From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy) - part 3.: Chasm Records

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  From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy) III. | 2016

The third part of the trilogy, a museum-style display of a fictitious archeological find is entitled 'Chasm Records'. ◼︎ From the introductory text: "The records presented here have been found in the Pilis Mountains (Northern Hungary, 756 m), considered a sacred site by non-academic Hungarian historiographers and ‘sacral geographers’ for its supposed symbolic role in preserving the archeological traces of several pseudohistorical narratives on Hungarian national genealogy. The speculative, mystical theories and interpretations associated with the site are based on national mythologies concocted from the traditions of prehistorical paganism and syncretic folk Christianity in an attempt to create an unambiguous narrative of the Hungarian ethnogenesis." ◼︎ In its exhibited form the Chasm Records it is organized through the logic of museum, presenting the items of a fictitious archeological find. Through the references of the historical objects and relics dating from the interwar period of Hungary the political formation of the nation is revealed, a process, which is being completed in the present days within the Hungarian society and politics. ◼︎ The narrative of the installation identifies the two main constitutive elements of the national becoming: the political religion as a tool, and the exclusion from the collective memory as an objective. ◼︎ The collection consists of 70 genuine (partly manipulated) objects, 46 A3 printed documents of anthropology of historical and media images and 11 video documents contextualizing the items. Each object is accompanied by a description written in the manner of a historical museum narrative, analyzing the interference and causality of the complex events, while they reveal a personalized narrative story between two real characters: Tamás, a young Hungarian lad of the time, and Sárika, a Jewish girl he is enloved with. ◼︎ The whole material is organized in 12 chapters (Containers / Preamble / Justice, Religion / Creed, Borders / Worship, Church / Memory, Exclusion / Faith, Education / Sport, Fight / Money, Economics / Rituals, Visions / Relics / Ideologies)