Revolutionparabotany

Are plants capable of eliciting social change or inciting spiritual civil disobedience by wielding strange unknown forces?

The point of departure for Igor and Ivan Buharov’s solo exhibition is their latest film, Land of Warm Waters, which attempts, by presenting the “revolution of plants,” to reinterpret the notion of “revolution” and to reconsider traditional political concepts. This latter attempt is in accordance with Hungarofuturist endeavors, one of its objectives being the extension of the political sphere to non-human life forms as well.

In Buharovs’ interpretation, therefore, revolution is not an event controlled by human demands, but a metamorphosis between different modes of existence throughout which spiritual relations and energy fluxes are formed between humans and plants. Of equally fundamental significance to the Buharov brothers and to Hungarofuturism, this absurd worldview is derived from the encounter of images, meanings and textures in a form that hybridizes diverse artistic media.

The spectator experiences revolution as “xenotopia,” the theater stage of alienness, where it is never possible to decide exactly where the political-aesthetic energies catapult us: to the start or the end of a civilizational stage. For the natural history of plants is inseparable from human history, that is, revolution may simultaneously lead to mutation and social change.

From a Hungarofuturist perspective, the two presuppose each other, as the transformation of history cannot go without the redesign of species.

The exhibition is realized as part of the Hungarofuturist project ‘Those Who Are Not With Us Are Also With Us!’, as part of the third edition of Off-Biennial Budapest.