Roland Farkas' action installation ’We’ will be on view in the courtyard of the Slovak National Gallery on August 19, 2023, from 3:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. The performance is the author's interpretation of the theme of Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel of the same name from 1921. For more information please visit the website of the Slovak National Gallery or Facebook:
"The plot of the book, published even before the famous novels of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, takes place in a dystopian future. The totalitarian system depicted in the novel operates based on mathematical logic, so the members of society are anonymous and distinguished only by numbers. In such a world, signs of individuality, fantasy, and human feelings are considered manifestations of disease. Farkas updates the theme of the novel with the parallels of contemporary society. He compares the glass-walled spaces imagined by Zamyatin to social networking sites, which are now inseparable from life, especially for young people. The revolutionary potential of the young generation already appears in Zamyatin's novel - "we" are actually "them", the community of rebels.
The performers freely improvise scenes according to Roland Farkas's script, visually based on Zamyatin's book We (crossed face / lips cut with a knife and blood dripping / temporary death / someone constantly reads the same line of newspaper / hands raised against bullets / different colors of laughter, etc.) During the event, the trendily dressed and painted performers use smartphones placed on stands and sometimes broadcast short content with the hashtag #my_we live on Instagram or Tiktok. The audience can participate in the situations by acting in some scenes or watching the performers from a distance or up close, for example, sitting right next to them.
Roland Farkas (b. 1975, Komárno) studied at the University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra, at the University of Pécs and obtained his doctorate at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, where he also works as a teacher. He completed many residencies around the world and received several prestigious awards and scholarships. He deals with intermedia and action art. Thematically, he focuses on institutional and social criticism.
Curator: Lucia Gregorová Stach
Performers: Nina Gazda, Anička Labat, Michael Luzsicza, Natalia Marcineková, Celestína Minichová, Andrea Rošková, Lucia Večerná"