Exhibition 'Field Work - Thank you, this part of the visit is over.'

'Field Work - Thank you, this part of the visit is over.'The exhibition showcases the work of students from KASK & Conservatory, Moholy-Nagy University of the Arts, and Partium Christian University. The growing demand for various forms of energy is a central feature of today's society and one of the greatest challenges we face, both globally and locally. In our daily lives, we often ignore the various aspects of energy, and we experience it mostly as either abundance or scarcity. The past decades have been characterized by disputes and crises over fossil fuels, nuclear energy and sustainable resources, fuelled by competing technologies. Hungary is no different.

The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design invited students from Belgium's KASK Ghent and Romania's Partium University to participate in a research project at Paks, where a new nuclear power plant is soon to be built next to its half-a-century old counterpart. The field trip focused on the broader political, social and economic context of energy. Attempting to photograph the unphotographable, students captured the invisible processes of energy production, extended the conversation about energy consumption, from the private sphere to the field of social discourse, confronting opinions articulated by different interests.

Exhibitors: Tamás Cseke, Simon Gerlinger, Enikő Dorogi, Andrea Hompot, Hermina Nagy, Vincent Kloevoets.
Instructors: Mathieu Asselin, Krisztina Erdei, Gábor Arion Kudász, Willem Vermoere.

Venue: Budapest, K11 LABOR
The exhibition is open: 2024.05.08 - 06.12.

Below some impressions of the exhibition and information on the works created by the students.

ENIKŐ DOROGI: LIMINAL I, 2023 Electric current has become the foundation of our everydays, connecting, transforming and controlling our lives. But what is it really? It’s the movement of a multitude of charged particles under the influence of an electric field. With it, we have access to information, without it, we miss out on opportunities. Dorogi photographed cables that run through railway stations, with their connections turning the straight lines into constellations of unique, weightless shapes. Setting the given field of images in motion, arranged side by side, under and above each other, the cables offer unreadable partitures like musical scores, until the accumulated layers render the original forms invisible by washing them together.

ANDREA HOMPOT: TRASH, 2024 Nuclear power plants produce radioactive particles during fission. The half-life of spent fuel can be tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, so it is important to be careful when storing it for long periods. The half-life of low and intermediate level radioactive waste is shorter than this, but it is just as difficult to grasp. Andrea Hompot collected non-nuclear waste that had been scattered around the power plant in Paks. Her assemblages form still lifes using a mix of organic and inorganic materials, including municipal garbage, objects from the nuclear power plant, memories and archival photos about Paks, the town and the plant.

HERMINA NAGY interviewed students at the Paks Energetics Technikum. The secondary school, which has been a breeding ground for future energy professionals since 1986. Nagy asked young people to imagine the quality and appearance of energy. Influenced by both subjective experience and accurate knowledge, the ideas reveal different layers of the concept of energy.

SIMON GERLINGER: YOUR TOUR ENDS HERE, 2023 Once you’ve watched the video showing the operation of the Radioactive Waste Storage Facility, you’ll see a message on the screens of the visitor center in Bátaapáti stating: This part of your visit is complete. Then it’s time to put on the appropriate protective clothing and go into the underground ditch where the low- and medium-level waste is stored in concrete sarcophagi. This is not something you get to see on a basic visit. The walk only lasts halfway through the tunnel, where you can touch the granite walls. This is the rock that prevents hazardous waste from getting into contact with the people living on the surface. It’s difficult for the average person to access the production and storage of nuclear energy, but well-crafted tour ceremonies try to explain the operation of the barbed-wire protected industrial facilities. The leaders of the nuclear power plant consider it important that interested parties are not kept in the dark. Gerlinger visited the sites of nuclear energy production in Hungary, including the visitor centers and the Atomic Energy Museum. His photos show the waste storage facility and certain details of the Paks cityscape. The pho[1]tographer, as a visitor, continued to choose from the sights selected for him.

TAMÁS CSEKE: THIS PLACE IS A MESSAGE, 2023 Tamás Cseke’s photo book looks at the future implications of nuclear energy production and the storage of radioactive waste from a human-scale perspective. The images - captured in different genres of photography - flow together in a free and easy sequence, creating a poetic atmosphere that invites the viewer to engage with the series in an active way. The dystopia of landscapes, photographs, diagrams, archival documents and portraits invites us to think for ourselves about the connections and associations. The divisive problem of radioactive waste, that can affect the lives of generations and even civilisations in the long term, is thus perceived in the constellation of past and present and future in Hungary, in a personal reading.

VINCENT KOEVOETS: DE KALOOT, 2023 Just by the village of Borssele on the banks of the Westerschelde, there’s a lovely coastal beach. Behind the 3.5- kilometre-wide stretch of coast is one of the three nuclear power plants in the Netherlands and COVRA, which is responsible for processing and storing the Netherlands’ nuclear waste, including high-uranium waste. The latter must be stored for approximately 240,000 years to ensure it doesn’t have any harmful effects on health. Just a short distance from the coast, fossils from the Miocene and Pliocene periods can be discovered, which are about 23 million years old. These, including snails and mammoth tusks, are stored at the Middelburg Museum. Koevoets’ work juxtaposes the waste produced by human industry with the living world of the Earth over millennia.

DOMONKOS VARGA: CHAOS AND ORDER, 2024 The series, which includes the image shown here, looks at the relationship between human activity and nature. Our modern world, with its reliance on technology and industry, basically exploits the environment. Our civlization simultaneously builds and destroys. We judge our human activity depending on our point of views and what we’re trying to achieve. The same examples of coexistence with nature thus sometimes represent chaos, sometimes order. This photograph was taken at a press conference in the turbine room of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant where the secondary circuit of energy production is housed. The secondary circuit is a system group that includes the feed water part of the steam generators, the main steam system, the high and low pressure elements of the turbine, the condenser and the feed water system. The nuclear reactor and the secondary circuit work together to produce one third of Hungary’s energy consumption on the bank of the Danube, the river used by fishermen for more than 40 years. Next to the picture letters, photos and newspaper articles published after the press conference show the complex bureaucracy and communication processes of the nuclear power plant.