Underpasses are characterised by emptiness due to the lack of aesthetics and personality, and emptiness is uncomfortable. You cannot relate to it. Yet, paradoxically, the lack of identity and the emptiness that we experience in these places can bring us closer to unity; we can identify with the space and with ourselves. In the loneliness and anxiety present in impersonal, holodic spaces – the non-places – we find the aesthetics of nothingness, the alternation of what is and what is not.
The public installation Presence in-between is a light installation that pulsates to the rhythm of breathing, helping us to experience being present, to connect with the environment. The installation “inhabits” an urban non-place and offers a different interpretation: that non-places could actually function as zen-places. As the visitors passes through the space, they can stop for a moment and take in its rhythm, breathe with it.
Viola Mangel is a student at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. She has recently started to work on public space projects, exploring the contrast between the pulsation of urban life and the Zen Buddhism that plays an important role in her own life.
Date: 10 AM – 6 PM daily, 5-8 September 2024
Location: Nyugati square underpass, 1066 Budapest Nyugati tér
As part of the project Marietta Mogyosósy, landscape and horticultural engineer, nature facilitator will lead a discussion with the artist.
Date of the discussion: 5 PM, 7 September 2024
Location of the discussion: coming soon
Language: the installation is English-friendly, but the discussion is in Hungarian
The programme is free of charge.