The Danube Exodus
dal 9/2/2006 al 18/3/2006
Segnalato da
9/2/2006
The Danube Exodus
Ludwig Museum, Budapest
An interactive installation. Peter Forgacs’s work is devoted to the period immediately preceding the Shoah. The film is projected onto five screens placed along the wall in the central space of the installation, with music composed by Tibor Szemzo. The walls along the way to the projection room bear chronologies, photos and prints, which provide an introduction to the historical context.
The Danube Exodus
The Rippling Currents of the River. An interactive installation by Peter Forgacs and the Labyrinth Project
The Danube Exodus is a one-hour documentary Peter Forgacs made in
1997. It served as a basis of the interactive installation he created between
2000-2002 while a resident scholar at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. After the
Californian museum, he presented the installation at ZKM (Germany), CCCB
(Barcelona), Kiasma (Helsinki) and the Judah Magnes Museum (Berkeley). Ludwig
Museum, Budapest, is the first Hungarian institution to show the work, which in the
summer will travel to the Donaufest, Ulm, and then on to Brussels.
Forgacs’s work is devoted to the period immediately preceding the Shoah.
Expanding over a territory that includes Central and Southern Europe, the river
Danube becomes the link between two stories that evoke, with spectacular vision and
historical accuracy, the tragic experience of the peoples of the Danube valley in
1939-40.
The Danube Exodus immerses the viewer in three historical narratives. One story
tells of Eastern European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in 1939, trying to reach a
ship on the Black Sea that will carry them to safety in Palestine. The second story,
set in 1940 following the Soviet re-annexation of Bessarabia, tells of
emigre German farmers abandoning their adopted homeland to return to
the “safety" of the Third Reich but being relocated to occupied Poland. Both groups,
each heading in the other direction, were transported along the Danube River by
Captain Nandor Andrasovits (1894-1958), an amateur filmmaker, who
documented these voyages. The third story focuses on the captain and on the river,
whose rippling currents have interwoven many cultures and periods throughout Central
Europe’s stormy history.
In his award-winning 60-minute film, Forgacs uses Andrasovits’s
original 8-millimeter film footage, which he obtained from the captain’s widow. The
49-minute material on the Jews’ voyage was donated to him by historian-archivist
Janos Varga.
The film is projected onto five screens placed along the longer wall in the central
space of the installation, with music composed by Tibor Szemzo. On a touch-screen
monitor in the center of the room, viewers can choose from 18 episodes of the full
composition, each 4-5 minutes in length. Two smaller rooms are devoted to
remembrance, one each for the memories of the Jews and the Germans, where viewers
can access the personal stories via computers. Further touch-screens enable the
visitor to wander through journals, interviews and memoirs from the passengers of
the Queen Elizabeth.
The walls along the way to the projection room bear chronologies, photos and prints,
which provide an introduction to the story and the historical context. A special
role is given to details from the massive 18th-century encyclopaedia of Count
Marsigli, devoted to the Danube. There is also a website available of The Danube
Exodus, courtesy of C3: Center for Culture and Communication, Budapest, where
visitors can access all the research material used for the installation.
http://www.danube-exodus.hu
Ludwig Muzeum - Museum of Contemporary Art
9th Komor Marcell u. 1 (Palace of Arts) - Budapest
Opening hours: Monday Closed, Tuesday-Sunday 10-20