On Sept. 6, the exhibition Geisterknochen, curated by the collective Technologie un das Unheimliche (T+U) and Borbála Szalai, opened at Budapest’s Trafó Galéria.
Founded in Berlin in 2014 T+U, consisting of Márk Fridvalszki, Zsolt Miklósvölgyi and Márió Z. Nemes, places the relationship between technology and the human condition at the center of its research, taking up the Freudian concept of the ‘perturbing’ (Das Unheimliche, 1919) in reference to an experimentation around the theoretical assumption of technology in light of the shape of its relations to humanity in the postmodern era. In this context, man is imagined as a “user” of technology, according to a power relationship in which the latter prevails over the former, resulting in a human-technology fusion that manifests itself as an alien presence that threatens the anthropocentric sense of feeling at home in the world.
Geisterknochen fits within this line of research, combining technology, philosophy, art and archaeology. The title of the exhibition – in Italian, “bones of ghosts” – refers to a double critical proposition: on the one hand, to the Hegelian concept that the spirit is something equivalent to a bone; on the other hand, to the meaning of palæhauntology, theorized by the curators in the fanzine of the same name published on the occasion of the Hungarian exhibition. As stated in the opening poster of the publicatione:
«By synthesizing the concept of deep ancestral or prehuman time with Derrida’s notion of hauntology – where haunting converges with ontology – palæhauntology foregrounds the necessity of confronting the spectral remnants of our cultural and biological pasts, which persists in shaping the present and extend into our posthuman futures. Traditionally, ghosts are perceived as the spectral shadows of the human past. However, palæhauntology subverts this anthropocentric perspective, positioning humans as potential shadows or remnants of non-human materiality.»[1]
According to this understanding, man is not only haunted by the presence of the ghosts of the past, but is himself a ghost within contemporary reality. Starting from this awareness, the exhibition presents the works of eleven heterogeneous artists belonging to the context of Hungarian and Eastern European contemporary art. After an introductory video presentation by the curators, the viewer is welcomed within the single room of Trafó Gallery by a central multi-level installation with works by different artists: Lőrinc Borsos offers several sculptural interventions composed of fragments of bones and skeletons that evoke a quiet, contemplative spirituality; Aleksandr Delev creates the translucent resin sculpture Tower (2023) that challenges conventional ideas of progress, suggesting that echoes of the past continue to haunt the technological development of the present; finally, Tamás Komoróczky’s five installations, titled Anticipated Target Concepts (1-5, 2010-2024), present a collection of boxes filled with velvet-covered and assembled objects, including fossils and fragments from the artist’s other exhibitions, such as an animal horn, a fax machine, VHS, bones and bottles. Although placed in apparent disorder, each object has a distinct meaning and position: deprived now of their original meaning, they are transformed into remnants of the past, in Komoróczky’s willingness to reflect on his own personal history and the future, suggesting that our desire to predict what will happen may be in vain.
Around this central core are then Hynek Alt’s installations, Untitled (Today) (2018), composed of a series of large, newspaper-like sheets placed in blocks in different areas of the gallery. The intent is to explore the role of materiality in an era dominated by digitization, against which the artist offers images of prints, made in series and depicting urban excavation remains, as a metaphor for the fragility and temporality of modern technology, prompting visitors to reconsider the impermanence of the most advanced technological devices. Finally, on the walls are large and small works made of different materials that still refer to the spectrality of the present and the ghosts of the past, such as the bone sculpture of a whale in Insane Temple’s The Cetacean Worship, the watercolors “Life Beyond…” I-IV (2024) by Dominika Trapp or Július Koller’s series of photographs Cult Cultural Situation / Kultová kultúrna situácia (U.F.O.) (1988).
Geisterknochen and Palæhauntology invite the viewer to approach the uncanny and the unknown, encouraging a reflection on the philosophical metaphors of bones and archaeology, as well as of the cultural excavation that reveals the roots of our contemporary existence and the legacy of the ghosts that shape our world and the possible future that awaits us.
[1] Technologie un das Unheimliche, Palæhauntology, Digital Print, Budapest 2024, p. 1.
Geisterknochen,curated by T+U (Márk Fridvalszki, Zsolt Miklósvölgyi, Márió Z. Nemes), Borbála Szalai, Trafó Galéria, Budapest, 06.09 – 27.10.2024
Artists: Hynek Alt, Lőrinc Borsos, Aleksandr Delev, Miklós Erdély, Márk Fridvalszki, László Győrffy, Insane Temple (Stach Szumski & Nestor Peixoto Aballe), Július Koller (JKS), Tamás Komoróczky, Márió Z. Nemes, Dominika Trapp.
images: (cover 1) Technologie und das Unheimliche fanzine. No 8. Paleohauntology | Trafó Gallery, 2024 | photo: Dávid Biró (2) Geisterknochen | exhibition view, left: Július Koller: Anti-performance (U.F.O.), 1980 (B/w photograph (photo: Květoslava Fulierová) Július Koller Society, Bratislava; right: Tamás Komoróczky: Anticipated Target Concepts (Macbeth), 2010. Assemblage (flocked objects, framed, 102×98 cm) | Trafó Gallery, 2024 | photo: Dávid Biró (3) Hynek Alt: Untitled (Today), 2018 (rotary offset press, 3000 pieces, 63×47 cm) | Geisterknochen, Trafó Gallery, 2024 | photo: Dávid Biró (4) Tamás Komoróczky: Anticipated Target Concepts (1-5) – detail, 2010–2024 (flocked objects in paper boxes, 39x59x27 cm each) | Geisterknochen, Trafó Gallery, 2024 | photo: Dávid Biró (5) Left: Dominika Trapp: „Life Beyond…” IV., 2024 (ink on paper, A3); in the middle and on the right: Július Koller: Cult Cultural Situation / Kultová kultúrna situácia (U.F.O.) 1., 2,, 1988 (B/w photographs (photographer unknown), Július Koller Society, Bratislava | Geisterknochen, Trafó Gallery, 2024 | photo: Dávid Biró
