"Traces - Contemporary Baltic Photography" in Budapest

October 21, 2014
Author Echo Gone Wrong

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In the framework of Hungarian Month of Photography festival in Budapest in 2012 the Young Photographers’s Studio launched a creative idea and workshop activity into the scene cooperating with young, emerging experts (sociologists, historians, anthropologists) of Kontra Műhely. The artists and researchers addressed social phenomena and problems that concern young people in their twenties and thirties – their own generation. The workshop functioned as a creative community and an open university. The main topic researched the uniqueness of this generation how the political changes influenced their life and achievements.

In 2014 the Hungarian Month of Photography festival is willing to continue this topic but in wider scale and invite the Baltic countries to tell their opinions, stories and experiences on this topic in through a common exhibition project which mostly based on the usage of private archives as a main theme of the 10th photofestival in Budapest. The show focuses more on the usage of archive, revising history and addressing memory without age limit among the invited artists.

The up-date of the topic is in connection with the increasing interest in the global research field to the Eastern and Central European region.

The Baltic project would be initiate self inspection and offer an overview of how the private archives recall the memory, focusing on the soviet period. Are the people mentality does differ from those who were born before or after the regime changed? Does it influnece their mentality to have spent part of their life in socialism but to have experienced the political transition? Do they have a set of values and model for the family and for work which are based on the former socialist models but these established models do not work anymore in the global economy and especially in the global art scene.

The works which we are expected at the planning exhibition would be self-reflection of the generations which point beyond themselves when they represent the current social issues and problems. In a boarder sense the project is related to the history of Baltic countries, the political transition influenced the way of thinking of all generation.

Artists: Maria Kapajeva (EE-UK), Dénes Farkas (EE-HU), Silja Saarepuu & Vilu Plink (EE), Ivars Gravlejs (LV), Reinis Lismanis (LV), Inga Erdmane & Ilze Vanaga (LV), Arnis Balčus (LV), Vytautas Stanionis (LT), Donatas Stankevičius (LT), Darius Kuzmickas (LT)

Curators: Krital Raelsaar (EE), Arnis Balčus (LV), Mindaugas Kavaliauskas (LT)