[spectre] Fwd: OFF-Biennale Budapest: INHALE!, April 24–May 31, 2020

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Betreff: 	OFF-Biennale Budapest: INHALE!
Datum: 	Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:01:43 +0000
Von: 	e-flux <info at mailer.e-flux.com>
	

*OFF-Biennale Budapest*
*/INHALE!/*
April 24–May 31, 2020

http://offbiennale.hu

OFF-Biennale Budapest is the largest independent contemporary art event 
in Hungary. It started in 2014 as a grassroots initiative, a "garage" 
biennale set up by a small group of art professionals in order to create 
a platform for exchange between art practitioners and other members of 
society. Our main aim is to strengthen the local independent art scene, 
to generate public discourse on urgent but often suppressed issues. OFF 
has been a continuous experiment to perform and prefigure a sustainable 
and democratic institution in the civil realm.

OFF-Biennale boycotts the Hungarian public art infrastructure: it does 
not apply for state-managed funding and steers clear from state-run art 
institutions. This is a political statement as much as a practical 
solution to protect the freedom of artistic expression. In lack of 
significant alternatives to the state infrastructure in Hungary's art 
scene, this decision confronts us with serious challenges in sustaining 
the project; at the same time, it allows us to demonstrate that it is 
possible in Hungary to work on this scale without accepting the negative 
compromises state subsidies often entail.

After two successful editions in 2015 and in 2017, now we focus on a 
small number of complex projects that we co-produce and co-organize. The 
OFF curatorial team has worked in close collaboration with the local 
initiators on each aspect of their predominantly international projects; 
and by raising the visibility of these locally as well as internationally.

/*INHALE!*/
Inhale! Exhale!—Respiration is a basic physiological process that 
functions involuntarily but can also be controlled. We take a deep 
breath when we want to say something or when we brace ourselves for a 
difficult task. "Fresh air" is also a symbol of freedom: metaphorically 
it may refer to a place or a situation in which it is possible to 
breathe freely.

The third edition of OFF-Biennale Budapest, /*INHALE!*/ takes the 
seminal political poem, “A Breath of Air!” by 20th-century Hungarian 
poet Attila József as its point of departure. The poem was written in 
1935, a time when the social catastrophe of the Great Depression 
rearranged the political map of Europe, and Fascism overruled half of 
the continent. After the crisis of 2008, the political climate has, 
again, moved into a more xenophobic, fascistoid direction in Hungary as 
well as in other countries of the world. And it is not only the 
political climate that has changed: the climate of the Earth itself also 
underwent dramatic changes due to human activities. Thus, in our 
21st-century reading of the poem, a “breath of air” simultaneously 
refers to the galloping climate crisis and the fundamental freedoms 
threatened by populistic regimes and by global capital.

What does contemporary art have to say when scientific facts are taken 
over by conspiracy theories, myths replace history, and creativity 
itself has also become subject to co-option? The presented projects not 
only point to problems: going beyond criticism, they deliver utopistic, 
playful, or very tangible suggestions and alternatives. Thus, /INHALE!/ 
is neither a desperate call for help, nor a demand only, but rather an 
imperative pertaining to all of us. It is a direct reference to how we 
must take a deep breath and take action for clean air, for the 
protection of our freedom, for the liberation of our imagination—to 
create and preserve conditions and places for breathing freely.