CROSSING BUDAPEST
Urban exploration workshop (13th - 17th NOV 2014)
Nyugati Railway - Skála Metró - West End Mall
From the 13th till the 17th of November, BUPAP(HU) and EXPODIUM (NL) will embark on a three-day urban exploration workshop in Budapest, exploring in-situ the Nyugati Railway Terminal, Skála Metró and the West End Shopping Mall.
Identifying stations as the cathedrals of modernity and shopping malls as the cathedrals of post-modernism, Expodium choose to dive into the relational prospects of both ‘monuments’, research their history, function, social relevance and position as mobility and consumption ‘meccas’ of the contemporary world.
Bupap choose to explore the area of a railway station from the fin du siècle (the era of integration), think on the future of a recently unfunctional socialist department store (from the era of isolation) and follow the footsteps of costumers to a western-style shopping mall (in the era of colonisation).
Both partners will identify Nyugati tér as a symbolic space where a central-european community is searching identity between West and East.
This study will additionally function as a context for both collectives to get familiar with each other’s mode of operation – having established walking as a common mean of research and knowledge production.
The workshop, though addressing to the partners, will have the potentiality of inviting relevant experts and creative forces to join.
Bupap is a creative group of art historians, historians and sociologists. Bupab was founded by Anna
Lénárd, artist and urban guide, who started organizing walking tours in 2011 on the unmastered political past of Budapest. The initiative has 20+ different urban walks on memory politics, minority and gender questions, real estate speculation and other important topics. These programs target locals and with the aim of helping Hungarian society – its political-sociological heritage of the 20th century, two lost world wars and three dictatorial periods – to transform from form a postdictatorial society into a democratic, European, and multicultural community.
Expodium is an urban do tank. Through a variety of methods of artistic research, we generate vital information about urban areas and at the same time activate those areas and their users. We are a satellite at grass-root level; framing local developments in global discourse. We document, archive, contextualize and frequently publish information and knowledge generated through our practice. We work with an international network of artists, architects, academics and the likes for mutual brain-picking. We stroll and awe.
Expodium is a collective of three [Nikos Doulos, Friso Wiersum, Bart Witte].
