Heterotopia.exe

The third space exists as a site of possibility. It is a threshold where contradictions are not erased but embraced. These spaces, described by Michel Foucault as heterotopias, are worlds within worlds, alternate realities suspended in tension with the normative. They are other, real-yet-unreal, and following a specific set of rules, like bars, prisons, nightclubs, or this exhibition space right here.

The need for third spaces arises from the failures of traditional structures to accommodate the complexity of human existence. As public spaces shrink under privatization, and as digital platforms increasingly mediate and monitor our interactions, the creation of third spaces offers a counterpoint.

Heterotopia.exe unfolds as an activation and simulation of Foucault’s concept of “other spaces”, and opens it not as a static notion, but as an executable environment. In this exhibition, artworks are not only representations but portals, where reality is reprogrammed.

You will discover here installations taking their aesthetics from video games, coded landscapes populated by 3D-printed hybrid creatures hovering between biology and imagination, and uncanny beings made of glass and steel, half deep-sea, half interplanetary, suggesting lives evolving in environments we can barely imagine.

You will walk through fragments of reveries, otherworldly landscapes where colors and shapes obey unfamiliar laws, and distorted gardens. You will enter curated domestic interiors, dreamscapes colliding with visions of post-internet hells, beehives and other allegories for the infrastructures of control and care we navigate daily. Lastly, you will catch your reflection in mirrors; these paradoxical heterotopias offering presence and absence at once.

The exhibition space is its own world. It reflects our contemporary art practices, questions and opens the space for dialogue, and holds together universes that may otherwise seem incompatible. It also has its own temporality: suspending time for the short period the exhibition is on display, and crystallizing it in memories and through documentation.

Opening: Friday 28.11, 6-10 pm.

Performance by Eszter Dobos on Sunday 30.11, 3pm.

Info: Inner Pocket
Performance, 30’

The performance explores the topics of heterotopias and their connection to class and community through packing lists and the act of packing.

While the basic choreography of packing usually does not vary whether it is for a library visit or a club night, the lists of objects and the different institutions they are meant for change how the everyday, almost automatic movements are perceived.

Does the length of a list indicate stress or rather excitement? How does adding one extra item, like in the case of Hungarian hospitals where you are expected to bring your own cutlery, change our concept of one's locality, class, or their access to resources? Does the size of a bag relate to equipment or community?

The aim of the project is to look at lists as simple poems which challenge the notion of common and individual property, telling stories about class, security, or the dying idea of a welfare state.

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