Attila Hetesi

Clearly, there are people who become excited at the sight of violence. Full of undeclared desires and emotions that are of a truly inspiring, uplifting power. This violence becomes a part of our daily lives, with the television, the cinema, newspapers and the Internet bringing it to us in a physical proximity, rendering it an accustomed element of our lives. Even to the lives of those who most consistently repudiate it.

Of course, truly good things are sometimes borne of pain, just as violence is also saturated with it. There is no denying that we all have a need for pain, for violence. If not otherwise, then as the surrogate furnished by the media. The suffering hidden in brutality becomes thrilling. The lights radiating from the screen are deceptive, contrived, the elements of the scintillations of an illusionist complete with crystal ball. The media plays with us, the news and the cinema forcing the concept of shock upon us. Visual shock lies its way onto a pedestal, practically intimating that violence is a form of self-fulfilment.

On the other hand, it is a ridiculous cliché to suggest that the dumping of aggression by the television, newspapers, etc. is responsible for the wave of violence of our times. Since violence always has been, is and will be. It is merely the dimensions that differentiate between epochs and periods, and the extent to which we feel it close to us. And naturally it is not only the quotidian, but an organic part of culture that it represents.

By now, even the shock associated with violence has lost its once dazzling light. It has become routine, no longer eliciting real reactions; it has met the pervasive embrace of indifference and apathy. It is my intention to provoke this dulled interest, the viewer’s immunity that responds to the shock.

My works of the past few years evoke a world in which it is evident: one who fails, fails not because s/he has become a party to violence, but because s/he lives in the belief that there is nothing stronger than him/her. With the loss of this reality, s/he does not sense his/her own limits; s/he does not recognise that there is always a power that is mightier than him/her. In this unsubstantial world, violence appears simply and incidentally as when someone’s cell phone won’t work, or s/he misses the bus that s/he wanted to catch.

The world that appears in the images is the conceptual and visual world that inundates the television and the cinema, of the dozens upon dozens of films of inflated action, reproduced to the maximum extreme, of autotelic violence, merely for itself, low-budget, with the participation of third- and fourth-rate “stars”. The exhibited violence that is its basic subject is the simple reflection of this violence that is brought into close proximity and made tangible.

Violence comes in many varieties, naturally. One part of my pictures attempts a representation of primarily physical aggression. In my other works, the unlimited consummation above the partner, of the compulsions, emotions and volition straining between a man and a woman; the outward forms of the power that is present between the two individuals – materialise.

The sequences of stories that take place in the pictures is composed of pieces, like emphasised stills from the course of a film scene, like the frozen frames, moments, of video, underscoring the more striking elements from a fiction film.

The characters convey their impulsive emotions to the screen and consummate completely the illusion of violence. This dynamism and intensity is further enhanced by the protracted view, blurred by motion.

The given elements of the work involved are all predefined: the dimensions of each picture are proportional to that of the wide-screen of the cinema; some intensified colours refer to the accentuated colour-dominance of action films and videoclips – in following the accepted practice of sensationalism.

The light and shadows, as an important atmospheric element, likewise bear significance. From the viewpoint of the story, the character of the actors, the location and the time of recording are similarly determining. In the case of night-recordings, the atmospheric element simply intensifies, since in the films that serve as a model, it is also perpetually evening or night. In spite of the filmic visual approach, the lights that appear in such situations, the neon-washed view, provide the pictures with an unintentional painterly quality.

Because of the limited possibilities, the production process is a given; on the other hand, it is likewise the element of conception that is represented, since the basic material of the works – the images in slide form – are produced by myself, together with a crew, like on a film-shoot: actors, lighting technician, etc.

As a consequence of the filmic mode of viewing that constitutes the foundation of the work, the end-product is a colour, relatively large-scale, digital print.

 

All images on this website are copyright 1992-2017 Attila Hetesi and may not be reproduced without written permission of the artist.