KristofLab: Still Life
War is a constant, recurring event in human history. Various excuses have always justified its inevitability and explained the immense loss and pain it causes. War can be sacred, it can be a duty, a retaliation, a means of strengthening alliances, defending nations, reclaiming women, fulfilling ideals… The excuse varies, the aim is usually the same: resources, power.

We usually come across the concept of war early on, as children we learn about the horrific experiences of our grandparents and parents, we learn the dates of the most important wars at school (we know the date, it is not important to remember the loss in numbers…), we play it with sticks, wooden weapons, sitting in front of the computer, we draw it, we imagine it, later we hear it happening somewhere in the world, but we never think that we could suffer it. War, if we are lucky, is just a distant myth that mobilises masses, gives strength, power, the ability to upset societies, to shake up systems; there is one aspect of it we encounter least: the loss of the individual. The history books make no mention of the pain of the families of the boys who died in the Trojan War; the Crusades are analysed in terms of civilians who were not killed. But what is war if not the personal experience of individuals in a world turned upside down? The closer in time a war is, the more information we have about the experiences of individuals, but the fewer who remember, the more the useless agony becomes a blank history.

But how can we remember something we have not experienced? How long is it important to us? Why canonise a war and what do we want to remember about it? Our living space is full of war memories, glorious statues of victorious might, street names and squares, while for the thousands of victims lost, there remains an eternal memorial – a grave for the dozens. It is impossible to represent the losses of the individual. Absence and silence are often the most powerful symbols of the inexpressible. It is no coincidence that the very first acts, commemorated with silence, were for those who died in war. Forced silence is unbearable, it breaks the daily routine, it breaks the constant action, the flow of life, just like war…
War is a lifeless life. It is still life, but it has been overturned, no longer governed by the norms and rules that used to govern it. Everything that is characteristic of life is broken and destroyed. War is an enforced silence whose destruction is unbearable.
The works on display in Still life/Csend Life are reflections, frozen lifeless images of war in all its aspects. The norm is broken by an unexpected objection. The bomb falls in the unbearable silence of war, the destruction that erupts from its force already an unbearable noise. Life becomes lifeless, the abnormal becomes the norm.

Curator: Lilla Boros, Museologist, Historian
Opening:
2024.04.25. 19:00
20.24.24.20. on the Turbina floor in the exhibition space.
Music: Dj fsz
25.04.2024-05.23
Monday-Saturday 16:00-24:00