FREEDOM TRAP

Hajnal Németh, „Freedom Trap”, 2025, Blinken OSA Archivum – Galeria Centralis, Budapest, Photos by Zoltai András / Blinken OSA Archivum

Performance in counter-concert format, presented in a 25-min version at Blinken OSA Archivum – Galeria Centralis, Budapest, 2025.

Developed and directed by: Hajnal Németh

Performed by: Gábor Balázs (bass), Mark Ballyk (drums), Vanda Bukovinszky – Distress (rap), Dominik Bereczki (thai box), Dóra Csernátony, Dávid Oláh, Albert Orgon, Tímea Piróth (text interpretations)

“Freedom Trap” (version 2025) is a performance in counter-concert format that employs musical, rhythmic, and vocal techniques, and brings together performers from a range of diverse professional fields to interpret two distinct yet interrelated texts. The first part reimagines Tibor Hajas’s “Freedom Industry Broadcast, Channel IV” (1973). Serving as a kind of counterposition, this is followed by excerpts from archival secret-agent and police reports documenting Hajas’s 1973 performance in Balatonboglár and describing the context of the Chapel Studio.

While the validity of Hajas’s text becomes newly manifest over the course of the present performance, the compilation of reports gradually disintegrates—literally falling apart. Through this example taken from the past and transposed into the present, the performance explores the relativity and the illusion of freedom within an authoritarian system.

Tibor Hajas (1946–80) was an iconic figure of the Hungarian underground art scene of the 1970s, known for his writings, conceptual works, films, and performances.

György Galántai’s Chapel Studio in Balatonboglár functioned between 1970 and 1973 as a model of self-organized, progressive artistic activity in Hungary, operating independently of official cultural policy.

The “Freedom Trap” project was originally initiated at the commission of curators Gabriella Schuller and László Százados. It was premiered in Balatonboglár in 2023 and it was also presented in Berlin in 2024.

Hajnal Németh, „Freedom Trap”, 2025, Blinken OSA Archivum – Galeria Centralis, Budapest, Photos by Zoltai András / Blinken OSA Archivum

“Freedom Trap”, 2025
Performance, 25-min version
Blinken OSA Archivum – Galeria Centralis, Budapest
Developed and directed by: Hajnal Németh
Performed by: Gábor Balázs (bass), Mark Ballyk (drums), Vanda Bukovinszky – Distress (rap), Dominik Bereczki (thai box), Dóra Csernátony, Dávid Oláh, Albert Orgon, Tímea Piróth (text interpretations)

Performed at the opening event of the exhibition “Shifting Perspectives: If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag. The Story of a West Berlin Fellowship.”, curated by Nóra Lukács and Melanie Roumiguiére.

Hajnal Németh’s performance Freedom Trap was part of the joint program series of the Blinken OSA Archivum and the Goethe-Institut Budapest, also titled Freedom Trap. The series took its name from Németh’s performance of the same title. 

The performance was supported by the Goethe-Institut Budapest and Péter Barta.

Partners: Stage Land Crew, Amorph Film – Boutique

Photos by Zoltai András / Blinken OSA Archivum