Events

Photo book Presentation

Bibi Tomasi, Al cerchio delle tue mani. Published by BilderAtlas.

Al cerchio delle tue mani by Bibi Tomasi (On the circle of your hands. A story in images of the Italian feminist movement from the archive of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective) is a photo book published by BilderAtlas, on the occasion of Libreria delle donne di Milano’s 50th Anniversary. The volume is a collection of never-before-seen photographs of the gatherings and communal life of the first feminist groups in Italy, taken by the multi-faceted author Bibi Tomasi: poet, writer, journalist, among the founders of the bookstore. Giorgia Basch, publisher and curator of the book, and Traudel Sattler of Libreria delle donne, will discuss it by connecting it with the history of Libreria delle donne and some of the key publications that led to this one. 

venue: ISBN (1085 Budapest, Baross u. 42.) 

date: 13 June 2025. 5 PM

Supported by Istituto Italiano di Cultura Budapest

The feminist practice of affidamento and the politics of desire

The Libreria delle donne di Milano (Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective), founded in 1975 and celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, is one of the pivotal political spaces where the practices and theoretical thinking of Italian feminism have been elaborated. 

With this workshop, we aim to highlight the strength and originality of the practice of relation—particularly the relation of entrustment, known as affidamento. This exercise in female mediation requires each woman to acknowledge and care for their qualitative differences and to build dual relationships from that foundation—at work, at home, at school, and in all kinds of social situations. Women ally with and empower one another by recognizing the disparities among them in a shared pursuit of freedom and self-expression. Through this practice, women recognize that personal desire is the driving force behind mediation. In short, we can speak of a “politics of desire”. Affidamento, in fact, operates on both a personal and political level, as it enters the system of social relations and modifies its symbolic order in a radical way. This practice thus goes much deeper than gaining the recognition of women’s rights – it fosters a cultural shift.
In an era in which traditional patriarchal structures are tottering and representative democracy is in a serious crisis, some men have also recognized the value of a political practice of relation, which allows them to engage in self-awareness.

To learn more about Libreria delle donne please visit libreriadelledonne.it and its social media channels, as well as the following documentary produced by Memomi: https://memomi.it/libreria-delle-donne.

Registration link:  https://forms.gle/rGNu8zUZWCDz6Rpi6 

venue: Közkincs Könyvtár (1088 Budapest, Rákóczi u. 11.)

date: 13 June 2025. 2 – 4 PM

Supported by Istituto Italiano di Cultura Budapest

Mother Ireland (1988), 51 min

directed by: Anne Crilly

Mother Ireland is a 1988 documentary directed by Anne Crilly and produced by the Derry Film and Video Workshop (DFVW). The film explores the relationship between the struggle for Irish nationhood and feminism, with a particular focus on how Ireland has been represented as a woman in culture and politics. Through historical footage, photographs, political cartoons, and music, the film examines how these female symbols have shaped societal expectations of women in Ireland.

The film is notable for featuring interviews with key political and cultural figures, including Mairéad Farrell, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who was executed by British Special Forces during an operation in Gibraltar in March 1988. Mother Ireland was banned under the UK government’s sweeping broadcasting restrictions introduced on October 19, 1988, in part because of interviews like the one with Farrell, and was only shown in an edited form in 1991 as part of Channel 4’s “Banned” series.

The Derry Film and Video Workshop (DFVW) — featured in one of the the OFF-Biennále exhibitions “these walls are not here to defend us” at Merlin — was a women-led film collective founded in Derry in 1983 to enable local communities to tell their own stories, particularly at the intersection of gender, class, and the legacies of colonization. Members of the collective included Anne Crilly, Margo Harkin, Trisha Ziff, and Stephanie English. Their work was supported through the 1982 Workshop Declaration, funded by Channel 4, which promoted independent filmmaking and the representation of marginalized communities.

Both Mother Ireland and the work of DFVW had a significant impact on Irish independent cinema and feminist art, helping to make women’s stories and experiences more visible in the media.

Following the screening, filmmaker Anne Crilly will speak with Sara Greavu, researcher and curator of the DFVW archive.

The film will be shown in English (with English subtitles).

Related installation on view at Merlin: 

Sara GREAVU & Ciara PHILLIPS & Derry Film and Video Workshop

To keep the other image alive…, 2025

Mixed media installation

As an accompanying event of OFF-Biennale Budapest we present a selection of video and audio pieces reflecting on various experiences of black and brown, migrant and marginalized people and bodies in hostile, politically controlled environments.

The event will be introduced by curators Lívia Páldi and Borbála Soós. The films will be screened in English. Total screening program length: 77 mins.

Jay Bernard
Something Said, 2017, 7’33’’

The New Cross Fire, also known as the New Cross Massacre, was a devastating tragedy in 1981 that claimed the lives of 13 young Black people. The initial response from the state, media, and police was marked by indifference, compounding the community’s grief. Jay Bernard’s film Something Said engages with this haunting legacy through a queer lens, situating the fire within a broader narrative of Black British history. Created in the shadow of Grenfell and amid the resurgence of far-right politics, the film explores the lasting impact of the fire on two interconnected levels: the broader social and political rupture it caused, and the deeply personal journey of reconciling a queer present with a Black radical past.

Something Said is an imaginative re-telling of the night following the fire, placing Yvonne Ruddock—whose birthday party it was and who was among those who died—at the centre of a reflective inquiry. The film examines how this tragedy has reverberated through history, particularly in the post-Brexit era of rising fascism, while also delving into Bernard’s own transgender experience. Like their poetry collection Surge, the film draws from Bernard’s residency at the George Padmore Institute, a North London research centre dedicated to Black history.

Jay Bernard (FRSL, FRSA) is an interdisciplinary writer and artist from London whose work is rooted in social histories. They were named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2020 and are the winner of the 2017 Ted Hughes Award for their first collection Surge. Bernard was a 2022-2023 DAAD literature fellow in Berlin and in 2023-2024 a fellow at the Institute of Ideas and Imagination in Paris.

Supported by the British Council.

Larry Achiampong
A Letter (Side B), 2023, 20’00’’

The film looks at the affective impact of history, immigration and geographical separation on two brothers living in Britain and Ghana. Through the nuanced uses of current and older technologies, visuals, sound and recollections of lived experiences and conversations, the film points to the wider social and political consequences of institutional structures and behaviours that threaten the lives of migrants and refugee families. 

The piece collapses time, exploring how the past interrupts and impacts in the present and incorporates recent footage filmed by Achiampong in Ghana as well as archival footage from The Museum of African Art: The Veda and Dr Zdravko Pečar Collection in Belgrade, Serbia. 

Speaking from a deeply personal perspective, the film utilises a ‘hacked’ Game Boy Camera, which Achiampong modified to enable the capture of moving image via HDMI. Through the marriage of storytelling and the use of retro technology, the exploration of time travel and the concept of ‘Sanko-time’ becomes possible. Coined by Achiampong in 2017, the term relates to the Ghanaian Adinkra symbol and indigenous Akan term ‘Sankofa’, meaning to ‘go back and retrieve’. 

Supported by the British Council.

Davinia-Ann Robinson

‘some intimacy, a meditation’,  2022, 5’00’’

The artist’s voice, Ujjayi breath practice

‘some intimacy, a meditation’ is a durational reading and breath practice, performed by Davinia-Ann Robinson, examining colonial and ancestral landscapes which formed her body and the environments she inhabits.

Through breath and repetition, the work recites the lineage of ancestors housed within her body, while mapping both lineage and landscape through severing roots, displacement, and violence of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the East India Company.

The work then conjures movements of her body through the earth, questioning what it means for Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies to ‘concave and fold’, to ‘compost’ within the land and the body, invoking acts of “fugitivity:.

The concept of “fugitivity” in decolonial thought refers to acts of freedom, resistance, and self-determination that serve as active responses to the structures of colonialism and racism. This approach not only signifies the end of colonialism but also the dismantling of the coloniality that is rooted in power and specific forms of knowledge—both bodily and linguistic—embedded within colonial structures. Hence fugitivity is not merely about physical escape but also about creating spaces and practices that resist and subvert colonial norms.

Supported by the British Council.

Kader Attia
La Valise Oubliée (The Forgotten Suitcase), 2024, 32’12”

Three suitcases, three stories, three individual histories that interweave threads of our collective History. Through this seemingly ordinary, even insignificant object, Kader Attia tells the story both of his family and of the anonymous actors in the struggle for Algerian independence; the thousands of nameless heroes, men and women of courage and commitment who worked in the shadows against colonialism. Whether it’s a suitcase “left behind” in the late 1950s by an unknown member of the Algerian resistance at the home of the artist Jean-Jacques Lebel, a suitcase found by chance in a Parisian street by feminist decolonial thinker Françoise Vergès containing photographs of her family, or the suitcase that accompanied the artist’s father on his journeys back and forth between France and Algeria, each one contains traces of a life, interwoven with a collective unconscious in which our individual dreams as passers-by are played out.

Supported by the Institut français en Hongrie and the Goethe-Institut Budapest.

Imran Perretta

15 Days, 2018, 12’00’’

After the refugee camp near Calais that became known as the Jungle was razed in 2016, the hundreds of people who had found shelter and a sense of community there were equally abruptly uprooted, adding yet another sorry episode to the disruption and displacement they had already suffered in their flight from persecution, corruption and the fall-out of war. 

Imran Perretta’s video 15 days is inspired by the time that he spent in Northern France with former inhabitants of the Jungle, now living rough in the surrounding woods and fields. The title of the piece is not a measure of the length of his stay there but rather a salute to the hastily made-up name of one of the people he befriended, whose alias ’15 days’ might be an allusion to the all-too-brief period of respite since his latest temporary camp was destroyed but might also read as a sardonic rebuke of the interminable nature of the time he has been waiting in limbo, in the hope of a new and better life.

Supported by the British Council.

A performance about losing one’s homeland, about processing death, and about what it feels like to exist without a sense of home. It explores how extreme people can be—and how, instead of judging, we must observe, be present, and act with humanity. Because ultimately, we all strive to feel—somewhere, somehow—a little bit at home.

An adventurous journey and a therapy of touch.
The journey happens here and now—with you. Everything unfolds within you, through you, because of you.

Participants:
Imre Keserű, Cintia Toshev-Peller, Viktória Pignitzky-Németh, Szonja Mónus, Lotti Lőrincz, Pál Nyáry, Zsolt Budavári-Dudla, Réka Herczeg, and Katalin Papp

Within this framework each participating organisation implemented different art mediation programs. OFF-Biennale worked together with civil organisations based in District 8 (Józsefváros), along with their communities and interested residents, to design and build together the community meeting space AllinOne at Kálvária Square.

As a summary of the project, a glossary was created in six languages. It contains terms and entries that serve as guides and reference points for the partners. Titled We Cannot Say That We Have Arrived Somewhere, Yet Neither Can We Say That We Haven’t – A Glossary of Commoning Terms, the publication reflects on experiences and dilemmas rooted in our own environments and local contexts, instead of relying on overused concepts such as “inclusion” or “participation.”

Together with our local guests and international project partners, we will share our community art experiences in a World Café format discussion. The program is built around selected keywords from the glossary (e.g., Being Understood, Making/Holding/Giving Space, Self-Empowerment, Reaching Communities, etc.), discussed in smaller groups at thematic tables, guided by the invited guests.

The glossary is available in English, Hungarian, Czech, Albanian, German, and Spanish at www.emotional-labor.eu, where it can be downloaded as a printable PDF or e-book. The English edition is also available for order.

Venue: Merlin, Károly körút / City Hall Park
Date and time: June 5, 2025, 17:00 – 18:30

Invited participants:

Mónika Bálint (Executive Director of the Civil College Foundation)

Zsuzsa Berecz (Founding member of the Pneuma Szöv. artist collective)

Zsófia Puszt (Staff member at The Space of Opportunity)
Project partners in the Art Space Unlimited project: tranzit.cz (Prague), < rotor > (Graz), La Escocesa (Barcelona), Shtatëmbëdhjetë (Pristina)

The event will be held in English.

Everyone is warmly welcome!

Supporters: EU Creative Europe Programme / European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), Our Common Values Programme / Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV), Praktiker Kft., Sika Hungary Kft., Józsefváros Municipality

This activity is a part of the project Art Space Unlimited co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the EACEA. Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.

This project has received funding from the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV). The European Commission’s support for this project does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the project implementers, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Further information about the Art Space Unlimited and the AllinOne projects:

https://offbiennale2025.hu/kiallitas/mindentbelehely-kozossegi-epiteszeti-projekt-a-kalvaria-teren/

Looking for Jeanne 

Tuesday, June 3, 6-8.30pm 

As an accompanying event to OFF-Biennale Budapest, we will screen the first and third parts of the four-part film project Looking for Jeanne by Swedish film and visual artist Petra Bauer. The series is based on the 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles by French filmmaker Chantal Akerman.

The event will be introduced by curator Lívia Páldi. The films will be screened in English. The total length of the screening programme is 132 minutes.

Petra Bauer: Sisters!, 2011, 72’

The film Sisters! is the result of a collaboration between Petra Bauer and Southall Black Sisters – the radical, pioneering London-based feminist and anti- racist organisation founded in 1979. Southall Black Sisters support and campaign around the social and political conditions of black and minority women, particularly those experiencing gender-based violence. Documenting one-week in the life of the organisation, the film takes daily work as a springboard for a visual discussion on feminism, politics and aesthetics in today’s society. It shows political resistance in its most ordinary, everyday form.

The film asks what happens when questions from the 1970s Women’s Liberation Movement, particularly those explored by feminist film collectives from the time, are posed in a contemporary political setting; and consequently, what are the important feminist issues of today for black and minority women?

Petra Bauer’s method includes investigations of British feminist film production and theory from the 1970s, and Sisters! discusses the possibility for moving images to provide a focal point for social and political negotiation.

Petra Bauer: fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two

thousand sixteen, 62’

On January 19th 2016, Carolina is on the other side of the world when she receives a phone call from home where she is informed that both of her sons have been shot, the killings witnessed by her 13-year-old daughter. She takes the first flight back home to Stockholm, but the worst has already happened: her youngest son has died and her eldest is in a coma.

fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen refuses one-dimensional depictions of the violence currently taking place in the outskirts of Swedish cities. The film portrays how Carolina Sinisalo’s routines and gestures are transformed when her children

are shot. How a home holds memories, but also the possibility of refusal and change. How the kitchen table becomes a place to mourn, share stories, and mobilize.

DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT

It is January 6, 2019. We – Marius (Dybwad Brandrud) és Petra (Bauer) – participate in the manifestation “Say Their Names,” organised by a group of young people mourning their friends who have been murdered by the violence inflicted upon Swedish outskirts since the early 2000s. Together, they share memories and pay tribute to their friends, whom they refuse to let become mere statistics.

We are there with our camera. We are permitted to film everything save for the names of the murdered, which have been printed on t-shirts. This may appear paradoxical, but from the perspective of the youth, it is a considered act of resistance against simplistic mainstream descriptions of the youth, the outskirts, and criminality. They have a firm hold on the power over their own memories and they refuse to let their friends’ deaths be exploited by powers alien to their own convictions.

At the manifestation, we meet Carolina Sinisalo, who lost her son, Robin, in a shooting. On that very day, Robin would have turned 18. We talk about what forms of representation would enable memorialisation on the families’ own terms. This conversation sets a longer discussion and collaboration in motion, specifically concerning how we can speak of Robin in particular. fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen is the result
of our shared attempts to try to make a film which takes as its point of departure Carolina’s experiences of this violence.

The event will be introduced by curator Borbála Soós.

The films will be screened in English.

Melanie Bonajo’s Night Soil Trilogy consists of a series of experimental documentaries, a poetic journey into the heart of resistance and renewal. Through intimate encounters with women who use ayahuasca, sex work activists, and alternative farmers, Bonajo paints a vivid tapestry of lives that challenge the dominance of global capitalism and patriarchal norms. Each film in the trilogy serves as a chapter in this exploration:

Night Soil – Fake Paradise, 2014, 32 mins
Delving into the world of psychedelic plant medicine, this film highlights the voices of women in ayahuasca ceremonies. It presents an amalgama of personal accounts on the spiritual and bodily experiences with the Amazonian substance, giving particular weight to the feminine point of view, traditionally neglected in psychedelic research.

Night Soil – Economy of Love, 2015, 32 mins
This film is centred on a Brooklyn-based women’s activist movement that approaches sex work as a way for women to reclaim power, challenging societal taboos and advocating for a more inclusive understanding of sexuality. Their emphasis is on nurturing, educating and empowering all sexes around the power that lays within the female orgasm, advocating for a shifting vocabulary around sex work and gender roles and moving toward mutual respect and understanding of the body and spirit.

Night Soil – Nocturnal Gardening, 2016, 50 mins
The third part of the trilogy portrays a group of women living by alternative norms and who have each, on their own, established communities. The women stand for sensitivity, connection, and communication with other communities, plants, animals and elements. Each of them embraces social movements and self-organization, exploring spiritual anarchy and the solitary wild in their own way. 

Through these narratives, Bonajo invites viewers to question the artificial boundaries between humans, nature, and technology. By spotlighting practices often marginalized or deemed illegal, the trilogy encourages a reevaluation of societal norms and a reconnection with the natural world. Bonajo’s work is a call to embrace alternative ways of living that prioritize connection, sustainability, and the dismantling of oppressive systems.

Supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands.

Melanie Bonajo (b. 1978, The Netherland), is an queer, non-binary, Dutch artist, filmmaker, sexological bodyworker, somatic sex coach and educator, cuddle workshop facilitator and activist. Through their videos, performances, photographs, and installations, they examine current conundrums of co-existence in a crippling capitalist system, and address themes of eroding intimacy and isolation in an increasingly sterile, technological world. They research how technological advances and commodity-based pleasures increase feelings of alienation, removing an individual’s sense of belonging. Their works present anticapitalist methods to reconnect and to explore sexualities, intimacies and feelings.

Bonajo studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and completed residencies at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam (2009-10) and at ISCP in New York (2014).

Melanie Bonajo started working in 2014 on their monumental ‘Night Soil Trilogy’, consisting of ‘Night Soil – Fake Paradise’ (2014), ‘Night Soil – Economy of Love’ (2015) and ‘Night Soil – Nocturnal Gardening’ (2016).  In 2016, ‘Progress vs Regress’ was released, followed by ‘Progress vs Sunsets’ in 2017. This new Trilogy examines extinction or endangerment of vulnerable groups through techno-capital development, but also extinction in an abstract sense, extinction of feelings and thoughts. In ‘TouchMETell’ (2019) Bonajo invites children (and adults) to think and talk about intimacy, their limits and body awareness. In 2022, ‘When the body says Yes’ was released and presented as the Dutch Entry at the Venice Biennale. Their work continues to be exhibited internationally, with upcoming solo exhibitions scheduled at Kunstpalais Erlangen in Germany and Pori Museum in Finland in 2025.

GARDERIE NOCTURNE (2021)
ducomentary film
Dir: Moumouni Sanou (1h 07m)
In original languages with English subtitle

Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Every night, Madame Coda welcomes the children of sex workers into her home. Garderie nocturne follows the routine of several mothers who call on her services. Burkinabé director Moumouni Sanou lingers on the moments of intimacy they share with their babies.
Moumouni Sanou has managed to gain the trust of everyone involved in this unique set-up, together with a huge amount of insight into the lives of Odile and Farida, both of whom rely on Ms Coda’s services. He tenderly observes all aspects of their situation, including domestic work, downtime and the most intimate moments of motherhood, as well as their relationship to Ms Coda and how she raises their children. Female experience is at the heart of the film, and men and the fathers of these children remain absent.

When: 30/5/25, Friday, 7:30 PM
Where: 1084 Budapest Koszorú utca 25-27.
3000 huf
Registration: holnaputanminden@gmail.com

The film is part of the program series related to the exhibition The Day After Tomorrow Everything Will Change.

As an accompanying event of the exhibition “these walls are not here to defend us”, OFF-Biennale presents a selection of films by the Central Asian collective DAVRA.

The film screening will be introduced by curator Eszter Lázár.

DAVRA is a collective of artists from Central Asia, initiated by filmmaker Saodat Ismailova in 2021. The group explores the region’s shared cultural heritage. The word davra, of Persian origin, means “circle.” As Ismailova explains, “A circle can mean a circle of people, a place to gather, or a group of people with whom you gather. In the Central Asian region, people understood the universe and the world around them as round.”

The films in this program, created by four members of the collective, focus on female rituals—on the cyclicality of the female body, which reflects human presence on earth, where life and death also exist in a continuous cycle. 

These rituals revolve around the spirits of the chilltan: spiritual guides, a sacred and invisible collective of powerful female entities at the heart of animist spirituality in Central Asia. Elements of fairytales and daily rituals are interwoven in the films, linking historical past and ancestral heritage with everyday reality.

Shared female experiences evoke a sense of belonging that may manifest in physical spaces—a home, a house, or a shelter created by a female protectress to support women who have experienced violence—or may be imagined in the warm, protective body of a pregnant woman, resonant with with nature’s reproductive powers..

Program: 

• Aida Adilbek, Köbelek, 2023, 2.25 min

• Saodat Ismailova, Bibi Seshanbe, 2022, 52 min
• Nazira Karimi, Maiday Isin Shygaru, 2021, 3.18 min
• Nazilya Nagimova, Chulpan – The Mother, 2022, 11 min

The film program is 88 min. long

The screening is with English subtitles.

Who is considered the foreigner, the outsider and the host? The current wave of migration is significantly impacting Hungarian society. Over the past decade, war refugees and economic migrants from various regions have arrived in Hungary, seeking new homes. Within the city ‘ s fabric, these ‘ communities of outsiders ‘ are at times invisible and at other times highly visible. How long does one remain an outsider, and when does one become integrated into local society? Why do some individuals continue to be viewed as outsiders, despite having lived in the country for generations? Who is responsible for this: the migrants themselves or those who offer shelter?

Coordinates of the starting point: 47°29’19.3″N 19°05’48.1″E

In front of the entrance with a sign “BÁRDI AUTÓ”

IMPORTANT INFO: To participate in the walks, you ’ll need a smartphone or a device that can play music and a pair of earphones! You can either download the sound files beforehand or have mobile data to stream the sound files online!

Practical info: The terrain of the Józsefváros Market can be very uneven, watch your step! If you participate with smaller children, we recommend a carrier instead of a stroller. It might be worth it to walk and listen alone, and gather together later with your friends to discuss your experience.

Walks

1.

ENG

Zsófia Paczolay: Kőbánya Express

Duration: 30”

Contributors: Zsófi Paczolay (narration), Dávid Somló (sound design)

Music and sound

Field recordings at the Józsefváros market

蘇聰 (Cong Su):美夢成真 (album: Dreams Come True) / song: 美美的夢 (The Dream Of Mei Mei)

郭峰 (Guō Fēng): 黄色 (album: Yellow) / song: 戀 (Love)

蓮明一派 – (T at Ming Pair) – 禁色 (Forbidden Pleasure)

鄧麗君 (T eresa T eng) – 忘記他 (Forget Him)

2.

ENG

Zsófia Móró: The rehearsal

Duration: 19”

Contributors: Hungary Starlight Choir

Music and sound

Folk song of the Yimeng Mountains

“Quiet song ” Csöndes dal, 1997, Boldizsár Csiky

“The world needs warm hearts ” 1986, Liu Huan

3.

ENG

Haibo Illés and Richárd Melykó: Unknown Tigresses

Duration: 20”

Contributors: Anna Vecsernyés (voice), Haibo Illés (propaganda caption voice), Richárd Melykó (editing)

Music and sound

iu takahashi – Dew

Survivor – Eye of the tiger

Special thanks: Mihály Gulyás, Bibiána Jordán, Luca Kovács

Curators: Useless Galeri (Luca Petrányi and Fanni Solymár)

Assistant curator: Benedek Farkas

Artists: Richárd Melykó – Haibo Illés, Zsófia Móró, Zsófia Paczolay

Consultants: Fanni Beck, Dávid Somló

Opening: May 25. 14:00

Dates: május 26. – június 15.

Opening hours: Mon – Fri 7:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 7:30-17:00

Finissage: June 14.

Location: Józsefvárosi piac, 1087 Budapest, Kőbányai út 29.

Open and associative yet tangible and specific, the exhibition ‘these walls…’ brings together a diverse array of artistic practices that explore the Biennale’s key themes: safety and security. Though loosely connected, the selected works speak to and through one another, their varied—and at times conflicting—voices coexisting in dialogue. Informed by distinct human, cultural, and political experiences across geographies and historical moments, these perspectives intersect and challenge binary thinking and patriarchal worldviews. They confront both literal and metaphorical walls that shape our contemporary reality.

Curators: Rita Kálmán, Eszter Lázár, Edit Molnár, Veronika Molnár, Lívia Páldi, Hajnalka Somogyi, Borbála Soós, Katalin Székely

Tickets

Do you feel safe?
If not—why not?
And what could help you feel safer?

In the Women’s Self-Defense Workshop, we begin with these simple yet powerful questions. We talk, we play, we grow in awareness, and  we practice. Together, we reflect on our relationship with our bodies and our environment—through the lens of self-defense. In the practical part of the session, you’ll also get to try out a few simple but effective self-defense techniques.

This workshop is for you if you’d like to reconnect with your own strength—and the strength of a supportive group of women.

Participation is subject to registration.

How do we choreograph tenderness? In this intimate and reflective space, participants explore the dramaturgy of love — not through text alone, but with eyes, gestures, and affect. Love as score. Love as movement.

A journey into formlessness through voice and gesture. The workshop offers a dual approach — first through sound as an embodied release, then through drawing as a visual translation of transformation.

A deep dive into the performative state of “thinking in movement.” Using physical improvisation, participants explore dynamic balances: tension/release, grounding/scattering — allowing presence to guide their practice.

Voice becomes a tool for inner exploration and collective play. Participants use sound to unlock creative blocks, explore emotional landscapes, and find joy in spontaneous music-making, regardless of experience.

Painful love, blind clarity, harmonious conflict, free captivity.
“I want to protect you, but we keep hurting each other. If you tie me to you, you let me go.”
We want to stay together—but also break up. To be alone—and also united. To end it—but somehow continue. To draw lines—cross them—redraw—cross again. Lost between yes, no, and maybe…

Brimming with contradictions, clashing emotions, ambivalent reactions, paradoxical choices, and passionate, irrational decisions, this duet reimagines love as a form of full-contact combat without protective gear. Two vulnerable fighters rewrite the rules in real time—negotiating power, struggling with and against each other, beside and for one another.

Caught in the tangle of doubt and conviction, tension and tenderness, confrontation and collapse, they wear down their bodies, hearts, and souls—laying themselves bare in the name of integrity, dignity, and freedom.

An act of resistance and reimagination through the pages of women’s magazines. Participants cut, paste, and rewrite mainstream narratives to uncover new meanings and build a collective feminist archive.

Connected to the exhibition Emergency Frequencies, OFF-Biennale presents the film Preemptive Listening by Aura Satz. The film screening will be introduced by curators Veronika Molnár and Katalin Székely.

—

Preemptive Listening
89 min | UK/Finland | 2024 | Dir. Aura Satz

In a time defined by intersecting ecological, political, and technological crises, Preemptive Listening reimagines the siren—not as a blunt instrument of fear, but as a multifaceted signal that demands our attention, response, and rethinking. Directed by artist Aura Satz, this urgent and evocative film traverses siren systems and emergency infrastructures across the globe—from Fukushima’s nuclear landscape through Bethlehem in Palestine to the ghostly remnants of American civil defense networks—investigating the siren as both relic and prophecy.

Blending sonic experiment, documentary, and design history, Satz assembles a choral collaboration with over 20 avant-garde composers and sound artists, including Laurie Spiegel, Moor Mother, Sarah Davachi, and Raven Chacon. Their works challenge the very essence of the alarm: must it incite panic, or can it resonate as a call to collective responsibility?

With each composition, Preemptive Listening opens new tonal and philosophical terrain—harp harmonics, subterranean rumbles, fractured voice—transforming the siren from a signal of impending catastrophe into a speculative tool for future readiness. In reframing the siren not just as an alert but as an invocation, Satz asks: What do we listen for when the world is already on fire?

Aura Satz (1974, Barcelona) is a London-based artist working with film, sound, performance, and sculpture. Her works explore a distributed, expanded, and shared notion of voice and are made in conversation, using dialogue as both method and subject matter. Satz has performed, exhibited, and screened her work internationally, including at the Tate Modern; BFI Southbank; Hayward Gallery; Sydney Biennale; NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo; High Line Art New York; Rotterdam Film Festival; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Sharjah Art Foundation; KADIST, San Francisco; Onassis Stegi; and Sonic Acts. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Wellcome Collection, the Hayward Gallery project space, John Hansard Gallery, George Eastman Museum, Dallas Contemporary, ARTIUM Museoa, and Kunstnernes Hus, as well as special screening programmes at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, The New York Film Festival, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, and more.

Produced by:
Producer: LONO Studio – Luke W Moody 
Associate Producers: Tendai John Mutambu 
Co-Producer: Co-producers Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola for Testifilmi

Supported by:
AHRC, OKRE

With additional support from:
AND festival, AVEK, Sonic Acts, Walker Arts Centre, Kunsternes Hus, Tyneside Cinema, Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery / Creative New Zealand, EMPAC, CPH:FORUM 2021

The film features newly imagined sirens composed by (in sequential order):
Laurie Spiegel (astronomical planetary data)
Evelyn Glennie (percussion)
Maja Raatkje (voice, bells)
Anton Lukoszevieze (cello)
BJ Nilsen (wind, electronics)
Rhodri Davies (harp)
Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet)
Ilpo Väisänen (electronics)
FUJI||||||||||TA (insects, bats, DIY organ, electronics)
Christina Kubisch (security electromagnetic sounds)
Moor Mother (sirens, electronica)
Laurie Spiegel (manatees, dogs, mice, electronica)
Sarah Davachi (organ and bells)
Camille Norment (feedback sounds)
Elaine Mitchener (voice and whistles)
David Toop (fire, sparks, smoke, electronics)
Mazen Kerbaj (49 trumpets of Jericho)
Raven Chacon (aeolian sound sculpture)
Horomona Horo (Taonga Puoro)
Debit (Mayan instruments, AI, Schumann resonance)
Raven Chacon (eagle bone whistle)
Kode 9 (sine wave shepard tones)

and spoken by (in sequential order)

Khalid Abdalla (actor and activist in the Arab Spring)
Daphne Carr (organizer and scholar on Police Sound)
Asantewaa Boykin and Niki Jones (co-founders of Mental Health First)
Erin Matariki Carr (lawyer and co-lead for RIVER)
Arturo Escobar (anthropologist and environmental philosopher)

The event will be held in English.

The event is supported by the British Council.

Discover the cinematic power of your smartphone. Learn to shoot poetic video diaries that carry emotional resonance. A hands-on session for those ready to make filmmaking personal and accessible.

Connect with the pelvic center as a source of emotional intelligence and creation. Through somatic movement and guided improvisation, participants explore their inner mycelial network, finding unique expressions within a collective choreography.

Reclaiming What’s Ours

We’re taking back what belongs to us—our voices, our strength, our bodies. We step into our power, grounded and alert, tuned in both inward and outward. A bit of wrestling, a bit of tactics, a bit of strategy.
Playful combat for serious realities.

Open and associative yet tangible and specific, the exhibition these walls… brings together a diverse array of artistic practices that explore the Biennale’s key themes: safety and security. Though loosely connected, the selected works speak to and through one another, their varied—and at times conflicting—voices coexisting in dialogue. Informed by distinct human, cultural, and political experiences across geographies and historical moments, these perspectives intersect and challenge binary thinking and patriarchal worldviews. They confront both literal and metaphorical walls that shape our contemporary reality.

Exhibiting artists: Larry Achiampong (UK), Kateryna Aliinyk (UA), Kader Attia (DZ/FR), Daniel Baker (UK), Anna Barna (HU), Mária Berhidi (HU), Gipsy Criminals (HU), Anna Daučíková (SK/CZ), Sara Greavu – Ciara Phillips – Derry Film and Video Workshop (IE), Róza El-Hassan (HU/SY), The Erfurt Women Artists’ Group (DE), Rachel Fallon – Alice Maher (IE), Robert Gabris (SK/AT), Dóra Galyas Denerák (HU), Andrea Gáldi Vinkó (HU), Andrea Éva Győri (HU), Anita Horváth (HU), Gideon Horváth (HU), Ingela Ihrman (SE), Flo Kasearu (EE), Dorottya Szonja Koltay (HU), Dominika Kowynia (PL), Anikó Loránt (HU), Goranka Matić (SI), Noor Afshan Mirza – Brad Butler (UK), Zanele Muholi (ZA), Iz Öztat (TR), Paula Rego (PT), Davinia-Ann Robinson (UK), Katarina Šević (RS/HU), Zsófia Takács (HU), Dominika Trapp (HU), Slavs and Tatars (PL/US), Zorka Wollny (PL)

Curators: Rita Kálmán, Eszter Lázár, Edit Molnár, Veronika Molnár, Lívia Páldi, Hajnalka Somogyi, Borbála Soós, Katalin Székely

Erzsébet Gyarmati and Eszter Salamon – MONUMENT 0.7: M/OTHERS (2019)

Eszter Salamon is one of the most well-known Hungarian-born choreographers and dancer-creators. Her works often examine female subjectivities, multi-generational relationships and different ways of being in human relationships. Her work M/OTHERS, which will be shown in Budapest for the first time, explores the mother-daughter relationship. The performance with Erzsébet Gyarmati opens up an intersubjective time through different forms of action, feeling and perception, creating a singular space with traces and states of coalescence. The intertwining of present and past, the reversal of roles, and the reflection in the other all depict the intricate web that lies beneath reality and questions the illusion of individualism.
Salamon uses choreography as an activating and organizing force between different media such as image, sound, music, text, bodily movement, and actions. Her works develop through different formats, aesthetics, methodologies, and poetics, encompassing a wide spectrum of modes of expression.

Curator: Lívia Páldi

Sound, with its intense somatic materiality, is often deployed in psychological, and even in physical warfare. The sounds of air raids, bombs, and fighter jets impacts can be as devastating as the actual casualties they induce. The butcher’s bill is paid in somatic symptoms and post-traumatic conditions, which, as we know, can be as deadly as the weapons themselves. Organized in a former air-raid-shelter in the framework of OFF-Biennale Budapest, the exhibition Emergency Frequencies presents works that represent, manipulate, and play with the sounds of war. These works transcribe, deconstruct, recompose and overwrite the sounds of conflict, offering visions of possible futures where weapons might remain silent after all. The exhibition, in collaboration with the Blinken OSA Archivum, will also present a range of archival material on the Cold War civil air defense, as well as documents from the siege of Budapest, which ended eighty years ago.

Exhibiting artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan (JO/UK), Nikita Kadan (UA), Ádám Jeneses – Dániel Kophelyil – Ádám Krasz (HU), Cal Kowal – Charlotte Moorman (US), Tuan Andrew Nguyen (VN/US), Open Group (UA), Tamás Páll (HU)

Curators: Veronika Molnár, Katalin Székely

The exhibited artworks explore the layered interplay between the sense of uncertainty and safety, embodying, through a variety of media, the delicate harmony teetering on the edge—or precisely, the tireless search for it. Rather than depicting the ideal state of safety, the exhibition delves into subjective and often contradictory moments of harmony found along the fault lines of expansive, frequently incomprehensible structures—hopeful connections, discovering joy in the crumbs falling from the table. Alongside the unpredictability of the social “wheel of fortune,” appears the strength of solidarity between close-knit communities and the desire for life within the web of unchangeable circumstances—finding inner silence amidst external noise, the prison-like fences woven from our stories and closing in on us. The duality carried within the artworks offers no simple answers, but complex perspectives when approaching the theme of safety. 

The use of materials reinforces this duality, reappearing throughout the space in a certain rhythm: metals and textiles, cold and sharp materials contrasted with fabrics evoking softness and warmth. The artists investigate the boundaries where safety and uncertainty are not opposing states, but subjective experiences blending into each other. The exhibition’s audio elements also capture the interrelation of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli. The sound imprints, relying on individual perception, focus on visceral reactions to sensations of safety or danger. The language of the artworks draws from personal experiences, intertwining universal themes with private symbols, such as the family dining table, a childhood blanket, our protective garments, or the hum of the street. The exhibition invites us to discover the lively dialogue between tension and calm, secretly residing within everyday life.

As part of the opening, Valentina Várhelyi’s performance Protected Area will be presented.

Exhibiting artists: Aliz Farkas, Sándor Alex Kunu, Vendel Vajda, Valentina Várhelyi

Curators: Clara Farkas, Nikoletta Lakatos, Norbert Oláh / The Bura Gallery team

Join us to celebrate the launch of the fourth issue of ETC. Magazine: Comfort Zone—a deep dive into how we seek (and resist) comfort in our bodies, relationships, and communities.

Published annually in Ljubljana, ETC. presents contemporary art from the Balkans to the Baltics, bringing together artists, curators, writers, and publishers from across the region.

This event accompanies ETC. Magazine’s guest-curated exhibition at Liget Gallery as part of OFF-Biennale Budapest. Featuring projects from the magazine, the exhibition explores intimacy, queer perspectives, gender roles, and gendered spaces through the lens of comfort.

ETC. editor Hana Čeferin and ETC. curators Ajda Ana Kocutar and Lara Mejač will be in conversation with Veronika Molnár, director of Liget Gallery and co-curator of OFF-Biennale Budapest, to discuss the issue’s theme, featured artists, and the stories behind the pages.

The magazine will be available for purchase at ISBN+ during the event, and while supplies last.

Venom Zine Library at OFF-Biennale Venom Zine Library is a Copenhagen-based DIY BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) and queer zine library and platform for discovering self-published zines. Maya Acharya and Janna Aldaraji created the collection with the intention of making zines accessible to all and sharing resources on zine-making. Their aim is to introduce the activist, self-organising and academic communities to self-publishing as a powerful tool.
Curator Borbála Soós, in collaboration with the ISBN+ team, has selected additional publications with the aim of presenting Venom’s collection in the context of the OFF-Biennale in Budapest, Hungary and Eastern Europe. Also to draw attention to grassroots initiatives and their struggles that represent marginalised and sometimes intertwined perspectives, including anti-fascist, feminist, disabled, queer and Roma.
You can browse over 200 zines in ISBN+ or create your own using the Venom Zine Library guidelines. Explore zine production as a tool for grassroots organizing, activism, and sharing of ideas and art!

Curator Borbála Soós will give a guided tour at the opening

Karolina Breguła in conversation with Edit Molnár, curator of the exhibition.

Polish artist Karolina Breguła’s video installation The Storm is a rather dark portrait of collective fear, isolation and, on a larger scale, a dysfunctional society.  At a time of global political and environmental crises, Breguła’s dark, analytical work could describe a complex psychological situation through a rather simple scenario: the image of the sea and a distant island, observed by five characters who reveal their most hidden emotions as the destructive wind and waves grow. The threatening change in the weather reveals social tensions and conflicts within the small community, which seems unprepared to face the coming dangers together. The text-heavy talking head composition of the 5-channel video installation portrays the individuals gripped by fear, and the growing mastery of suspense highlights the protagonists’ inability to unite, their fear keeping them separate, suspicious and powerless.

Curator: Edit Molnár

Feathers (2021)

Egyptian drama – comedy

Dir: Omar El Zohairy (1h 52m)

In original languages with English subtitles

“A family is forced into a period of self-discovery after its authoritarian patriarch is accidentally turned into a chicken by a magician during a children’s birthday party.”

“Ambiguous, Kafkaesque and with a deadpan wit, Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy’s debut feature explores a woman’s place in a man’s world.” The Guardian

Omar El Zohairy an Egyptian director studied Cinema at the Cairo Cinema Institute, Feathers is El Zohairy’s first feature film. The film previously won the Grand Prize of the International Critics’ Week at 2021 Cannes Film Festival, marking the first Egyptian feature film to receive this award in the history of the festival.

The event costs 3000 HUF, tickets can be purchased on the spot.

Registration: holnaputanminden@gmail.com

Erzsébet Gyarmati and Eszter Salamon – MONUMENT 0.7: M/OTHERS (2019)

Eszter Salamon is one of the most well-known Hungarian-born choreographers and dancer-creators. Her works often examine female subjectivities, multi-generational relationships and different ways of being in human relationships. Her work M/OTHERS, which will be shown in Budapest for the first time, explores the mother-daughter relationship. The performance with Erzsébet Gyarmati opens up an intersubjective time through different forms of action, feeling and perception, creating a singular space with traces and states of coalescence. The intertwining of present and past, the reversal of roles, and the reflection in the other all depict the intricate web that lies beneath reality and questions the illusion of individualism.
Salamon uses choreography as an activating and organizing force between different media such as image, sound, music, text, bodily movement, and actions. Her works develop through different formats, aesthetics, methodologies, and poetics, encompassing a wide spectrum of modes of expression.

Curator: Lívia Páldi

As part of OFF-Biennále Budapest, Liget Gallery will host Comfort Zone, a group exhibition curated by ETC. Magazine. ETC. is an annual showcase magazine based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, presenting contemporary art from the Balkans to the Baltics. Under the title Comfort Zone, its fourth issue explores the multitude of ways in which we seek comfort—in the context of the body, family, relationships, and community in general—while also acknowledging the discomfort on the other side of the same coin. Through a selection of projects from the magazine’s pages, the exhibition at Liget Gallery will focus on questions of intimacy, queer perspectives, gender roles and gendered spaces. The artists approach these topics through a variety of media, with a sincerity and openness proving once again that the personal is political and that seeking comfort is an act of agency.

Curators: Hana Čeferin, Ajda Ana Kocutar, Lara Mejač / ETC. Magazine

Though drawn from her personal experiences—specifically the complicated and often unsettling relationship between her grandparents—the Romanian/Hungarian artist Kincső Bede’s long-term series The Art of Pista (2015–2023) opens up various perspectives on the capacities and responsibilities of photography. The work is presented as a site-specific installation that guides the viewer through different spaces and rooms, each representing a chapter in a layered story of intergenerational dynamics. Bede blurs the boundaries between staged images, figments of her imagination, and what might be considered a documented event. The installation consists not only of her photographs but also of surviving props and wooden sculptures created by her grandfather, Pista, as well as documents, letters, additional photographs, and a video piece. 

Bede also reflects on her position as a photographer, using the camera as a shield—a protective device in difficult situations that provided her both a vantage point and a necessary distance. The result is a tabloid-like, complex mapping of intertwining relationships and a nuanced reflection on vulnerability, the construction of private and collective memory, and photography as a powerful tool for multifaceted approaches to abusive histories.

Curator: Lívia Páldi

The exhibition Security / Borders critically examines the concept of security through the lens of technologies, featuring works created at the intersection of art and technology, politics and society. It exposes how security infrastructures and systems, while ostensibly designed for protection, actually function as instruments that reinforce authoritarian practices, creating pockets of authoritarianism embedded in seemingly democratic systems.

Biennale Warszava is an interdisciplinary cultural institution conducting artistic, research, educational and social activities. It operates at the intersection of various disciplines, combining the area of culture and art with the area of theory and research, as well as social activism.

Exhibiting artists: Bahaleen (PS), Border Emergency Collective (PL), Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevich (UK/BY), fantastic little splash (UA), Martyna Marciniak (PL), Oleksiy Radynski (UA), Firas Shekhadeh (PS), Tytus Szabelski-Różniak (PL), Filip Wesołowski (PL)

Curators: Bartosz Frąckowiak, Ewa Kozik, Paweł Wodziński / Biennale Warszawa Foundation (_BW_Lab)

Erzsébet Gyarmati and Eszter Salamon – MONUMENT 0.7: M/OTHERS (2019)

Eszter Salamon is one of the most well-known Hungarian-born choreographers and dancer-creators. Her works often examine female subjectivities, multi-generational relationships and different ways of being in human relationships. Her work M/OTHERS, which will be shown in Budapest for the first time, explores the mother-daughter relationship. The performance with Erzsébet Gyarmati opens up an intersubjective time through different forms of action, feeling and perception, creating a singular space with traces and states of coalescence. The intertwining of present and past, the reversal of roles, and the reflection in the other all depict the intricate web that lies beneath reality and questions the illusion of individualism.
Salamon uses choreography as an activating and organizing force between different media such as image, sound, music, text, bodily movement, and actions. Her works develop through different formats, aesthetics, methodologies, and poetics, encompassing a wide spectrum of modes of expression.

Curator: Lívia Páldi

The exhibition Security / Borders critically examines the concept of security through the lens of technologies, featuring works created at the intersection of art and technology, politics and society. It exposes how security infrastructures and systems, while ostensibly designed for protection, actually function as instruments that reinforce authoritarian practices, creating pockets of authoritarianism embedded in seemingly democratic systems.

Based on their previous cooperation, OFF-Biennale invited the team of Biennale Warszawa Foundation(_BW_Lab) to participate as guest-curators. Biennale Warszava is an interdisciplinary cultural institution conducting artistic, research, educational and social activities. It operates at the intersection of various disciplines, combining the area of culture and art with the area of theory and research, as well as social activism.

Exhibiting artists: Bahaleen (PS), Border Emergency Collective (PL), Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevich (UK/BY), fantastic little splash (UA), Martyna Marciniak (PL), Oleksiy Radynski (UA), Firas Shekhadeh (PS), Tytus Szabelski-Różniak (PL), Filip Wesołowski (PL)

Curators: Bartosz Frąckowiak, Ewa Kozik, Paweł Wodziński / Biennale Warszawa Foundation (_BW_Lab)

The exhibition, staged in multiple locations, examines how emerging and mid-career Hungarian women artists relate to the promise of the day after tomorrow inherited from previous generations. In the constantly reshaping battlefields, how do women respond, negotiate, and attempt to expand the narrow paths offered by patriarchy? 

The exhibit is divided and installed across two locations: a private home, rented for the exhibition, and a former pharmacy, now part of a museum. The two spaces hold significant meaning as this area of Budapest’s 8th district is connected to the social trauma of prostitution. While society has removed this taboo from the streets, it has never tried to discuss it in a broader context. It is crucial to consider how we initiate the resolution of the oppressive gestures against women in this geopolitical context, and what suggestions, juxtapositions, and overwritings occur. The exhibition’s two spaces create connections between inside and outside, private and public/social realms, individual experience and cultural representation. They establish contexts where female narrators appear, negotiating with patriarchy, resisting, dancing out, bending in, and displaying various strategies.

Exhibiting artists: Boglárka Dankó, Nóra Zsófia Demeter, Andrea Fajgerné Dudás, Andrea Gáldi Vinkó, Dorottya Szonja Koltay, Éva Magyarósi, Dóra Palatinus, Eszter Szabó, Klára Petra Szabó 

Curator: Kata Oltai

The Ernyey József Pharmaceutical History Library – part of the Semmelweis Medical History Museum – is open to visitors aged 18 and over.

A pioneering figure in feminist and queer art in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Anna Daučíková’s highly anticipated first solo exhibition in Hungary delves into her themes of (self-)education in feminist critique and gender politics, featuring a selection of her single-channel videos, photo and video performance works from the 1990s. It focuses on her exploration of the body as a “tool of intermediation” and her engagement with the sensualization of the visual. The exhibition also showcases more recent works that challenge boundaries, rules, and norms, reflecting Daučíková’s experience of bodily being and becoming, both as transgender and transsexual.

Lívia Páldi will give a curatorial guided tour at the opening.

Curator: Lívia Páldi