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2007 » Hungary » National section
| Curator: | András Forgách |
| Authors of Theme: | András Forgách, András Forgách |
| Designer / Architect of exhibition: | Zsolt Khell |
| Other collaborators: | Marton Agh, Viola Fodor |
| Institution: | Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute |
Liliom in Baghdad
After nearly a year of intensive discussions with selected stage designers, a scale-model took shape. It preserved the spirit of my original idea, but it was expanded and enriched by very different artistic philosophies in addressing and presenting an actual problem of our world today. The exhibition, entitled Liliom in Baghdad, appears as pieces of a puzzle; it is through fragments that the whole comes through. The exhibition is an exhibition of an exhibition: it is open and closed at the same time, entry is barred and permitted at the same time. It makes the viewer curious, yet it denies him the satisfaction of his curiosity. Visitors can enter the foreground of the exhibition only through barriers – just like at an airport, stadium, or any other public place under terrorist threat. They must stand in line with their assigned number, pass through a metal detector, and are photographed and fingerprinted. If we carefully read the description of the scenes of Molnár’s Liliom, we can see that all scenes are transitional, temporary, public, suburban. There is a fair, a railroad track, a park, a bench, and the inner courtyard of a photographer’s studio. These are ephemeral scenes, with otherworldly lights, on the periphery of mortal existence. After the suicide of Liliom, Heaven is nothing else but the waiting room of a police station, a temporary place where you will be questioned and processed. Liliom, after being sent back to earth to make good, solves his problem by making trouble. He slaps his daughter’s face, whom he wanted to present with a star from the sky. Everything will be recorded by a camera, and the resulting film will be projected onto a huge television screen. On this screen, like at any airport, clips are running all the time, clips of city-bombings, clips of theatre performances, clips of the visitors’ faces. The guard of the exhibition asks for our IDs – and still he doesn’t let us enter the exhibition. You can be a terrorist. But through the entrance door, forever closed, you can read the title of the exhibiton: LILIOM IN BAGHDAD, and maybe catch a glimpse of the exhibited objects through the mirrored doorways. Many of us spend much of our lives travelling. We are at airports or railway stations. One doesn’t know whether he is in the enormous halls of the airport of Baghdad, Tel-Aviv, Munich or Edinburgh. These places try to manifest their special cultural identity through designs and signs, but still, everything is imbued with a universal language. I love this plan, because the creativity of my chosen designers flared up before my eyes while we worked on it, and we trust that it will be enhanced by the imagination of the public. To me it is mysterious, meaningful, and simple at the same time.
other collaborators: Kentaur Co-ordinator of the Hungarian exhibitions: Sylvia Huszár and Tamás Galgovics