13’ 43’’
Language: English, Hungarian, Yiddish
Subtitles: English, Yiddish

The video work, On the ground, the possibilities, is a continuation of an earlier project “How I realized/How I found out,” which was first exhibited in Budapest in the summer of 2021. “How I realized/How I found out” deals with the commonalities and differences in concealing, rejecting, or embracing Jewish and Roma identity by members of the Third Generation after the Shoah/Pharrajimos.

After viewing this project, the organizers of the Yiddishland Pavilion invited me to participate in this hybrid online-offline project connected to the 59th Venice Biennale. They commissioned me to create a new video work, building upon “How I realized/How I found out.” While researching my project, I discovered that, in the 1930s, some Roma intellectuals drew inspiration from contemporary Zionist dreams of a Jewish state and envisioned a future, independent Roma homeland of their own. This imagined homeland frames the video and provides a springboard for rhizomatic reflections on the roots and routes of Roma in Hungary, with a focus on poetry, painting, and song. This video work uses my own artworks and research diary, along with television interviews and film clips that I recorded from the computer screen with a digital camera and then incorporated into a video collage as visual quotations.