Attribution of Meaning

“’[…] Needless to say, I did not achieve complete absolution, nor shall I ever achieve it. But this matters little; I may have behaved in this fashion at the time simply in order to prove to you later that I am capable of laughter. […]’ – this struck me.”
(Péter Forgács quoting Franz Kafka)

Similarly to his earlier practice, Péter Forgács processes private archives with his creative method again, but this time he not only explores other people’s past but also adds some of his own memories. His exhibition comprises of two distinct sections, separated in space.

In the first section he presents a video sequence he started in 1982 and finished in 2015. The work and its script is based on a Kafka letter, written on the night of January 8, 1913, to the writer’s love, Felice Bauer − this is where the title comes from: I Can Laugh Too. The sequence is characterized by a disturbing ambiguity that on the one hand the artist intends to create images for a greater public and on the other hand he discloses a recording that captures intimate family moments. We can see family members, mothers, children, friends on the screen; their unconstrained behavior stems from their trust towards the cameraman and vice versa.

In the second section, titled Mrs. P and Her Sons, Forgács processes an archive, unfolding a family story with a mother figure in the center. Mrs. P worked as a III/I intelligence agent in Hungary between 1975 and 1985 and concealed that from her children. The installation filling the whole room helps us track the life events of this artist family in two parallel ways: 1) through the supervising officers’ evaluation reports and Mrs. P’s own reports, and 2) through her son’s diary entries, photo archive of almost 400 images, and other documents of his related to the family and his artistic activities.

András Forgách delineated the portrait of Mrs. P in his new book which constitutes also an integral part of the exhibition. The installation, together with Forgách’s book, encompasses ten years in total, and through the rearrangement of the private archives of the P family, helps us picture as to how everyday life was determined by the authoritative practices of the Kádár era.

The Forgács-Forgách brothers have worked together on several literary and film projects since 1996; the Mrs. P and Her Sons installation is the newest piece of their cooperation.