AFTER LUNCH, 2026,  audio installation, revisits "Az Ebéd (In Memoriam of Batu Khan), organized in 1966 by Gábor Altorjay and Tamás Szentjóby,  widely regarded as the first happening in Hungary. Although it survives through silent film footage and photographs, no audio recordings have been preserved. This is particularly significant because participants later remembered sound as one of its most powerful features. “After Lunch” takes this absence as a starting point of reconstructing a speculative soundscape - based on audience members’ recollections, archival materials, publications and a 1968 police report - that explore the fragile space between memory, archival evidence, and imagination. By focusing on what has not survived or is invisible, “After Lunch” reflects on how cultural history is mediated through fragments, testimonies and institutional records, and how experimental and ephemeral art can be approached when some of their most vital elements do not exist anymore. The work also considers the relationship between artistic expression, surveillance and documentation, bringing the methods of observation used by state authorities during the Kádár regime into dialogue with contemporary AI tools (with the help of which the soundscape was created). This way, “After Lunch” reflects on how technologies of monitoring continue to shape the ways culture is perceived, classified and controlled today.

Audio available upon request.



The work is available for viewing at Artpool Art Research Center in Budapest,  (H-1061 Budapest, Liszt Ferenc tér 10, Hungary); http://www.artpool.hu/

Made possible thanks to Fiatal Képzőművészek Stúdiója Egyesület and International Visegrad Fund / VARP