Katalin Tesch

SELECTED WORKS

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teschkata is moving to Kleio!

Old and new works, archives, and details on upcoming shows are now available at teschkata.kleio.com.

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Oxymoron (2023) Light installation (6 pre-loved, prepared overhead beamers, steel structure, light-absorbent screening surface) In collaboration with Agnus Szekeres

Oxymoron is a sculptural installation constructed from old overhead projectors, in which the projectors manifest as unheard, ignored identities. Drawing on the principle of additive colour theory, playing with the interrelationship of light, colour and perception, our 6 overhead projectors try to communicate a clear message in consensus with each other in the form of pure, white light, but their 'voices' are swallowed up by the dark void. While the projectors mix different colors on the surface coated with Black 3.0, renowned for its exceptional light-absorbing capabilities, the projected white light, theoretically resulting from the additive mixture, paradoxically remains invisible.

“In the central element that unexpectedly gains topicality – in the overhead projectors – there is also the ideal of rationality from a bygone modernity, the impossibility of intelligence transfer as opposed to knowledge transfer, the crisis of parallel but mutually annihilating truths, as well as the traumatic memories of the barely functioning Hungarian public education that span generations.” – Endre Cserna

The realization of the project has been fully supported by Light Art Museum, Budapest.

2023 Superluminal, Light Art Museum, Budapest, group exhibition Curated by: Barnabás Bencsik, Borbála Szalai, with curator assistant Dalma Kovács 

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Kata Lepsia: The diary (2020/21) Collaborative project with writer Virág Katalin Balogh

after the equinox my space but not my time is how i thought of spring now i know it’s neither one nor the other 2020/10/25

Kata Lepsia is a single, middle-aged woman from Central Europe, who is living in the epoch of crises and catastrophes that has inauspiciously been named after the human race itself. The most recent of these crises has turned her life completely on its head, sentencing her to interminable house arrest. What else is there to do at a time like this apart from observe what’s happening around us and within us?

Kata Lepsia is the fictitious alter ego of two artists, and the material presented here, in the form of Kata Lepsia’s diary, is the outcome of a year of shared reflections and creativity — a kind of productive ping-pong. Geographically, Virág Katalin Balogh and Katalin Tesch live at a distance from one another, which significantly influenced the way in which the project developed. Writer Virág Katalin Balogh recorded Kata Lepsia’s thoughts, feelings, dreams and anxieties in the form of diary entries, which she occasionally sent to Katalin Tesch, who responded to the words with spontaneous, journal-like photographs. A selection of this material, focusing on autumn and winter 2020/21, is published here.

At a certain moment, Kata Lepsia took on a life of her own. The shaping of her personality is inextricably bound up with her surroundings — and the surroundings of her creators. At the end of 2019, she embarked on life amid the anxieties caused by global warming, but neither of her creators could have foreseen the events of 2020 and the new kinds of distress they would entail. Her inner world meets and merges with external reality, and because of her isolation, this world hovers permanently on the border between the rational and the irrational. One of the central elements of her internal conflict is how to survive in such a way that she does as little damage to the environment as possible. How can she continue taking pleasure in everyday life without polluting yet more rivers, without causing suffering to yet more creatures, and without spreading a dangerous virus? Her permanent efforts to achieve a balance between self-control and self-care will be familiar to us all in today’s chaotic world.

The texts were translated from Hungarian to English by Rachel Hideg.

2021 Good Intentions: online group show @ UN/CUBE Gallery

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Territory (2018) Participatory, single-channel video work with sound, 10′25″  Collaborative project with Heini Nieminen

For thousands of years, humans have been keeping animals for different purposes, and their relationship is exciting and controversial at the same time. We find the question the most fascinating when it comes to the delicate line between human-animal correspondences. Charles Darwin thought the mental capacities of animals and people differed only in degree, not kind. However, Darwin’s attitude to animals ran contrary to a long tradition in European thought, which held that animals had no minds at all. In contrast, the current consensus is that no animals have all the attributes of human minds; but almost all the attributes of human minds are found in some animal or other.

To further explore the theme, we have been collecting personal stories from pet owners. The stories are essentially the owners’ recollections of a particular event that are not necessarily connected to their pets, however, we asked them not to reveal the narrators’ identities. By that, we mean to create a strong comparison between the pet and its owner. While the stories are told as a voice narration, the video only shows the pets in their ‘natural,’ cohabited territory: The shared habitat. Although we don’t show people directly, traces of their existence are present by personal belongings, tools, and artefacts. By doing so, our hope is to highlight the ways of animals’ adaptation to the human-shaped environment, and to explore how we, humans, can’t help but humanize our animal companions.

Special thanks to our storytellers and their pets:

Tanja & Uuzo Sanna & Albert Paulina & Remu Otto & Mittari Veera

2019 Film Festival ‘film as idea, film as film, film as art,’ Studio Teatrgaleria, Warsaw, Poland 2019 2B Gallery, Budapest, Hungary 2018 City Animals - Animal Cities, Kotkan Valokuvakeskus, Finland

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FACTS. (2018) Mixed media installation (carbon film on paper, plastic sheets, tapes, magnets)

As part of the project City Animals - Animal Cities, FACTS. deals with the abundant theme from a slightly different angle, compared to the previous pieces. The main characters of FACTS. are seemingly non-human animals, but this time, they are placed in the larger context of human reasoning and beliefs.

In my current practice I investigate how information technology and social media might distort our interpretation of the surrounding world. In the contemporary, ‘post-truth’ climate, ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ work their ways into our minds and reasoning – just as their ancient predecessors, the lore did, – only the traditional channels of passing information has changed to some degree. Inspired by the 1908 book about ancient lore, written by the Hungarian doctor and sportsman Zoltan Dalmady, I collected the most grotesque stories about animals that used to be common sense, even just a hundred years ago. Struggling with their comprehension, I started to fabricate fake evidence to support those stories. However, instead of making the documentation the usual way, I was searching for a ‘post-photography’ and ‘post-photoshop’ technique to create a more trusted, analogue way of documentation. Therefore FACTS. became a series of handmade prints, made with carbon film, on paper.

Can we find, or rediscover, a completely analogue substitute for representation and evidence, and are we still interested in an objective truth? But more importantly: What happens to an unfaithful stork lady when the stork-court finds her guilty?

2019 City Animals - Animal Cities, 2B Gallery, Budapest, Hungary 2018 City Animals - Animal Cities, Kotkan Valokuvakeskus, Finland

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Neighbours (2016 – ongoing) Photo series and installation (8 photographs behind clear glass frames, rods, lace curtains)

Neighbours is a collection of photographs and a part of the City Animals – Animal Cities project. It started with surveillance. At the time when I moved to New York City, I was reading about how recent experiments had revealed that bird individuals among pigeons and magpies were able to learn to recognize human individual features. Based on that information, I have started to monitor my most curious neighbours, the pigeons, coming to and living on our fire escape. After a couple of days, the previously nervous pigeons didn’t even move a feather when I was approaching the window. After a while I got confused, who actually was under surveillance, by whom. Yes, pigeons will remember you. 

They remind me on myself, the way I try to register cultural differences each time I move to a new land. City birds have to adopt novel foods, deal with unfamiliar enemies, communicate in noisy environments and cope with pollution – all these could be familiar for a relocating human as well, however, on a different level. I have relocated five times since I started this collection. Accordingly, the scenery might have changed a couple of times, so did the birds themselves, but the strategies of learning about each other are strikingly the same, everywhere.

2019 City Animals - Animal Cities, 2B Gallery, Budapest, Hungary 2018 City Animals - Animal Cities, Kotkan Valokuvakeskus, Finland

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City Birds (2016-21) Participatory audio installation for 6-channels (6 wooden bird houses, 6 mini speakers)

City Birds focuses on the challenges of adaptation to a new environment. Every time we see a fox or a racoon searching for dinner in our neighbourhood, or hear the news about wandering bears or wild boars in the city, we can notice that our human habitat and territories sometimes overlap with the animal kingdom. Wild animals live around and amongst us, sometimes even in greater numbers than in their natural habitat. Among others, many birds come to the cities to find better chances of survival. Although one of their greatest challenges is communication: The noise pollution of the urban environment makes city birds to alter their strategies.

While moving to, and living in a strange, new place, humans need to find the right procedures of survival by monitoring their environment, trying to understand the novelties and adapt to them, in order to find a new home. Communication is crucial in that process and city birds are real professionals in that. For this audio work, I invited expat friends and acquaintances, to try and imitate the sound of specific city birds. Pigeons, blackbirds, house finches, and all other kinds of birds use several different ways to adapt to the strange and noisy environment, just like humans. However the patterns of those strategies seem to be universal.

- Here you can find an excerpt of the work -

Participating friends:

Acrocephalus arundinaceus - Varez (Hungarian, lives in Sacramento, California) Asio otus - Mariann (Hungarian, lives in West Bay, Cayman Islands) Columba palumbus - Andras (Hungarian, lives in London, UK) Corvus monedula - Endre (Hungarian, lives in Vienna, Austria) Crex crex - David (Hungarian, lives in Groningen, Holland) Cuculus canorus - Attila (Hungarian, lives in Sacramento, California) Falco tinnunculus - Hanae (Japanese, lives in Berlin, Germany) Garrulus glandarius - Flora (Hungarian, lives in London, UK) Phylloscopus collybita - Methan (Hungarian, lives in London, UK) Strix aluco - Anna (Hungarian, lives in Tel - Aviv, Israel) Tyto alba - Eszter (Hungarian, lives in London, UK) Upupa epops - Reka (Hungarian, lives in New York, US) Vanellus vanellus - Heni (Hungarian, lives in Budapest, Hungary)

Special thanks to Heini Nieminen and  Zsófi Sztranyák.

2021 Intimate landscape: group show @ Galerie Go Green Art, Erlenbach, Switzerland 2019 Állatok városa: cooperation with Heini Nieminen @ 2B Gallery Budapest, Hungary 2018 City Animals - Animal Cities: cooperation with Heini Nieminen @ Kotkan Valokuvakeskus, Finland 2016 City Animals - Animal Cities: cooperation with Heini Nieminen @ Galleria Aarni, Espoo, Finland

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Theremin (2015)  Interactive sound installation for 4-channels Irokéz Gallery, Szombathely, Hungary In collaboration with Réka Harsányi and Zsófia Sztranyák

Theremin is a sound installation for one to four players, simultaneously. Four pressure plate switches are placed in a circle, and are connected to a computer, via an Arduino. The switches react on the pressure of our steps: Every time someone stands up on any of them, a female voice starts to play. The pitches she ‘sings’ in loop, are tones of a certain Arabic musical sequence, the Kurd tetrachord. Depending on how many people and for how long play at a time, an endlessly transforming, eternal chanting is created.

Non-verbal communication is a crucial part of social relations in the Arabic culture. Strict rules define most of the everyday actions, for instance singing is not allowed for everyone at anytime in public. Our project lets us ‘sing’ without opening our mouths, by only stepping on a rug and looking at the other player, in front of us.

The installation was created for the OFF Biennale – the first politically independent art festival in Hungary.

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Arched Skies (2013)  Site-specific, single-channel video installation St. Anna Chapel, Nečtiny, Czech Republic

Arched Skies was born during the AiR program in the small village of Nečtiny. It was inspired by and realized within the walls of the nearby, newly renovated baroque chapel, which has a beautiful, puritan inner area. To create a link between the building’s past and the contemporary environment, I projected a video onto the ceiling of the transept, in the manner of illusional baroque ceiling paintings. The fake quadrature shows the sky as we see it today, however the pace of the video and the whole composition evokes the impression of a fresco.

The realization of the project was supported by 2015 Pilsen, European Capital of Culture.

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A Reverse Gaze (2013)  Site-specific, single-channel video installation BBC screen at City Hall, Belfast, Northern Ireland 

For my residency project at Digital Arts Studios in Belfast I have made a short, experimental video to be installed in a busy shopping environment. In this work, I concentrate on the way we perceive and develop the idea of beauty through certain visual rules, just like perspective, and how those rules could eventually shape our collective standards. The structure and certain elements of the video are based on the contemporary trend of installing large LCD screens in shops – mostly showing attractive women or mannequins on the catwalk. The virtual, animated model of my video is walking and posing just like real women in those advertisements and broadcasts. However, she is placed in a true reversed perspective environment, which has a long background in the history of art, since pre-Renaissance iconography. Through this work, we have the opportunity to perceive and reflect on the aesthetics of the body in a completely strange, time- based, inverted system.

'A Reverse Gaze' by Katalin Tesch, Digital Arts Studios' International Artist in Residence for February and March, 2013 from Digital Arts Studios on Vimeo.

Since at the time of the development of this project there was no commercial 3D software on the market with the possibility of perspective inversion, for creating the video I had to use three different softwares: One for sculpting and animating the character, one for placing the object into the actual true reversed perspective scene, and one for editing and post-production. The most problematic part was, of course, to create the perspective inverted look - for this I used the camera-hacked version of Art of Illusion – big thanks to JMS.

2014 Belfast Film Festival, Beanbag Cinema Belfast, Northern Ireland

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A Casa/Homeward (2012)  Site-specific public art installation Invorio, Italy

After a few-minutes walk in the dark forest, the wanderer notices the comforting warm lights of a house. He thinks he finally arrived, but surprisingly, what he sees is only a deceit on his perception; there is no real house, there are not even real windows standing at that place. Inspired by the dramatic historical events of Alte Vergante, I installed 10 fake windows (made of wood, plastic, and fluorescent paint) in front of the sometime headquarters of the World War II’s local resistance. The fluorescent squares of different sizes are scattered in space so that they resemble coherent windows of a real house only from one viewpoint. Therefore, as the visitor approaches the cascina, their understanding of the space gradually untangles the constellation, and they eventually feel even more lost than before. There are no more signs of a safe place, only the dark woods around.

Upon my research on the historical remains of the Italian Alps, I got interested in the personal tragedies, as well as in the general idea of attacking and defending, exploring and hiding, watching and being under surveillance. The stones of this historically significant building remain hidden in these woods, with its past being unknown even to most of the locals. In the hope of changing this, an organized, one-night event became an important element of the project: A collective walk in the summer night, from the foot to the top of the mountain, where the cascina once stood.

The project has been realized during the AKM0 residency at Invorio, Italy.

2012 Arte a KM Zero, Galleria Eventinove, Borgomanero, Italy, group exhibition

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Enlightened (2011)  Video installation DE Nederlandsche CACAOFABRIEK, Helmond, Holland

In this project I mix reality and imagination in a subtle, confusing way: I show the invisible layers of the environment by evoking Plato's Cave and the idea of illusions. The ‘heart’ of the installation is the beamer, which both projects shadows onto the windows and, just like an artificial ‘fire,’ enlightens the whole hall at the same time. This way, visitors can become part of the projected image, since their shadows are no different from those in the movie, from the outside. By using the large windows as canvas, the interior and public space seamlessly blend together, creating a unified area.

Beside subverting visitors’ expectations, I was primarily interested in the idea of creating and interactive situation without being too explicit about it. Not surprisingly, children instantly comprehend the scene and start to play with the shadows instinctively, while grownups usually have preconceptions on how to behave in a white cube situation. Through this project, I am challenging our traditional understanding and expectations of art spaces. Should they be so strictly separated from our everyday surroundings?

The installation was made originally for De Nederlandsche Cacaofabriek in Helmond. The video is based upon the performance of Leonie Kuipers in the site, during the vernissage, in November, 2011.

2012 CACHE-CACHE, Design Terminal, Budapest, Hungary - Curated by Noémi Szabó & Zsolt Mészáros, Kogart Gallery

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-384 THz (2010)  Experimental 3D animation, 2'30"

In a world without the lights we are accustomed to, there would be no phenomena associated with them, such as shadows, colors, reflections, or refractions, which typically aid in our orientation within our environment.  Without lights, even those with good senses are somewhat blinded, making human eyes seem useless.

In -384THz (which refers to the lowest limit of electromagnetic waves human eyes are able to perceive) I rebuilt a monochrome world, and simulated a dark, smoky ‘anti-light’ to expose how human perception reacts on reversed materials, which means, in this case, the ‘opposite’ of lights. The result is very similar to ultrasound and other electromagnetic wave-based imagery: We can exclusively perceive the depth of the environment and only at the spots where the waves surround the objects. 

I have been investigating the optical phenomena that characterize our world since 2007 by simulating the ‘opposites’ of some well-known illusions. This video is the newest piece of the series. 

2013 Lumen Prize Exhibition, New York Institute of Technology’s Gallery 61, NYC, USA 2012 In Out Festival, Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdańsk, Poland: Winner of the 2nd prize  2011 Simultan Festival, Timișoara, Romania 2011 Pixelstorm Award, Dock18, Zürich, Switzerland 2011 Mozgásban/In Movement, opening group exhibition at Spiritusz Gallery, Budapest  2010 Budapest Art Fair, booth of Spiritusz Gallery, Kunsthalle, Budapest

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Re-Habitation (2009)   Participatory, site-specific, mixed-media installation  Hegyhátszentmárton, Hungary In collaboration with Ildikó Szabó

The little village of Hegyhátszentmárton is located at the west border of Hungary. In the past few decades, as a result of urbanization, millions have been migrated to the more developed area of the country. The less than 60, mainly elderly inhabitants of Hegyhátszentmárton have lost many of beloved people, either as a consequence of depopulation or migration. For ten days from the 31th of October 2009, missing family members ‘repopulated’ the only street of the village.

While engaging with the community, we had the privilege to learn about some personal and intimate memories this time. Many old, carefully kept photographs were handed to us, which became the inspiration and core of this project. At the end, we carefully selected fifty of those portraits that we printed on custom-made, black balloons. At the community event, the representation of each former inhabitants floated at head-height, placed around their respective, old homes but not fixed in place, so that the living could move them as they wished.

 The realization of the project has been supported by the Hungarian Institute of Culture and Art. 

2009 Re-Habilitáció, Inda Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, solo exhibition

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Street Pop-Up (2008)  Participatory, site-specific public art installation Magdolna-district, Budapest, Hungary In collaboration with Ildikó Szabó 

The so-called Magdolna-district of Budapest is probably the largest area in the city where the socio-economic backwardness, the dilapidated environment, and the concentration of underprivileged families can be precisely demonstrated. As a result of continuous deterioration, the social indicators have been pointing downwards for years, so the district slowly dropped behind the other parts of the city.

Walking by the neglected streets of the area, visitors could notice an unusual phenomenon: Several thrown-away computer parts scattered around the trash everywhere. Of course, this unexpected experience had caught our eyes too, and it prompted us to launch a project that uses a reimagined computer language to engage with the community. Despite its initial appearance of being cold and impersonal, this form of communication actually shared some common traits with the way locals interacted with each other.

After a few months of research and community engagement, we painted fifteen tags at specific spots in the streets of the Magdolna-district. The phrasing of these tags was inspired by Windows error messages, however, they highlight the actual problems faced by the locals. Our hope was to motivate the community to take initiative and address these issues. Each tag poses a question, giving the community a chance to make a decision, and potentially spark real change.

The realization of the project has been supported by the Hungarian Young Greens, the Nap Klub Foundation, and IMPEX – contemporary art provider. 

2008 Utca 2008, Gödör Klub, Budapest, group exhibition

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Moon's Journey (2007)  Experimental video and panoramic video installation for 10-channels

The perception of the known, surrounding universe has its own rules. We live with these rules to orientate ourselves in the world around. What happens if we simulate an other kind of perception? Can the experience of motion parallax be inverted through an artistic simulation? In this video, I attempt to rethink the rules of moving by completely reversing the order of ‘layers’ of an ordinary landscape. The result is an unusual, dreamy experience, in which it seems like our role in motion could be exchangeable with the landscape around us. In such a case, we find ourselves in the viewpoint of the Moon, which in the ordinary way of perception is standing in one point relative to the traveller.

2013 roBOt Festival, Palazzo Re Enzo, Bologna, Italy 2009 Crosstalk Video Art Festival Budapest, Gödör Club, Hungary AllArtNow 1st International Video Art Festival, Damascus, Syria 2008 Simultan Video And Media Arts Festival, Timisoara, Romania 2007 Festival der Künste, Zürich, Switzerland