Katarina Šević & Tehnica Schweiz: IMPERATORES PROVINCIAE

The exhibition is based on the documentation of Gasium et Circenses, a new, complex art project by Katarina Sevic and Tehnica Schweiz. The research project focuses on the Óbuda Gas Factory Cultural Centre's forsaken open-air stage and its immediate surroundings. The artists explore the questions of historical remembering, the site’s connotations and “forgotten past”, as well as the “layering” of the eras. The layers reach back as far as the Roman Empire. The buildings of the factory premises – the Gas Factory Housing Development (built in the 1910s), as well as the Gas Factory itself and the Gas Factory Cultural Centre – are located in the area referred to in ancient Rome as Aquincum. As the area has been a site of significant historical and cultural development from ancient times until today, it has become a historical stage of sorts, representative of peripheries. In recent years, for instance, the abandoned cultural centre has been used as an artefact storage facility by the Budapest History Museum.

The project is an experiment in historical reconstruction simultaneously realized in a number of media: outdoor tableau vivant performance, photo series and installation. Its basic questions are contained in correspondence, which, in the context of the project, has been transformed into a choir piece. This correspondence raises fundamental questions about the relationship between artist and museum, about historical canonization, and about the politics of remembering. Based on this research the Gasium and Circenses tableau vivant performance was created and was performed by the Heroes of the Shaft Company at the open-air stage of the Gas Factory Cultural Centre. The performance was documented.

The exhibition features the documentation of – and objects related to – the research and the performance. A reading performance based on the correspondence will be presented at the opening.

Simultaneously with the exhibition, a book will be published with the title of Gasium et Circenses, containing the photo documentation of the project and the libretto of the performance. The publication will be issued by Lumen Station, the publishing program of Lumen Photography Foundation.

Tehnica Schweiz is an art collective based on the collaboration of Gergely László (1979) and Péter Rákosi (1970). Tehnica Schweiz’s projects are based on intensive research and usually centre on the themes of community and cooperation, often involving large-scale volunteer participation. In recent years, Katarina Šević (1979) and Tehnica Schweiz has collaborated on a number of projects, which examined patterns of community behaviour, processing their findings in the form of documentation and performance.

Katarina Šević and the members of Tehnica Schweiz are representatives of the Lumen Photography Foundation. Katarina Šević and Gergely László are co-founders of Impex – Contemporary Art Provider.

Supported by: NKA