The installation, by Andreas Fogarasi, who was born in Austria but has Hungarian roots, shows short videos of local cultural centres in and around Budapest on six monitors. The videos, made with minimal equipment, show the interiors of the mostly empty centres, with background noise, street noise, music or snippets of conversation. The artist has also prepared a catalogue with descriptions of the cultural centres and information about their history.
Deputy State Secretary at the Ministry of Education and Culture Márta Schneider said the installation was an extraordinary project by an extraordinary artist.
Katalin Tímár, the curator of the project, said the videos show the MOM Cultural Centre in Buda, the Ikarus Cultural Centre in District XVI, the Pataky Cultural Centre in Kőbánya, the Gutenberg Cultural Centre in District VIII, the Óbuda Cultural Centre and the Kusza Cultural Centre in Kusza. They were picked to show cultural centres built in different styles, in different periods and for different functions.
The videos are not sociological documentary films, but show, with subjective tools, the changes the place of culture and cultural places have undergone, said Tímár.
Fogarasi, 30, said the installation is about "places pushed to the periphery," about places which exist in many countries, but not, for example, in Austria.
"The films tell about which places and which types of culture we experience, create and see," he said, adding that they show the cultural centres with "great sympathy, but not nostalgia."
The Ministry of Education and Culture is supporting the installation with HUF 48 million.
Kultur und Freizeit will be shown in the Giardini di Castello between June 10 and November 21.
