Hajnal Németh

Crash – Passive Interview

Object installation and audio installation, version 1, Museum Kiscell – Municipal Picture Gallery, Budapest, 12 March – 02 May 2010

The title work is an installation comprised of a black BMW wrecked in a car crash and a surrounding sound installation, apostrophizing it, so to speak. The six-channel sound installation deals with stories of car crashes based on interviews with the victims, the texts of which are performed as a musical piece by three singers.“Passive Interview” in the present case refers to a form of text in which the story develops in the interviewer’s yes-no questions, with the answers consequently reduced to yes and no.Two identical sculptures have been made of the vehicle crumpled by the collision, 1:4 scale models of the original. The replication and duplication of the shape – a unique, singular shape – of the wrecked car, together with the yes-no question form of the interviews with fortunate and uninjured drivers who survived the accidents – highlighting their series of errors, questions the very existence of chance, or more precisely, assuming that chance is determined, suggests the possibility of predestination. In the present case, crash as slow destruction is the equivalent of the extreme prolongation of the catastrophic moment via memory, which thus torn out of time turns into its own repeatable memento.

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Collaborators: Sean Hunter Williams (sculptor), Hanna Szperalski (mezzo-soprano), Tobias Müller-Kopp (baritone), Franz Bühn (Kinderchor CANZONETTA Berlin), Li Xuxa Bolden (the angel’s voice), Volker Schaner – FufooFilm and Setalite Tonstudio Berlin (audio recording)

Curator: Edit Sasvári

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Totaled black BMW E39 Sedan in red light, 6 channel audio installation, 3 librettos (passive interviews) on music stands

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Exhibition view: Museum Kiscell – Municipal Picture Gallery, Budapest, 2010

Photo: Barbara Antal, Ágnes Bakos, Bence Tihanyi