Humanoteka
Dorottya Vékony
Humanoteka is a specific manifestation of sharing economy as well as a model thereof disguised as an art project. It is a service where the goal is to share knowledge accumulated through learning or experience. What if we (the person on loan) could pursue our favourite leisure activity while freely and democratically sharing our knowledge? A pleasant and informal atmosphere is created for the borrower, too, since in return for the knowledge and free time of the person on loan we may take them to their favourite café, walk their dog, cook something for them, or might as well celebrate the birth of a new, burgeoning intellectual bond by husking beans together. The point of the service is, therefore, to fill the void between acts of kindness and pay services with a personal, democratic and practical use of knowledge.Furthermore, the service may assist in getting familiar with disciplines, life stories and professions which are not included in our social network. The system is based on confidentiality and its unique and universal “unit of payment” is reaching mutual satisfaction. The service may be used for research, exchange of information, art projects and cooperation. The present catalogue of 2017 includes a selection of over 50 people.
Concept & Photo by Dorottya Vékony Graphics Design by Réka Neszmélyi
Dorottya Vékony is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Budapest, Hungary. Her main field of interest keeps revisiting the theme of the body, whether it is our own or others’, or a collective body consciousness. The body images appearing in her works are primary reflections of our relation to the world, the environment and ourselves, forming a map that carries our history, the traces of our age and our personal stories.
Her aim is to make the spectator observe and to be observed at the same time. While we watch others, we are being watched too. The desire of observing one another, of having insight into the lives of others posits a system of norms based on which we define ourselves compared to others. We want to confirm that we have similar problems as others, that we are better than or just as good as they are. In other words, that we only deviate from the average on an average scale.
Her works explore how we can describe our body in the most objective manner possible, to represent it without any intimacy whatsoever. Looking at these so-called anti-intimate states, the works examine all the subtle and complex relationships our physical extension forms with our environment, and how social expectations shape our appearance. Personal stories and critical observations regarding the body are represented along with abstract objects and intertwined sculptural bodies. Her fundamental medium is photography that she often combines with other disciplines, such as objects, photobooks or video.
Would you be so kind as to undress, would you be please attract to me
The series, “Would you be so kind as to undress, would you be please attract to me” was created about rather personal questions, in the different stages of self-inspection in a relationship. The pictures of the series condense those emotions into different scenes that evolve in all relationships. Movements with acrid humour, sometimes burning with desire, sometimes distant, that carry the possibility of separation, tension and insecurity. The series, forming for years, found its carrying medium in a photo zine. Pictures of a relationship. Intimate diary. The zine has been published in a book called How We See: Photobooks by Women at 10x10 Photobooks, New York (2018)
50 cm × 35 cm, 28 colour pages, ofset print on 150 g/m2 semi-matte coated paper, 300 copies, self-published
Men
The representation of the male nude figure still reveals taboos. It is not easy to get used to the changing principals of gaze; not just looking at, but being looked at. This principal is embedded in centuries old traditions of them being the one who cast their gaze and women being the one who looked at. I spent more then a decade in a male community, as the only woman who was intimately close to them. This gave me time to observe the similarities and differences of behaviour and intimacy compared to female communities. The issues I was focusing on were their physical closeness, their taboo less openness, and their natural curiosity. Through these subject areas I reinterpreted and created a male community. The participating man did not know each other or me; therefore they were forced to create a community in my “artificially” created environment through my system of rules they played. I created situations in the “model farm”, in which the expressions of love and aggression, also modes of shyness and the intimacy of being together could come to surface.
Fertility
The photo-based installation Fertility displays the symbolic possibilities of women relating to each-other and to a community. The imagery is fragmented and rugged, where the emphasis is not on the personality but the subjects’ spatial position and interrelation. The individual bodies and shapes are so integral, that it is difficult to know whether they serve a protective, a disjunctive or a temporary purpose.
Besides personal aspects, the topicality of the subject comes from recent public discussions about reproductive rights in Hungarian media and politics. Thus, I have examined the expectations regarding female roles and the female body, its options for action, its status and representation.
The other half of the project consists of glass plate photographs about birth, delivery and fertility. The scenes are reconstructions of contemporary rites; ready mades and performances immersed in folk- and tribe rituals but always believing in the healing power of temporary communities.
The scenes tackle the impact of the desire for reproduction and societal pressure on the female psyche and body. The project further questions the active options for action of the female body, and how it can be represented in a changed social order, achieved on its own right.