Unhere as Unofficial, and as official, Unwork in Budapest
Unhere at OFF-Biennale Budapest as Unofficial Unwork, and in (not) falling in line exhibition at Artus Budapest as official work. In the same exhibition was also Postspectacle Shelter, next article would be about it.
Unhere, notes from inside, photos and videos:
“I behave erratically, change places, postures, my body doesn't know where to be, how to be and why. My confusion seems to spread also to my keen observer here on the corridor. It's comforting that the train knows where to go. I hope life too, despite my confusion, knows where to take me. This feels like an awkward cliché, and I realize that despite being Unhere in my body, in my mind I'm too coherent and predictable. Immediately after writing that, my eyes, and my entire body unfocused. For quite a while I was suspended in mental and affective fog. I couldn't write, the screen was blurry, I was looking through and around it. Something extra, strange, entered my body through my left hand that was resting on the empty seat next to me. But now I'm here.” (2025 May 16, train Prague - Budapest)
“Being here in the fog, just above the clouds, it really feels nowhere, unhere. My hands are prolonging the clouds, extending the fog towards me, around me, inside me. The hands’ strange movements create an unhere fog in front of me and in me, a cloud of unknowing. The sensation is of untiming and unspacing – unknowing time, space and myself – experiential fog. Despite the focus on strangers and alienation, I didn't really experience much strangeness or unknowing at the biennale. Yet I managed to feel alienated, in the sense that I felt that my practice and work didn't fit in these kinds of slick, expensive displays. I also felt that spending days in those environments I started to think how I could adapt my work and myself to fit into those implicit frames, conventions and expectations. But, although I don't really know where I am, I can say that the Biennale is left behind, under these clouds. I return to my cloud of unknowing that is somehow activated by auto-hypnotic movements of my hands. It’s a bit more difficult to maintain it while writing. I will stop and immerse more into the vague fog.” (2024 April 20, flight Venice - Bucharest)
“I paused here, looking at my shopping basket and the shelves, my gaze got wider, time dilated. The employees were watching me intently and I had to go. Now I'm next to the prepared foods section, frozen again in this confuzed state, looking at products, floor and my body with equal interest, everything is abstract. There are small movements in my body, like being drunk and trying to keep the balance, my gaze is locked on random elements, lights in the ceiling, trees outside the windows, and especially the shoes of the clients that are passing next to me. Some of them feel awkward, they sense that something unusual is going on. I bent to grab the shopping basket from the floor and, when almost catching it, my body entered a long break. I suddenly felt my situation, posture and the basket itself as very strange. I'm slowly walking backwards, looking around, trying to make sense of what I see and feel. It's like an alien spectacle, strong colors and beings moving strangely, carrying colorful things. I'm turning around like trying to figure out what all this is and means. My body and my empty gaze are locked on this product here, organic chickpeas, in a strange meditation. I can stay in this position in this shop forever. Now my body is completely out of here, it feels like I'm exiting, transcending the shop. My chest is warm, like sometimes in some prayers or meditations. My focus moved on a hemp seeds bag. After a while my head moved towards the ceiling. A client touched me and an employee started to arrange products next to me. Maybe they want to stop me. I must look weird to them. I went back to shopping.” (2022 November 25, supermarket, Bucharest)
“Going unhere opens thousands of possible ins. It's not just that "you're out", you can be connected to otherwise inaccessible levels. Unhere is not just an escape from reality. It may also be the opening of another one. It may be running from problems, but it may also be a search for solutions, and problems, on other levels. Unhere doesn't mean disappearing, it means getting out of here. And this always means arriving somewhere else. Any unhere is a here somewhere else. Disconnection from nature, in a paradoxical way, can mean a superior, normally inaccessible connection. Sometimes you need to disappear to be deeply present. To cut the ordinary connections with reality to really see. According to Simondon, to arrive at transindividual, at "collective", the community should be stripped away – the entire network of human "commerce", "the words of the tribe" that fix us in our social functions and roles. You need to do a paradoxical move, to go through "the ordeal of solitude", individuation, to escape and undo the embodied superficial sociality that blocks the collective.” (2020 September 7, Sălard)
“I don't know for whom I keep maintaining my composure, my appearance. My face drops, my posture disintegrates. What a relief. I'm drooling on my phone. I look and feel like an idiot, what a sight. And this strange sound that comes out of my mouth. I hope you don't reconstruct this in your mind. The neighbors came into my altered mind again. Sorry that I disconnect from you a little, there is something happening between me and this walnut tree here. I hope that my neighbors don't see me, it's not a problem that they think I'm crazy, but I'm afraid that they will go a little bit crazy as well. Hmm, that could be great actually. I'm very contagious because I'm not crazy in my mind, I'm "crazy" in my body. When the norm is sick the deviations are crucial. And the norm is always sick. The unhere people are annoying because they can ruin the harmony, the party, the official narratives, beliefs. They are out of tune with "normality", and attuned to something else. I should find the balance between content and experience, between performativity and discursivity. Let's think this further. I refuse to think my posture, to compose myself in the place where I am. I lose my human form.” (2020 August 20, Băla)
“I don't want to stay here anymore, I feel like I can start to fly. Like my head is connected with something in the sky that pulls me up. I'm still too heavy. Maybe, if I can activate that force from my dreams, in which it seems that we have the flying capacity somewhere in the body. It's a sort of feeling in my belly and my chest. At least this extracts me completely from here, psychologically. Like I'm more connected with that thing above. I must look quite absent. It doesn't seem to be a god. It is more like an abstract "out of here". The strange community from A Visitor to the Museum film comes to my mind: "We only have one prayer: 'Let me out of here.' Let me out of where? Out of here... In general." When we don't know what to do, or when we don't want to do anything anymore, or when everything is hopeless or too sad, or too difficult, too boring, too wrong, we just want to get out of here and now. To be unhere.” (2020 August 21, Băla)
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Florin Flueras, Unhere (2020). Unhere introduces deviations into the implicit social spaces, into the behaviors and conventions that form them. Performers activate states and affects corresponding to other realities than the situations in which they are (of visitors, clients, tourists, spectators…). Altering or cutting implicit adaptations, deviating from basic adjustments, from their implicit existence in the world, they seem out of touch with reality, out of place, unhere. Because at some level we emulate the bodies that we encounter Unhere can be contagious, affecting the social atmosphere, the space and its possibilities. In general we conform to environments, we want to be adjusted to here and now, to behave adequately, even in art, and usually that's fine. But sometimes is good to undo the automated submissions, to open up or transcend situations, to go Unhere. Artworks are usually visual, sound or conceptual, Unhere is affect based. In some venues Unhere can appear uninvited – Unofficial Unworks. Performers: Eliza Trefas, Florin Flueras.
Florin Flueras, Unofficial Unworks (2020). Unofficial Unworks are Unexperiences, Unimages, Unhere, Love appearing uninvited at important art events, enacted by visitor-performers, skipping and overriding structures of validation, going around gates of access, affecting implicit conventions and expectations. As visitors we usually conform, performing our roles, consuming quietly what is in front of our eyes. As artists we mostly follow art world's implicit codes, protocols and requirements, hoping to be seen, invited, appreciated. As people we conform to prevailing perspectives and certainties. Artists can and should sometimes deviate from these dynamics. Visitors too.
