The Illusion of the Republic – Opening Event
Opening Event of the Exhibition “The Illusion of the Republic”
It was 100 years ago this year, on November 16, 1918, that a republic was proclaimed for the first time in Hungary. To mark the anniversary, Blinken OSA is organizing an exhibition entitled “The Illusion of the Republic”. The exhibition, in the form of a video installation, presents the rootlessness and fall of the three Hungarian republics of 1918, 1946 and 1989–90. It seeks to answer why the republican idea is so weak and vulnerable in Hungarian political thought and how this leads to the rebirth of authoritarian regimes.
A common feature of the history of Hungarian republics is absence. Therefore, viewing the exhibition requires the active participation of the visitor: in the exhibition space, almost nothing will be visible on the walls. On the 6 monitors, the video installations—images, films, documents—will only appear when the visitor starts them. The audiovisual documents will be silent, and the texts related to each station will be interpreted by Eszter Csákányi.
Opening remarks by László Majtényi (President, Eötvös Károly Institute of Public Policy).
The program is in Hungarian.
The video recording of this event is available on Blinken OSA's YouTube Channel.