Effervescent Experience

Ever sipped champagne while watching a hermaphrodite walk the streets of Bucharest? That's what Budacast's Ágnes Emri did the other night at the "Overcoming" exhibition at the Ernst Museum. It's part of a co-operative project between five European partners, one of which is our very own Műcsarnok/Kunsthalle Budapest. Click 'read more' for more.

The concept is to establish a European network, showcasing the common and divers artistic background of Europe. Sounds interesting enough, that is why I joined a group of friends on November 14th, for the opening of this exhibition, compiling four video works, that try to come close to a traumatic event, by mixing documentary and staged footage.

The Ernst Museum is part of Műcsarnok, but it's not located on Heroes' Square, with the main contemporary arts building. It's a smaller gallery on Nagymező utca, the street known as the Broadway of Budapest, because of the Thalia theater and the Operetta, and a couple of more theaters in the neighborhood.

Walking on Andrássy út, from Oktogon towards the Opera has always been one of my favorite routes in the city. I like the posh stores, and standing by their huge glass display windows gets me in a Breakfast at Tiffany's mood. I love the smells coming from the colorful Indian restaurant, Bombay Express, and the vibrant Liszt Ferenc square with tourists and locals dressed up to for dining out at the many restaurants. There are bookstores, coffeehouses, tea houses, and I almost forget to turn onto Nagymező utca, seeing the impressive Opera ahead, always so nicely lit at night. By the time I get to the Ernst I am enthusiastic and hyped for some champagne.

The Museum is incredibly bare: big white walls, no distractions. The four videos are in four different rooms, closed off with heavy black curtains. Finding where the curtain opens and closes is always a comic sight. Twice, I bumped into someone trying to come in from the other side. For some strange reason the museum only supplied one bench for each screening room. We made no big deal out of this and sat on the floor.

My friends were compelled by "Facing- A Usual Story from a Nameless Country", which tells the story of Kadir, a Kurdish youth in a Turkish torture chamber. This video turned out to last an hour, soon only our group of six was in the little chamber.

While my friends got stuck in the Turkish prison, I made my way round to the other screenings. This meant Romantic Delusions, which follows the alienation of a hermaphrodite in Bucharest on a screen split in three; Journal No. 1 - An Artist's Impression reconstructing a lost Bosnian news-reel of Muslim women learning how to read and write; and Resonating Surfaces, which is a series of recollections of Sao Paulo. To sum it up, we have Brazil, Turkey, Romania and Bosnia... all of this in Budapest.

By the time I got back to Facing... the museum was closing. Unfortunate for my friends, who only had ten minutes of the movie left to watch. "Whatever happened to Kadir?" became our catch phrase for the night.

You can still find out until December 15!

Check out the website of the Műcsarnok for more details.