AROUND RURAL PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL CHANGE
Oprowadzanie po wystawie „Namaluj mnie w tej pracy”w języku angielskim z węgierską kuratorką i badaczką Katalin Erdődi

21.08.2024 (środa), godz. 17:00
wstęp wolny
Galeria Arsenał w Białymstoku
ul. A. Mickiewicza 2, 15-222 Białystok

“It's Better to Study and Have an Easy Job, Right?”
Katalin Erdődi’s guided tour and talk in English of Patryk Różycki’s exhibition

In her guided tour and talk, Katalin Erdődi will connect Patryk Różycki’s paintings and writings with her own experience of working on collaborative artistic projects with a focus on rural change. They are both interested in what cultural anthropologist Tomasz Rakowski calls the “quiet social history” of Central and Eastern Europe; the history of the countryside, of working-class, xrural populations.[1] Patryk’s autobiographical approach—his precise and sensitive accounts of his family’s experience across generations, and across changing social and political landscapes—unfold perspectives that are often missing from mainstream public discourse. This is also what Katalin tries to do when collaborating with people from different rural contexts with whom they co-create artistic works that foreground stories, issues and concerns that they consider important. At the same time, neither one of them follows a documentary approach, much rather they are both interested in how they can find artistic ways and forms to talk about these individual and collective experiences. What is at stake in such collaborations, what is at stake in working with one’s own biography and family history? Giving space to a plurality of voices and agonistic opinions seems a shared concern, while affective attachments and the relational also play an important role. In order to connect to Patryk’s personal approach, Katalin Erdődi will also share her experience of coming from a family of mixed background and class difference, and how this has impacted and inspired her work as a curator.

Katalin Erdődi is a curator, dramaturge, and writer based in Vienna and Budapest. She works across disciplines in the fields of visual and performing arts, with a focus on socially engaged art, experimental performance, and site-specific collaborations in rural and urban public spheres. Since 2017 she has been investigating social change in rural areas with collaborative artistic approaches that involve people from very different fields and backgrounds in a process of co-creation. She is especially interested in the post-socialist transformations of Central and Eastern Europe that she strives to address with decolonizing, feminist methodologies. Her curatorial projects span barter trades with farmers (I like being a farmer and I would like to stay one, 2017-2018, with Antje Schiffers, Ludwig Museum Budapest); creating new lyrics for traditional folk songs with a village women’s choir to talk about their experiences and lived realities (News Medley, 2020-2021, with Alicja Rogalska, Réka Annus and the Women’s Choir of Kartal, OFF-Biennale Budapest); and the co-creation of a series of Collaborative Village Plays (2021-ongoing, with Antje Schiffers) in Germany, Hungary and Spain, with diverse local collaborators ranging from farmers, hairdressers, teenage race car drivers and school teachers to fish auctioneers, net menders, local politicians and trombone choirs. In 2020 Erdődi received the Igor Zabel Award Grant for her locally embedded and inclusive curatorial practice. Currently, she is co-curator of the 2024 edition of the Biennale Matter of Art in Prague (with Aleksei Borisionok) where she is focusing on “rural change as social change” in dialogue with Aleksei Borisionok’s interest in the legacy and future of workers’ movements. From 2025, she will be the new director of Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest, Hungary.