With the collaboration of local creative communities, educational programs, and at times world-famous guest artists, the Veszprém-Balaton 2023 European Capital of Culture event’s flagship regional arts program, the Kultháló, takes place at eleven locations, referred to as ‘bases’. The aim of the program is to make the Bakony-Balaton region visible to the general public and the local population as a hidden home front and second home of contemporary art.
At the invitation of the Veszprém-Balaton 2023 European Capital of Culture, eleven artistic communities in the villages of the Bakony-Balaton region have joined the Kultháló program. In these more remote villages of the region, they sought the cooperation of places and artists who invite us into the delicate worlds of contemporary art and show us the unifying power of art from an unusual proximity.
What is special about the Kultháló program is that it offers not only artistic events, but also ways to them, opportunities for training, shared learning and initiation, closely and personally connected to the concerts, exhibitions, theater performances, and, not least, to the artists who create them.
The connection is not only more intense than usual between the audience and the artist, but also between the local artists and the guest artist in the first place: getting to know each other’s artistic (and non-artistic) worlds, spending time and working together are encounters that contribute to the development of creative communities in the medium term.
In most cases, the bases realize multidisciplinary artistic processes and events, but there is always a specific genre or activity that triggers a joint reflection between the host and the invited, based on local specificities and involvements. As a result, the bases of the 2023 Kultháló program are best explored along four themes.
Classical Music Sanctuaries
Bakonybél and Gyulakeszi open up a realm of Hungarian musical culture that is seemingly reserved for the few and is typically accessible in the famous institutions of big cities. In August, the world-famous Munich Bach Chamber Choir will be the guest of the Szent Mauríciusz Choir in Bakonybél; at the Csigó Mill, guests can enjoy master classes with Ingrid Kertesi and Éva Csermák, explore the boundaries between music and architecture with Gábor Zoboki, and discover the frontiers of music and brain research with Tamás Freund. Joint listening sessions, lectures, and introductory courses will also prepare us to embrace music.
Theater: local, rural, on the road, and in the making
In Pécsely, Magyarpolány, and Hegyesd this is what the theater projects of Kultháló will be about: The exploration of the life and works of a Pécsely district doctor who wrote under the pseudonym of György Bodosi, led by the Forte Company; the traveling theater of Emőke Kiss-Végh and Tamás Ördög, based on their summer experiences in Hegyesd; and the lightning theater in Magyarpolány, led by Kitty Kéri and Bence Móczár. The performances draw their inspiration from the local collective memory and attract everything and everyone that is not theater.
Fine arts, up close
From night school to open university, from underground photography to digital culture, from action painting to collaborative sculpture, through a wide range of educational programs, the bases are committed to the cause of cultural education. The Éden Porta in Vöröstó is home to the artists’ colony and the associated open university of Imre Bukta and his friends; in Hegyesd, the artists surrounding Attila Ménesi develop models of participatory culture; the Babel Camp in Boglár follows the contemporary trail of the neo-avant-garde heritage; in Magyarpolány, an artists’ colony gathers around metal sculpture; in the Bánya of Salföld, Miklós Déri’s special photography project and Béla Raffay’s sculpture courses open up to us; in Gyulakeszi, the northern Italian Villa Biener Arte Contemporanea is the guest of Gábor Áron’s Open Studio Series. Visual art at the Kultháló bases is the art of seeing and learning, where you can meet contemporary forms and artists in a personal intimacy and with unusual intensity.
Modern Music Provinces
In Mindszentkálla, Zánka, Badacsonytördemic and Salföld, modern music initiation programs with artists from the fringe and underground genres teach self-expression and invite you into more subtle musical worlds. In the Káli-kapocs, blues concerts and workshops, an acoustic ethnographic village and the Neon Museum; in Zánka’s Kisbirtok, street art and improvisational music meet the stories of the villagers; Zoli Beck and the Zajzajzaj collective engage students from the local art school on the terrace of the Skizó in Tördemic; in Bánya, János Vázsonyi’s jazz series features superstar Erik Truffaz.
At the 11 Kultháló bases, artist friends, actors and painters, musicians and collectors, locals and masters will come together to offer an adventurous journey from charcoal drawings to classical music, from the creative industry to jazz, from poetry to the underground, offering the opportunity to connect, to wonder and to experience something different: for anyone and everyone.
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