Guest speakers

OCTOBER

Ágnes Eperjesi born in 1964. She graduated in 1989 from the then freshly launched, photography-centred department of Visual Communication and Typography of the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts, where she pursued her Master degree in Visual Communication. She obtained her DLA from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2010 and is teaching at the Intermedia Department of the institution since 2011. Throughout her career characterized by a consistently built visual language and intellectual vocabulary, Eperjesi has been examining media theoretical questions and the social consequences of the use of media. In her practice, the artist examines with sensitivity and almost scientific methodology the specificities of the photographic medium, its unexplored possibilities and meanings, as well as the power contexts that define social existence. Her conceptually oriented works and their intellectual background are not mere theoretical derivatives, but aesthetically high-toned and sensually rich creations. /eperjesi.hu/

NOVEMBER

Eszter Szakács is a curator, researcher, and Ph.D. candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, where she is taking part in the project IMAGINART—Imagining Institutions Otherwise: Art, Politics, and State Transformation. Eszter is on the curatorial team of the grassroots art initiative OFF-Biennale Budapest, with whom they were lumbung members at documenta fifteen in 2022. She was a team member of the East Europe Biennial Alliance—co-founded by OFF-Biennale Budapest—that collectively curated the Kyiv Biennial in 2021. Eszter worked as a curator and editor at tranzit/hu in Budapest (2011–2020). She recently curated the exhibition Dóra Maurer–SUMUS–We Are Together at de Appel in Amsterdam. Her research and practice engage with grassroots art organizing outside state art infrastructures.

Dani Gal (1975, Jerusalem, Israel) is a visual artist and filmmaker. His work investigates the production of memory and collective history. His films and sound installations reconstruct and reconfigure preexisting documentary materials, blending them with fiction, and address current political events. They have been shown widely, including at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); New Museum, New York (2012); The Jewish Museum, New York (2014); Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014); Kunsthaus Zürich (2015); Kunsthalle Wien (2015); Documenta 14, Kassel and Athens (2017); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018 and 2023). Gal lives in Berlin. https://dani-gal.com/

DECEMBER

Daniel Grúň (1977) is an art historian and curator with a specialization in the theory and history of modern and contemporary art. He is senior research fellow at the Institute of Art History, Art Research Centre of Slovak Academy of Sciences and lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. He completed his studies in the history of art and culture at the University of Trnava in Trnava (2003), defended his doctorate at the Department of Theory and History of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (2008) and in 2017 was habilitated as an associate professor at the University of Applied Arts in Prague (UMPRUM). He has received several international scholarships, including a Fulbright Scholarship at the City University of New York (2012 – 2013) and International Visegrad Scholarships (2006 and 2007) at Adam Mickiewicz University and Charles University. In addition, he is in charge of the Július Koller Society and co-curated the artist’s first international retrospective, Július Koller One Man Anti Show, MUMOK, Vienna (2015 – 2016). He is the recipient of several awards: the White Cube, the Slovak Council of Galleries Award for Contribution to Gallery Activities (2018), the Art Magazine Kuratorenpreis “Ausstellung des Jahres 2016” (2017) and the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory (2010). He is the editor and co-editor of several bilingual books, published in Slovakia as well as internationally: Healing Through Sculpture Juraj Gavula and His Work for Architecture (Bratislava: Čierne diery, The Július Koller Society, 2022); White Space in White Space, 1973−1982. Stano Filko, Miloš Laky, Ján Zavarský (Vienna: Schlebrügge.Editor, 2021); Subjective Histories. Self-historicisation as Artistic Practice in Central-East Europe (Bratislava: Veda, 2020); Tomáš Štrauss. Beyond the Great Divide : Essays on European Avant-gardes from East to West (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2020), AMA. Ľubomír Ďurček, Květoslava Fulierová, Július Koller and Amateur Artists (Vienna: Schlebrügge.Editor, 2020); Július Koller One Man Anti Show (Vienna/Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, 2016); Július Koller Galéria Ganku (Vienna, Schlebrügge.Editor, 2014) and is author of the book Archeology of Art Criticism. Slovak Art of the 1960s and its Interpretations (Bratislava: Slovart – Vysoká škola výtvarných umení v Bratislave, 2009).

Anetta Mona Chișa and Lucia Tkáčová have been working together since 2000. At the heart of their collaboration lies their quest to find a means of reconciling the political and poetical agency of art. Their practice is “both visual and theoretical and does not rest upon the utopian dream of merging life and art, but opens up the possibility to think about both art and life differently. Working against our post-political and post-feminist universe, they convey their feminist scepticism by piercing the surface of Now, detecting in its depth the capillary working of power and questioning the effects they produce on art making and society as we know it” (Bojana Pejić, 2019). They live and work in Prague and Athens. Their works have been exhibited widely in numerous institutions across the world, from Art in General New York, n.b.k. Berlin, MoCA Miami, MuMoK Vienna, MNAC Bucharest, Kunsthalle Bratislava, Bunkier Sztuki Cracow, The Power Plant Toronto, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Sprengel Museum Hannover, Kunsthaus Graz, to Taipei Biennale, Moscow Biennale and the Romanian pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale among others.

Ilona Németh visual artist, activist, curator and professor. She exhibited widely both locally and internationally. She led the Studio IN, and in the years 2014-2019 also the international educational program Open Studio at the Department of Intermedia of the University of Bratislava in Bratislava. Since 2021, she has been a professor at the STU in Bratislava at the Faculty of Architecture and Design. In the years 2018-2021, she was the artistic director of the international exhibition and research project Eastern Sugar with the support of the Creative Europe program (following the solo exhibition of the same name, which was held in the Kunsthalle in Bratislava in 2018) in cooperation with Slovak National Gallery. In 2022, she presented her work at the Documenta fifteen in Kassel and held a solo exhibition at the Trafo Gallery in Budapest. Her permanent installation Grandstand was opened in a public space in Hohenau, Austria in September 2022. In 2023, she exhibits at the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, the Survival Kit 14 exhibition in Riga and the Jogja Biennale Yogyakarta in Indonesia.

JANUARY

Lívia Páldi is a curator and art historian currently based in Budapest working for BHM Kiscelli Museum-Municipal Gallery. She has organized lectures, workshops and numerous exhibitions and is the editor of various books and catalogs. Between 2017 and 2021 she was curator of visual arts at Project Arts Centre, Dublin. Páldi was the director of BAC–Baltic Art Center, Visby, Sweden (2012–2015) and chief curator of the Műcsarnok – Kunsthalle Budapest (2007–2011). She was one of the curatorial agents of dOCUMENTA (13). Her latest curatorial project On Violence (2023, BHM Budapest Gallery) presented a nuanced examination of the complex phenomenon and operation of violence from women’s and queer perspectives.

Szabolcs KissPál (1967 Marosvásárhely, Romania) has been living in Budapest since 1993. He works in various media, from photography and video to installation, objects, and public interventions. His main field of interest lies at the intersection between audiovisual and communication media, visual arts, and sociopolitical issues. He has lectured at in various European universities, including in the UK, Austria, Finland and Germany, and in 2013-15 led the Studio Art and Social Justice of the Intermedia Department of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia. Currently he is an associate professor in the Intermedia Department of the University of Fine Arts Budapest. His works have been presented at various institutions (Venice Biennale; ISCP, New York; NCCA, Moscow; Prague Biennial, OFF-Biennale Budapest; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Seoul International Media Art Biennale, among others) and can be found in several public and private collections (Ludwig Museum for Contemporary Art, Budapest; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; Muzeum Współczesne Wrocław; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris). The artist developed a collaborative activist practice between 2012 and 2015, establishing and maintaining the NO MMA multilingual blog about Hungarian culture and politics (nemma.noblogs.org). KissPál is one of the founders of the protest groups Free Artist and Living Memorial.

FEBRUARY

Krista Kodres is professor at the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture of Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia. She is editor-in-chief of “History of Estonian Art” (7 volumes). Her fields of research include: history and theory of art historiography; history of art and architecture of the Baltic region in Early Modern period; history of architecture and design of the Soviet period. Selected publications on Soviet studies and historiography: Chapter “Cultures of Interruptions. Art History in the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (co-authors G. Mickunaite, S. Pelše), in: Art History and Visual Studies in Europe. Transnational Discourses and National Frameworks (eds. M. Rampley et al., Brill 2012); Introductory Remarks to Socialist Art History. On Formulating the Canon, in: A Socialist Realist Art History? Writing Art History in the Post-War Decades (K. Kodres, K. Jõekalda, M. Marek, Böhlau 2019); Translations. The Dissemination of Socialist Art History in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1960w and 1970s, in: Universal – Global – International. Art Historiographies of Socialist Eastern Europe (eds. M. Dmitrieva, B. Hock, A. Kempe, Böhlau 2022); Revisioning Stalinist Discourse of Art: Mikhail Liebman’s Academic Networks and His Social Art History, in: Journal of Art Historiography, 2022/2 (27).To be published: Sneaking In: Iconology and the Process of Renewal in Late Soviet Estonian Art History, in: Art Historiography and Iconologies Between West and East (eds. W. Bałus and M. Kunińska, Routledge 2024); Soviet Thaw-era Marxism. Revision of Stalin-era discourse on aesthetics and art history, in: Routledge Companion to Marxist Art History (eds. T. Tunali, B. Winkenweder, Routledge 2024?) Edited international books: A Socialist Realist Art History? Writing Art History in the Post-War Decades (co-editors K. Jõekalda, M. Marek, Böhlau 2019). For more see: https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Persons/Display/c33ed7db-c11e-47e6-9bd7-d52d8ba498d5 / krista.kodres@artun.ee .

Gergely Nagy (1969), journalist, editor, author. Lives and works in Budapest. His main fields of interest are contemporary art, cultural policies and cultural resistance. After many years in journalism, since 2013, he has been the editor-in-chief first of the online art magazine Artportal, and then of the online magazine A mű (The Artwork). He currently works as a freelancer and he is a PhD fellow at ELTE University in Budapest. He is also the initiator of East Art Mags, a collaborative project of art magazines in the East Central European region. He is one of the founders of the OFF-Biennále Budapest, which has become the largest civic contemporary art initiative in the region. Gergely is an author of four books. Also contributed to several reports dealing with the state of artistic freedom and freedom of speech in Hungary. https://artportal.hu/szerzo/nagy-gergely/ https://amu.hvg.hu/author/gergely_nagy/