From State Security to Security State: Performing Control and Claustrophobia in Hungarian Theatre

Abstract

This article examines how the exchanges of archival and artistic practices in Central European and, more precisely, in Hungarian theatre and performance can create performative sites calling attention to the continuities and recurring reflexes of pre- and post-1989 realities. The genre of re-performance allows performance artists to comment on their own experience with the communist regimes, as well as to enact the continuing political and aesthetic potentials of past performances. In 1986, a recently founded performance group, the Collective of Natural Disasters, premiered its piece Living Space in Budapest, considered to be an iconic production in the history of Hungarian dance theatre, and earning international success. The solo performer (Yvette Bozsik) was set in a small glass box, suggesting the claustrophobic atmosphere of the 1980s in the country. In 2012, the group re-interpreted the 1986 production with considerable critical changes under the title (In)Finity. The new solo performer (Rita Góbi) was locked in a similar glass box. However, the group refashioned the main question about freedom by offering a mediatized landscape on stage where the recurring experience of claustrophobia was seen through technical innovations forming new regimes and forms of surveillance. Kornélia Deres is a Humboldt Research Fellow in the Institute of Media Culture and Theatre at the University of Cologne. Between 2015 and 2018 she was an assistant professor at Károli University (Budapest), and since 2017 has been a lecturer at ELTE University in Budapest. She is co-editor of five books and the author of Hammer for Images (2016), as well as two volumes of poetry.