From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy)
Szabolcs KissPál
From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy), examines the complex and shifting relationship between the quite recent authoritarian turn and development of ‘illiberal’ Hungarian state policy and the political and cultural philosophy that operates as its ideological basis.
From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy) is made up of two docu-fiction videos: Amorous Geography (2012) and The Rise of the Fallen Feather (2016), and an installation The Chasm Records (2016) that presents a fictitious museum setting. Within a larger historical and cultural framework, the work establishes interconnections between the three major elements of the state philosophy of ‘illiberal democracy’: the symbolism of the ‘ethnic landscape’ and political geography; the romantic historiography of national myths of origin; and Turanism, a re-emerging form of political religion. (The version on display here is a reduced version of the whole project.)