungarian language editing.
  • Press monitoring.
  • Website content uploads.
  • Content creation.

Educational Programs – Assistant

  • Contributing to the development and implementation of educational programs for children and adult audiences.
  • Preparing and coordinating educational programs, supporting educators.
  • Contacting and liaising with schools and children’s groups, maintaining contact lists.
  • Collaborating with the communications team on tasks related to educational programs (e.g., writing and managing program descriptions, maintaining the website’s educational content, organizing audiences, arranging guided tours).

Documentation

  • Photography, videography, post-production, video subtitling, image editing.

Online Events

  • Providing technical support and serving as a technical host for online events.

 

Thank you,
The OFF-Biennale Team

Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival. Lecture by Natalia Romik

OFF-Biennale Budapest proudly presents the first public event leading up to its upcoming edition to be opened in May 2025.

 

Sculpture representing the Józef Oak tree, photo: Daniel Chrobak, Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw 2022.

On 29 October 2024 at 6 p.m., public historian, architect and artist Natalia Romik will present her ongoing project Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival at the Polish Institute in Budapest. The project developed in the context of the Polish memory battles regarding the Jewish experience of hiding during WWII. Romik will speak about the research, the resulting exhibition and also how the total invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the refugee crisis on the Poland-Belarus border has turned her work harrowingly contemporary.

In Poland and Ukraine during World War II, approximately 50,000 people survived persecution by the German occupying forces in hiding. The majority of them were Jewish. They found refuge in tree hollows, closets, basements, sewers, empty graves, and other precarious locations. Natalia Romik’s exhibition Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival pays tribute to these fragile places of refuge and explores their physicality. The show poses basic questions about the relationship between architecture, private life, and the public sphere: it addresses the protective function of spaces and emphasizes the creativity those in hiding brought to bear in their attempt to survive.

In a research project extending over several years, Natalia Romik and an interdisciplinary team of researchers consulted oral histories to identify several hiding places, which they explored using forensic methods. The multimedia exhibition Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival presents the results of this research. It consists of sculptures bearing a direct connection to the sites and includes documentary films, forensic recordings, photos, documents, and objects found in the hiding places.

Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival has been presented in cooperation with the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt with a catalogue published in German and English editions by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

The inaugural event and the following Q&A will be introduced and moderated by Lívia Páldi curator. The collaboration between the artist and OFF is planned to continue in the framework of OFF 2025. The programme is also an event of solidarity: it is part of Bridges of Solidarity, an international series of events around the exhibition Sense of Safety that is currently on view in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which brings attention to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine through programmes by cultural institutions across Europe.

Partner:

The fifth edition of the OFF-Biennale is coming in 2025

The fifth edition of the OFF-Biennale is coming in 2025

 

Reviving the 1979 Gladness demonstrations of Endre Tót (a legendary figure of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde) carried out in several european cities, young artist Kristóf Kovács organised a demonstration in Budapest during the 2017 OFF-Biennale. Participants carried their own laughing faces on a large sign, while at the beginning of the march a giant banner read: “We are happy to demonstrate”.

We are delighted to announce that we will be organising OFF-Biennale again from 1 May to 15 June 2025! The fifth edition will also be a celebration of OFF’s tenth anniversary: it is just over a decade since the launch of the self-organised international garage biennale in spring 2015. The notion of “security” is the central topic of the next OFF, an instinctive need and a fundamental right for all of us; and yet, despite the heated political debates surronding it and the growth of the security services industry, it is becoming increasingly out of reach for the majority.

Ten years ago, OFF was established to strengthen the local independent art scene and contribute to the public discourse on social, cultural and environmental issues. As before, OFF aims to be a platform for open, multi layered and inclusive public debate, focusing our attention on pressing issues relevant to all of us by the means of contemporary art. In a political climate not conducive to civil and cultural self-organization OFF-Biennale remained one of the few art NGOs in Budapest still actively working on creating and maintaining ground for free speech and reinforcing independence.

The group exhibition Somewhere in Europe (Galeria Centralis / Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archive) reflected on the central theme of the 2017 OFF-Biennale, the daily life of the children’s republic Gaudiopolis and the short democratic period in Hungary between 1945-49, through archival material and contemporary artworks.

Over the past two decades, the notion of security has become central to mainstream political rhetoric and public discourse. In a world of rapid and chaotic change, the everyday unpredictability ecological disasters, wars and relentless individualistic competition, most people are desperate for a sense of existential, financial and social security – the lure of freedom has faded. Populist political tendencies have long been built on a sense of insecurity and fear, generating apocalyptic narratives of looming threats and enemies. It is increasingly accepted that security is being used as a pretext to curtail civil and human rights, leading to the rise of autocracies.

OFF-Biennale 2025 will attempt to rethink the notion of security with participating artists, professionals and researchers, so that it is based on trust rather than xenophobia, on communities of tolerance, care and solidarity rather than competition for domination, on transparency rather than secrecy, on emancipated public debate rather than fear of the dark masses. Where, how, with whom do we feel safe? What does this mean for us on a personal, even visceral level, when we think of our families, our communities? What does it mean in terms of our possessions, our data, and what when we talk about national security or international alliances? What does it mean for the most vulnerable communities who are not well represented in the current power structures? In a general climate of constantly generated fear and uncertainty, how can we feel safe enough to stand up for a future in which most living beings suffer the least?

The 2025 OFF-Biennale will be presented in several venues in Budapest, in the framework of local civil and institutional as well as international collaborations, with plans to show our productions abroad at partner sites in the second half of the year. Our priority is to produce and present new Hungarian artworks.

Art Space Unlimited – Vulnerable communities at the forefront of contemporary art institutions

Art Space Unlimited

Vulnerable communities at the forefront of contemporary art institutions

 

Project meeting, seminar and debate, Prague, 16-19 July 2024, © Tereza Havlínková

Five European non-profit art organizations have teamed up to learn from each other and find new ways to open up to audiences with limited access to institutionalized culture. Initiated by La Escocesa (Barcelona, Spain), OFF-Biennale Budapest (Hungary), < rotor > (Graz, Austria), Shtatëmbëdhjetë / Foundation 17 (Pristina, Kosovo), and tranzit.cz / Biennale Matter of Art (Prague, Czech Republic), the project Art Space Unlimited builds upon the individual artistic and educational efforts of these institutions, who will realise different critical art and cultural events in cooperation with local communities based on their specific needs. The art spaces involved will build shared knowledge and organize public events centered around the mediation of art. The project will help these institutions to become spaces relevant for an audience with limited access to institutionalized contemporary art and develop strategies which can be relevant for other, similar organisations. The project will culminate in a book that will be made available in six languages.

Project meeting, seminar and debate, Prague, 16-19 July 2024, © Tereza Havlínková

While shaped by their local contexts and institutional structures, each of the five organizations employs different formats and strategies to engage with audiences as well as artists and the professional public, ranging from year-long exhibition programs and discursive events to concentrated biennial exhibitions to regular artistic residencies. However, the common ground is that the activities planned will allow them to expand their regular programming, helping the institutions to develop mediation programs based on empathy, participation, and mutual understanding.

 

Partners:

La Escocesa: https://laescocesa.org/en

Rotor: https://rotor.mur.at/

Shtatëmbëdhjetë / Foundation 17: https://foundation17.org/

tranzit.cz / Biennale Matter of Art: https://matterof.art/

 

The project is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

 

Goethe Medal: German state decoration goes to OFF-Biennale

2023 GOETHE MEDAls go to Gaga CHKHEIDZE, YI-WEI KENG, AND THE OFF-BIENNALE

This year’s Goethe Medal honours the film manager Gaga Chkheidze from Georgia, the curator and dramaturg Yi-Wei Keng from Taiwan, and the curatorial team of the OFF-Biennale from Hungary. The official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany is awarded to public figures who render outstanding services to cultural exchange worldwide or the teaching of the German language. The Goethe-Instituts abroad nominate candidates by virtue of their significance for cultural policy and their exceptional artistic work; the selection of awardees is made by a jury of experts. The Goethe Medal will be conferred by the president of the Goethe-Institut Carola Lentz at a ceremony in Weimar on 28 August.

For the announcement of this year’s awardees, Carola Lentz, president of the Goethe-Institut, noted, “Cultural practitioners and civil society actors worldwide are increasingly affected by censorship, repression, persecution and war. This year’s award winners are inspiring enablers and mediators, creating places of encounter and diversity of perspective. They make a significant contribution to cultural understanding, global exchange, and freedom of expression and art. Gaga Chkheidze has contributed significantly to the development and internationalisation of the Georgian film scene and has worked hard to connect Georgia to European and international programmes. Yi-Wei Keng is one of the most important initiators of cultural exchange in Taiwan, especially of the networking with Germany’s theatre scene. The OFF-Biennale is the largest independent event for contemporary art in Hungary and reflects current social, political, and ecological issues through artistic means. It unequivocally works without state funding. With the Goethe Medal, we hope to strengthen the work of these outstanding individuals and groups in their cultural context.”

The commission for awarding the Goethe Medal, chaired by Thomas Oberender, justifies the selection of the award winners as follows:

Gaga Chkheidze is an internationally recognised film manager from Georgia. Under his leadership, the Tbilisi International Film Festival, which he founded, has become a central venue for the current Georgian and international film and cinema industries and an important meeting point for filmmakers, producers, and distributors in the South Caucasus. Gaga Chkheidze’s engagement in the field of film is crucial for Georgia’s connection to European and international institutions and programmes, film markets and festivals, and for opening Georgia to international co-productions. Gaga Chkheidze also maintains close working relations with Germany and creates important cultural bridges between the two countries. As director of the Georgian National Film Centre, he has worked for the digitization and restoration of the Georgian films produced during the Soviet era thus making a decisive contribution to the preservation of Georgian film heritage.

Yi-Wei Keng contributes as a curator, dramaturg, and translator to a lively cultural exchange in Taiwan, primarily in the performing arts. He has brought important stimuli to the Taiwanese theatre scene, including experimental theatre, children’s theatre, and theatre for people with disabilities. Under his direction, the Taipei Arts Festival has become the most important festival for performative arts in Taiwan with guest performances and co-productions from Europe, the USA and Japan, among others. A special focus of his work is the promotion of German theatre productions. Yi-Wei Keng has brought productions by the Deutsches Theater Berlin, Rimini Protokoll and Raumlabor Berlin to Taiwan. He is also continuously committed to opening up new perspectives for theatre professionals and students of theatre studies in Taiwan through translations of fundamental foreign texts into traditional Chinese characters. At his suggestion and with his support, many contemporary plays and publications from Germany, such as “Postdramatisches Theater” by Hans-Thies Lehmann, have been translated in recent years.

The OFF-Biennale is the largest event for contemporary art in Hungary. The six-member curatorial team, which consists exclusively of women, brings contemporary art to civil society, and initiates a public discourse on current socio-political and ecological issues. The focus is on issues such as the participation of LGBTQ+ and Roma in Hungary. The curators not only invite central positions from Germany and other places into the Hungarian debate, but also make Hungarian and Eastern European perspectives accessible in Germany and beyond, as recently at documenta fifteen. OFF-Biennale deliberately keeps its distance from a national cultural policy and therefore works without state funding and without partnerships with state art institutions. This is considered by the OFF-Biennale both a strong political statement a practical basis to protect the freedom of artistic expression and the professional integrity of its programmes.

About the awardees

Gaga Chkheidze (Georgia)

Gaga Chkheidze was born in Georgia in 1957. After studying German at Tbilisi State University, Gaga Chkheidze graduated from the Faculty of Literature and Art at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. In the 1980s, he worked as the director of the German school in Tbilisi and taught German literature at Ilia University. In 1988, he organised a Georgian film retrospective at the Arsenal cinema in Berlin for which he even smuggled films across the Soviet border in his car. In the 1990s he worked as a translator and programme coordinator for the Forum of Young Cinema (Berlin International Film Festival) and the Arsenal cinema (Berlin). In 2000, Gaga Chkheidze founded the Tbilisi International Film Festival in Georgia to introduce Georgian audiences to films made in Georgia and around the world and to promote the development of the Georgian film industry. The now internationally renowned festival celebrates its 23rd anniversary this year. From 2005 to 2022, Gaga Chkheidze was a board member of the Georgian Film Fund; from 2005 to 2008 and from 2019 to 2022, he was director of the Georgian National Film Centre. After Gaga Chkheidze expressed criticism of Russia in the wake of Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine and published a statement of solidarity with Ukraine, he was dismissed as director of the Georgia National Film Centre in March 2022. The decision of the Minister of Culture was challenged with a lawsuit.

 

Yi-Wei Keng (Taiwan)

Yi-Wei Keng, born in 1969 in Taiwan, went to Prague to study non-verbal theatre from 1997 to 1999 after studying philosophy. He returned to Taiwan in 1999 and began working in theatre alongside his work as a writer. In 2012, he became artistic director of the Taipei Arts Festival. His Axis Taipei & International Collaboration concept contributed to anchoring Taipei as a creative centre, introducing the latest trends in international theatre and presenting creative works from all over the world to the festival audience. The focus of his artistic work was and still is particularly on the promotion of German-Taiwanese cultural projects. Since 2018, Yi-Wei Keng has also been dramaturge at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts in southern Taiwan, one of the three most important theatres in the country. For 2023, he has invited the Berlin Schaubühne with their production “Im Herzen der Gewalt”. He is also co-curator of the Want to Dance festival in Taipei. From 2023, he will be responsible for the Tainan Arts Festival in southern Taiwan and thus provides access to German and international cultural content beyond the capital city. For his work to date, Keng received the Friendship Medal of the German Institute Taipei in 2017 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 2019.

 

OFF-Biennale, represented in Weimar by Hajnalka Somogyi and Nikolett Erőss (Hungary)

The OFF-Biennale started in 2014 as a “garage biennial” to create a platform for artists in exchange with civil society. Already in its first year, the art show attracted much international attention. With three editions to date (2015, 2017, and 2021), it has since become a highly regarded international event. The team behind the OFF-Biennale consists of six curators: Nikolett Erőss, Eszter Lázár, Hajnalka Somogyi, Eszter Szakács, Borbála Szalai and Katalin Székely.

Nikolett Erőss, leader and co-curator of the OFF-Biennale, works as a curator as well as editor and directs the municipal Budapest Gallery. Previously, she was co-curator of the C3 Gallery, coordinated media art projects at the C3 Cultural and Communication Centre Foundation, was director of the Trafó Gallery and curator at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. Hajnalka Somogyi is the initiator, leader, and co-curator of the OFF-Biennale. She received her Master’s degree at Bard College, New York in 2009, worked as a curator at Budapest’s Ludwig Museum, founded the independent art initiatives Dinamo and Impex, and currently teaches as a professor at Metropolitan University Budapest. In 2020, she became the first Hungarian to be voted one of ArtReview’s “Power 100: most influential people in art.”

 

The artistic and discursive programme for the Goethe Medal in Weimar is developed in cooperation with Kunstfest Weimar.

 

Press photos of the 2023 awardees can be found at www.goethe.de/bilderservice

Information about the Goethe Medal and an overview of previous awardees can be found at www.goethe.de/goethe-medaille

About the Goethe Medal

Since 1955, the Goethe-Institut has awarded the Goethe Medal once a year as an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is the most important award of Germany’s foreign cultural policy. The candidates are nominated by the Goethe-Instituts around the world in consultation with Germany’s diplomatic missions. From these nominations, the Goethe Medal Jury, consisting of persons from academia, art, and culture, draws up a selection that is confirmed by the president of the Goethe-Institut. The awarding of the Goethe Medal makes globally relevant cultural issues and actors known to the public in Germany and supports the internationalisation of the German cultural landscape. The award ceremony is held on 28 August, Goethe’s birthday. Since it was first awarded in 1955, 375 persons from 70 countries have been honoured, including Dogan Akhanlı, Yurii Andrukhovych, Daniel Barenboim, David Cornwell aka John le Carré, Princess Marilyn Douala Manga Bell, Sofia Gubaidulina, Ágnes Heller, Wen Hui, Neil MacGregor, Petros Markaris, Ariane Mnouchkine, Tali Nates, Shirin Neshat, Sandbox Collective (Nimi Ravindran and Shiva Pathak), Irina Shcherbakova, Jorge Semprún, Yoko Tawada, Zukiswa Wanner, Robert Wilson and Helen Wolff.

The commission for awarding the Goethe Medal

Franziska Augstein (journalist), Meret Forster (editorial director, music, BR-Klassik), Olga Grjasnowa (writer), Matthias Lilienthal (dramaturg and theatre director), Moritz Müller-Wirth (journalist, Die Zeit), Cristina Nord (Berlinale Forum, head of Berlin section), Thomas Oberender (representative of the Presidium and chair of the jury, author and curator), Insa Wilke (literary critic); representing the Federal Foreign Office: Ralf Beste (Head of the department of culture and communication); representing the Goethe-Institut: Carola Lentz (President of the Goethe-Institut) and Johannes Ebert (Secretary-General of the Goethe-Institut)

 

Solidarity Screenings – ONLINE in the Verziotheque until June 11

Solidarity Screenings – ONLINE in the Verziotheque until June 11

Moving Image and War in Ukraine

Fundraising for Ukrainian artists

 

The SOLIDARITY SCREENINGS program, presented in the framework of the symposium THE SEASON OF DARKNESS: Being Civil in an Uncivil Society, is available online between May 23 and June 11, 2023 in the Verziótheque, in collaboration between Verzió Film Festival and OFF-Biennale Budapest. The Solidarity Screenings program is a series of fundraising events in the framework of the initiative ESI – Emergency Support Initiative, supporting members of the artistic and cultural community in Ukraine finding themselves in need.

 

The Solidarity Screenings video program is a collection of thought-provoking works exploring the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, its effects and its perception. Each video has been created by a visual artist based in Ukraine, and all of the works were made after the start of the full-scale Russian military invasion on February 24, 2022.

 

The project aims to preserve and develop evidence, reflections, and feelings related to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Through their artistic reflections, the video creators offer unique insights into the impact of the conflict on the lives of people caught in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, forced migration, occupation, volunteer, and resistance movements.

 

The video program presents an intimate and raw portrayal of the artists’ current practices, featuring personal stories and attitudes. It explores the diverse ways in which the conflict affects the daily lives of individuals, families, and communities across Ukraine. The screenings foster awareness about the situation in the region and provide a platform for Ukrainian artists to share their perspectives and experiences with audiences around the world, offering their own interpretations of the complex political and social issues at the heart of Europe.

 

Solidarity Screenings program features the works of Anna Kryvenko, Alisa Sizykh, Bohdan Bunchak, Daryna Snizhko, Maria Matiashova, Vladyslav Plisetskiy, Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei, Eugene Arlov and Diana Derii, Zoya Laktionova. Curated by Serge Klymko.

 

Rental and more information on this link.

LUMBUNG FILMS — THE BUDAPEST SCREENING. A selection from the lumbung Film collection

LUMBUNG FILMS THE BUDAPEST SCREENING. A selection from the lumbung Film collection

Date: May 24 – June 3, 2023

Wednesday – Saturday,  4:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Venue: Nyolcésfél, Budapest 1084, Német u. 16.; 7 th floor

 

lumbung Film is a common pot of film and video works created by lumbung members and lumbung artists. It functions as an online database accessible for the lumbung community who can curate and present their own film selections in their respective countries. Aiming to pool resources together, lumbung Film is one of the manifestations of the lumbung practice and a way to keep using this “sharing resources, knowledge and working-method”—approach beyond the duration of documenta fifteen. Within the framework of the film programme lumbung Films – The Budapest Screening, the works selected by OFF-Biennale Budapest will be presented in four sections and screened consecutively over 8 days.

 

lumbung Film was developed by lumbung members in the framework of documenta fifteen. The screening programme is part of THE SEASON OF DARKNESS: Being Civil in an Uncivil Society symposium.

 

  1. Modus Operandi: lumbung working methods in practice

The lumbung experience or method—adopted by ruangrupa on the path towards documenta fifteen in 2022 and beyond—is an operative approach based on such values as collectivity, generosity, sustainability, mutual help, trust, solidarity, and interdependence. It tests alternative economic and cooperation models that prioritizes shared resource building and equitable distribution on the local level. It emphasizes the social role of art and promotes a radically different, broader, and more inclusive understanding of art than the practice currently consensual in Western Europe. The works featured in this section give an insight into the specific ecosystems and working methods of a handful lumbung members who were part of the collectively driven journey throughout documenta fifteen. The majority of these lumbung-interlokal participants are spread around the Global South, with their own contextual realities and vulnerabilities requiring different operational routines, often perceived as a survival strategy.

 

The House of Red Monkey & Taring Padi: Art, Activism, Rocknroll, 2002, 26 min

Agus Nur Amal PMTOH: Jatiwangi Art Factory, 2021, 11 min

Sebastián Díaz Morales: Smashing Monuments, 2022, 50 min

Atis Rezistans: The Ghetto Biennale, 2015, 3 min

Atis Rezistans / John Cussans: The Tele Geto Sign Painting Video: 2012, 14 min

Wajukuu Art Project: Wakija kwetu, 2022, 29 min

El Warcha: A Blast from the Past, 2021, 8 min

Project Art Works: Modus Operandi, 2015, 10 min

 

  1. The cycle of women’s rites: films by DAVRA collective

DAVRA is a collective of 19 young artists from Central Asia created by filmmaker Saodat Ismailova, exploring the common cultural heritage of the region. The word “davra” is of Persian origin and it means circle. “A circle can mean a circle of people, a place to gather, or a group of people with whom you gather. In the Central Asian region, the people understood the universe and the world around them as round.” The films in this section by four members of the collective are about female rituals: the cyclicality of the female body which reflects a human presence on earth, where life and death are also in a continuous cycle.

Rituals revolve around the spirits of the chilltan, a sacred and invisible collective of powerful female entities at the centre of animist spirituality in Central Asia. The elements of fairytales and daily living rituals are intertwined in the films as well as the historical past and the ancestral heritage are linked to everyday reality.

The common female experiences create a sense of belongingness that either can be manifested in a physical place, such as a home, a house, or a shelter (that is created by a female protectress to protect women who have been subjected to violence), or it can be imagined in a warm and protective pregnant female body with the reproductive capabilities of nature.

 

Aida Adilbek: Köbelek, 2023, 2.25 min

Saodat Ismailova: Bibi Seshanbe, 2022, 52 min

Nazira Karimi: Maiday Isin Shygaru, 2021, 3.18 min

Nazilya Nagimova: Chulpan – The Mother, 2022, 11 min

 

  1. Songs of displacement and resistance

The power of music as survival strategy in the face of persecution, resistance, displacement, and migration are the common topics shared by all three films represented in this section. The documentary-based films collect the traces and tell the tragic stories of a Yazidi community from the border region between Turkey and Syria, of a former multicultural town Müküs on Turkey’s border with Iran, as well as of a Kurdish-Iranian refugee seeking asylum in Australia. The act of documenting all the suffering, hardship, trauma, love, and sorrow in song texts, singing them out loud accompanied by heavy music is an immensely powerful testimony of the witnesses (be it a single person or a whole community, a religious or cultural minority), who stay forever haunting in these films.

 

Shero Hinde (Komîna Fîlm a Rojava): Love in the Face of Genocide, 2020, 52 min

Pınar Öğrenci: Asit, 2022, 60 min

Safdar Ahmed: Border Farce, 2022, 15.55 min

  1. I wanted the screen to flip: methods of refusal and support by Sada [regroup]

Sada is an art community and self-organised art school active between 2011-15 in Baghdad, initiated by Rijin Sahakian with the aim of providing an artistic platform that in addition to recording shared experiences, witnessing, and resistance offers professional and human support, the saving power of community in the midst of years of war, armed conflicts, US occupation, international sanctions and total political instability. The group disbanded after four years, but several members re-joined to produce new works—compiled as one experimental, interconnected anthology film—for documenta fifteen, providing a unique artistic and political representation of Iraq’s recent history, interspersed with personal narratives.

 

Sajjad Abbas: Water of Life, 2022, 13 min

Ali Eyal: The Blue Ink Pocket, 2022, 11 min

Sarah Munaf: Journey Inside a City, 2022, 10 min

Bassim Al Shaker: Barbershop, 2022, 8 min

Rijin Sahakian: Anthem, 2022, 11 min

 

THE SEASON OF DARKNESS: Being Civil in an Uncivil Society

THE SEASON OF DARKNESS: Being Civil in an Uncivil Society

OFF-Biennale Budapest, Symposium

Date: May 24–26, 2023

Venue: Nyolcésfél, Budapest 1084, Német u. 16.; 7 th floor

The event will be streamed via Facebook

 

When the season of darkness comes, not all hope is lost, nor should it be. It is the darkest times—a time defined by multiple crises—when we (re)discover the importance of solidarity, care, and empathy. It is the war that reminds us of peace; it is the darkest deeds that emphasize human rights; it is the propaganda that makes us strive for clarity; it is the excesses of power that teach us to value democratic procedures; it is the corruption that accentuates the need for social justice; it is the bigotries that make us work for a more tolerant society; and it is authoritarianism that highlights autonomy. In a season of darkness, we formulate our civil responses and responsibilities; we create networks, finding new ways of collaboration. 

 

OFF-Biennale Budapest’s three-days symposium circles around the newly (re-)emerged urgencies in the region broadly understood as “Eastern Europe” that were brought forth by the ongoing full-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine. The three-day event is organized as a way of preparation, and—based on the “lumbung experience”—it intends to open up the organization and participation process of OFF’s fourth edition in 2024.

 

The symposium’s discussions aim to assess the viability, sustainability, and possibilities of an often forced civilship in the East of Europe: when self-organized civil initiatives take on higher stakes, working under ever worsening (or even threatening) conditions, partly taking over responsibilities of the state, and partly hindered by it to continue their independent operations. If the societies in the Eastern part of Europe have never actually been modern, democratic, and free—in the Western notions of these terms—how are civil initiatives to act with integrity and autonomy, especially in times of war? How can civil initiatives and communities work together in the region, also on an institutional level? With the symposium OFF-Biennale would also like to connect with the methodologies and practices of the lumbung inter-lokal that OFF was a part of at documenta fifteen.

 

The symposium will be held in a hybrid form. 

 

Supported by Goethe-Institut Budapest; European Commission – Creative Europe programme; Foundation for Arts Initiatives

 

PROGRAM

 

May 24, 2023, Wednesday 

 

Lumbung in the Easts of Europe: the East Europe Biennial Alliance and Other Networks

 

Lumbung—a concrete practice adopted by ruangrupa on the path towards documenta fifteen in 2022 and beyond—enables an alternative economy of collectivity, shared resource building, and equitable distribution. Lumbung is anchored in the local and based on values such as humor, generosity, independence, transparency, sufficiency, and regeneration. But how can the lumbung practice be translated/adapted/paralleled to already existing networks in the Easts of Europe, such as the East Europe Biennial Alliance, and used by organizations in the region facing new and old emergencies caused by the ongoing war in Ukraine? And what futures does the lumbung practice offer in the Easts of Europe?

 

4:00 pm

Greetings and introduction by OFF-Biennale Budapest

 

4:15– 5:15 pm
Lumbung: Experiences, Lessons Learned, Visions for the Future

Roundtable discussion with lumbung members 

Participants: farid rakun (ruangrupa, online), Matthias Einhoff (Z/KU – Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin, online), members of OFF-Biennale Budapest

Moderated by Luca Petrányi

 

5:15 – 6:15 pm 

How to Lumbung in the Easts of Europe? 

Negotiating the Tensions between the Precariousness of Self-organized Biennales and a Desire for Regenerative Cooperation

Roundtable discussion with members of the East Europe Biennale Alliance

Participants: Tereza Stejskalová (Biennale Matter of Art, Prague); Bartosz Frąckowiak (Biennale Warszawa); Serge Klymko (Kyiv Biennial); Laima Ruduša (Survival Kit Festival, Riga); and Eszter Szakács (OFF-Biennale Budapest)

Moderated by Katalin Erdődi

 

Coffee break

 

Networks of Solidarity – presentations

6:30 – 6:55 pm  Kateryna Aliinyk: What was Planted? What has Sprouted?

6:55 – 7:20 pm Daša Anosova: Artist Collectives and Cultural Networks for the Reconstruction of Ukraine

7:20 – 7:45 pm Matthias Einhoff (Z/KU – Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin): Networks of Mutuality—Trust and Resource-sharing in the Berlin Eco-system (online)

7:45 – 8:10 pm  Zsolt Miklósvölgyi: (An-)archiving Easternfuturist Movements (online)

 

Coffee break

 

8:30 – 9:45 pm

Solidarity Screenings: Moving Image and War in Ukraine

Introduction by the Solidarity Screenings’ curator Serge Klymko

The films will be available online between May 23 and June 11, 2023 in the Verziótheque,
the online film library of Verzió Film Festival. The Solidarity Screenings program is a series of
fundraising events in the framework of the initiative ESI – Emergency Support Initiative,
supporting members of the artistic and cultural community in Ukraine finding themselves in
need.

 

 

May 25, 2023, Thursday

 

11:00 am – 1:00 pm

 

On Violence

 

Curatorial Guided Tour with curator Lívia Páldi at Budapest Gallery (Budapest 1036, Lajos u. 158.)

 

The exhibition is dedicated to investigate the arts-based approaches to gender-based violence from the perspective of women and queer people. The Russian invasion and the ongoing war in Ukraine have brought into closer proximity the brutality of war-related sexual crimes, the traumatic and disorienting loss and vulnerability. Given the permanence of a great number of conflict zones and violence experienced by women and children, the discrimination directed towards the LGBTQI+ people, the ongoing struggle for bodily autonomy, equality, and reproductive health and a worldwide increase in domestic violence, the exhibition brings together various positions and explorations into the complex nature and nuanced operation of violence.

 

Kateryna Aliinyk, Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, Rachel Fallon, Olia Federova, Jelena Jureša, Elektra KB, Hristina Ivanoska, Anikó Lóránt (1977–2020), Milica Tomić, Dominika Trapp, Selma Selman, Anna Zvyagintseva

 

4:00 pm

 

Civil Insituting: Roma and Minority Communities’ Instituting Endeavors

 

Roma cultural organizations have evolved and operate in a constant dichotomy of community-based immediacy (given their grassroots character) and a desire of a more formal institutionalization (given their claim for national acceptance and support). At the same time, this dichotomy, as well as the often hostile and exclusionary attitude of the state apparatuses towards them has led these organizations to develop specific operating models (through direct contact with their communities and their interconnectedness) that can serve as an example for majority institutions, as long as they are open to a less exclusionary approach that recognizes and includes other voices. This section investigates how civil organizations relate to institutionalization, and how larger institutions consider the complex tasks related to the representation of and working with different minority communities. In the meantime, it also raises the question of how artists play with institutional exteriority / interiority and how these actions (or the discourse itself) can feed back into the institutional structure.

 

4:00 pm 

Greetings and introduction by OFF-Biennale Budapest

 

4:15 – 5:00 pm
Practices of Change in Communities of Today and Tomorrow: Towards Institutions of the Future

Roundtable discussion

Participants: Arman Heljic (online), Lara Khaldi (de Appel, Amsterdam, online), Payam Sharifi (Slavs and Tatars, online), Natali Tomenko (online)

Moderated by Marina Csikós

 

5:00 – 5:30 pm
Performance: Luna de Rosa: Jaćh opràlë lë làvë miré – (trust me)

 

5:30 – 5:45 pm
Coffee break

 

5:45 – 6:30 pm
Decolonizing Institutions: The Responsibility of Representation

Roundtable discussion

Participants: Angéla Kóczé (CEU, Romani Studies Program), Renan Laru-an (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Dr. Zsolt Sári (ICOM Hungary), Tímea Junghaus (ERIAC, Berlin)

Moderated by Eszter György

 

May 26, 2023, Friday, from 10.30 am

 

The Borough: Civil Networks on a Local Level

 

The borough, the hood—the terms used to describe the immediate neighborhood in a city—are considered in this section as complex webs of urbanistic and interpersonal relations, where the built environment and the communities that live there interact and affect each other. This section presents a series of case studies about smaller-scale (neighborhood-size), community-based urban interventions and collaborations that use a lumbung-like working method on a micro-level, embedded in the different local contexts, which are always exposed to different historical and social storms, and which are nevertheless the primary terrain for everyday solidarity and cooperation.

 

10:30 am
Greetings and introduction by OFF-Biennale Budapest

 

Presentations by 

10:40 – 11:05 am Recetas Urbanas: The Crazy Army Rebellion

11:05 – 11:30 am Katalin Erdődi: Learning from the Rural: Watermelon Republic and News Medley

11:30 – 11:55 am Kata Oltai: The TANGÓ project: Building a good neighborhood

11:55 am – 12:20 pm Artemisszió Foundation: Building an Intercultural Community and Active Civic Participation on the Level of Local Communities

 

12:20 pm – 1:00 pm
The Borough: Culture on the Scale of Site
Closing roundtable discussion with the presenters

Moderated by Krisztián Török

 

Closing remarks

 

RELATED SCREENING PROGRAM

Date: May 24 – June 3, 2023

Wednesday – Saturday,  4:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Venue: Nyolcésfél, Budapest 1084, Német u. 16.

LUMBUNG FILMS – THE BUDAPEST SCREENING

 

Supported by Goethe-Institut Hungary; European Commission – Creative Europe programme; Foundation for Arts Initiatives and Instituto Cervantes de Budapest

Towards Shared Futures – Participatory Conference

The project ‘From Complicated Past Towards Shared Futures’ is a collaboration between the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in Riga, the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (Lithuanian National Museum of Art), OFF-Biennále in Budapest, Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, and Malmö Art Museum. The aim of the project is to support the formulation, processing and interpretation of certain socially difficult, conflictual themes and to provide access to cultural products for groups and individuals who do not necessarily have the opportunity to do so.

In the framework of the project, OFF-Biennale Budapest, realizeda practice-based meeting among professionals to meet, speak and think together on the topics raised by the project and to learn with and from each other.

The participatory conference Towards Shared Futures aims to create a meeting space, a platform for art mediators, curators, artists, educators and youth workers aiming to reach and work with vulnerable communities (with a special focus to minorities) using various tools that contemporary art projects offer. Our goal is to create a better understanding of challenges, goals and errors and to work towards more open and inclusive art mediation and museum practices.

The event consist of four panels and some intermediate programmes, inviting practitioners working with and for underprivileged communities in different ways, most of them including the tool of art mediation.The aim of the international collaboration ‘From Complicated Pasts Towards Shared Futures’ is to support the formulation, processing and interpretation of certain socially difficult, conflictual themes and to provide access to cultural products for groups and individuals who do not necessarily have the opportunity to do so. Our goal is to create a better understanding of the challenges, goals and errors and to work towards more open and inclusive art mediation and museum practices.

 

The event will consist of four panels and some intermediate programmes, inviting practitioners working with and for underprivileged communities in different ways, most of them including the tool of art mediation.

 

The program  is supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

 

Venue: Kesztyűgyár, Budapest, Mátyás tér 15, 1084

Dates: November 24-25.

Registration:

 

November 24. (Thursday)

9:30-10:00 Check-in and coffee

10:00-10:30 Opening by Elza Medne (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art), Hajnalka Somogyi and Nikolett Erőss (OFF-Biennále) and Fanny Hajdú

10:30 Melinda Vajda: Reflections on contemporary Roma identity

11:00-13:30 Play&Talk | workshop-lectures and Q&A

Participation-based workshops including a short presentation on the context they were created for. This part invites artists and practitioners who created art mediation sessions for specific exhibitions or art works using out-of-the-box tools and methodologies aiming to address vulnerable communities and people outside of the general audiences of the arts. For this panel several art mediation sessions of the former OFF-Biennále will be introduced. In the end of the panel a round-table will be mediated with the facilitators in order to discuss how successful their outreach was, what challenges and errors they encountered and what are their questions, doubts or ideas to overcome those.

11:00-11:30 Eglė Mikalajūnė: “A Colleague from another Tribe. Artist Meets Entrepreneur”

11:30-12:00 Csilla File & András Cseh: Together with Bees and the Offline Reserve 

12:00-12:15 Virág Lődi: RomaMoma

12:15-12:30 Māra Žeikare: Challenges and benefits developing inclusive art mediation programmes. Project “Agents of Change: Mediating Minorities” and exhibition “Dairy Diaries” about dementia

12:30-13:00 Árpád Bayer: Open History – drama and role-play in the museum

13:00-13:30 Q&A with the section’s speakers

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-16:30 Break the Wall | workshop-lectures and Q&A

Talks and Q&A with guests working with the targeted communities as social and youth workers, educators or in other positions. The aim of this session is to get to know the perspective of those working with specific vulnerable communities on a longer term, not necessarily with artistic tools. Our guests will speak about their experience on how they work together with their groups and how arts and external mediators could be introduced into these contexts. Our goal is to create a conversation and discuss goals, mistakes and possible solutions together.

14:30-15:00 Máté Lencse:  Board game pedagogy at Toldi Tanoda and beyond  

15:00-15:30 Panni Végh, Olga Irimiás, Péter Klausz: Artemisszió and Mira – Intercultural and artistic practices as tools of social integration 

15:30-16:00 Éva Preszl: Self-Knowledge Filmmaking Workshop with underprivileged youth 

16:00-16:30 Zita Csőke: Kesztyűgyár Community House – At home in Józsefváros   

17:00-19:00 Interactive Roma led walk by UCCU

 

November 25. (Friday)

9:30-10:00 Check-in and coffee

10:00-11:30 Creating (in) Community | workshop-lectures and Q&A

A session of sharing case studies from artists and educators working with communities with the tools of art – all sorts of! From music to movement, live-action role play and performing arts, we invite practitioners of diverse methodologies they use to co-create with the people they work with. The case studies will shortly present the chosen methods, processes, target groups, obstacles and outputs of the speakers. The session will end with a world café format try-out of the mentioned tools and methodologies, facilitated by the speakers of the panel. Participants of the conference will be able to try out different co-creation processes in a small scale, to have a direct personal experience of the tools and impacts of what has been presented before.

10:00-10:30 Éva Bubla: The scent of common creation

10:30-10:50 Eglė Nedzinskaitė: “Where Are the People?” – When teenagers become  curators, architects, designers and marketing strategists of the exhibition.

10:50-11:10 Dalma Tokai: Common Vibe – Music is for everyone

11:10-11:45 Bálint Márk Túri: Creating Parallel Worlds 

11:30-13:30 Two Brain’s More Than One | collective brainstorming

In the last and most participation-based part of the conference, we will create diverse groups, each of which will include participants of the conference, and speaker-facilitators from all of the above sessions. The groups will gather their experiences and thoughts of the previously learnt methods and learnings and together come up with a smart goal and an action plan to implement their new ideas and knowledge into their practice. The aim of this session is not to create a specific mediation activity, but to open up different perspectives, share ideas and inspire each other to use new ways to reach our audiences.

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:00 Sharings and learnings of the previous session

15:00-15:30 Closing

16:00  Women in Power – We will not remain invisible / Guided tour of the exhibition. at Kesztyűgyár Gallery

 

The goal of the Women in Power group is to help women with disabilities to strengthen their female identity, express and show themselves, connect with each other and others, and break out of invisibility by organizing events and art projects.

 

 

The event is supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.