Tamás Kaszás

Escapist Stories

Archive

The main pieces of the exhibition are digital slide shows edited from photos of the artist’s own archive. This way a fictional narrative is built from the fragments of reality. Each slide is completed with a text line which tells the protagonist’s story with his thoughts and motivations coming into his mind. The images follow a former activist escaping from urban environment towards nature in hope of creating a more autonomous life. The environment of this inner emigration is not the untouched paradise far away but the natural peripheral areas around European urban centres. The work is playing with the romantic aspects of the situation meanwhile – from a very realistic point of view – looking for the moments when theory turns to practice. How is it possible or is it possible at all to rebuild the basic human wisdom which is needed for self-subsistence, but almost entirely lost as folk science from art, philosophy and other intellectual knowledge?

photography by Miklós Sulyok