Four exhibitions during this year’s OFF-Biennale Budapest 2017 presents: Gaudiopolis 2017 – The City of Joy will feature Polish artists including Ewa Partum, the Slavs and Tatars collective, Joanna Piotrowska, Piotr Wysocki and Daniel Jałowiński.
OFF-Biennale Budapest is the largest independent arts initiative in Hungary. It’s second edition, entitled Gaudiopolis 2017, will feature more than 120 Hungarian and international artists. Unique among contemporary art biennials, OFF-Biennale Budapest is a grassroots endeavour which is based on the self-organisation and a voluntary collaboration of artists, curators, galleries and other cultural organisations, among others. The OFF-Biennale’s goal is to take an active part in the social discourse on public issues and to enhance the culture of democracy by means of contemporary art.
Four exhibitions during this year’s OFF-Biennale Budapest 2017 presents: Gaudiopolis 2017 – The City of Joy will feature Polish artists: City Theatre, People Players, Slavs and Tatars and Run Free.
City Theatre
Eight hours of work, eight hours of recreation, eight hours rest. Socialism regulated life, as well as mobility and existence in the public space. Through the positions of artists from the region, the exhibition introduces examples of the directions and the possibilities of neo-avant-garde public art. Documentations of urban interventions, performances, and spontaneous social and artistic events are put on display in different venues.
The exhibition is supported by the Czech Centre, Erste Stiftung and a is co-produced by the Kisterem Gallery, Trapéz Gallery, Vintage Gallery and the OFF-Biennale Association.
Dates: 29th September – 27th October 2017
Featuring: Akademia Ruchu, Stano Filko & Alex Mlynárčik, Tomislav Gotovac, Sanja Iveković, Július Koller, Jiří Kovanda, KwieKulik, László Lakner, Dóra Maurer, Jüri Okas, Neša Paripović, Ewa Partum, Mladen Stilinović, Endre Tót
Curator: Péter Szörényi, assistant curator: Viktória Popovics
People Players
By game, as grownups, we mean looking for the possibility of alternative realities. We play because our intentions are dismissed by reality, and we play because this is something we refuse to accept. A game bolsters new skills and offers new perspectives, therefore—just as any form of learning— it does transform reality, in the end.
The exhibition People Players revolves around the joy a game conveys and playing, the soberness of discovery. A player is liberated and contemplative; they are inside and outside at once, they play, and they see themselves playing.
The event is organised in co-operation with the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Erste Stiftung, the Goethe Institut, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Hope Scott Trust, the Czech Centre and Három Holló.
Dates: 29th September – 5th November 2017
Featuring: Zbyněk Baladrán, Johanna Billing, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Ex-Artists’ Collective (Tamás Kaszás, Anikó Loránt), Danièle Huillet és Jean-Marie Straub, Ádám Kokesch, Eva Koťátková and Joanna Piotrowska
Curators: the curatorial team of the OFF-Biennale
Society of Rascals
The artists collective Slavs and Tatars presents an installation in the form of a pickle-juice bar, referring to the centuries-old tradition of pickling to ferment or turn sour the romantic conception of the fatherland and power.
The main characters of Pickle Politics, a part of the project, are pickles, objects of national identity and pride in Eastern European countries. Pieces of the project introduce paternalistic, nationalist visions from these countries with a sour, austere sense of humour, and advertise pickle juice, a well-known folk remedy, as the sour, sobering cure for the delirium of power.
The event is organised in co-operation with U.S. Embassy in Budapest and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Dates: 3rd - 29th October 2017
Featuring: the Slavs and Tatars collective
Curators: The curatorial team of the OFF-Biennale
Run Free
In the form of a several-day workshop, Piotr Wysocki and Dominik Jałowiński organised a meeting between two groups who are in permanent conflict: traceurs (practitioners of parkour) and the police.
In Radom, Poland, at the location of the brutally quelled 1976 workers’ protest, the two groups joined to achieve a common goal: to create a choreography together. During the collaboration, disagreements once considered fundamental were now questioned, everyday routines were put aside.
The event is organised in co-operation with the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and Rákóczy.
Dates: 13th – 31st October 2017
Featuring: Piotr Wysocki and Dominik Jałowiński
Curators: the curatorial team of the OFF-Biennale
The main partner of this year‘s OFF Biennale is GfZK – Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig.