Puskás Marcell Amúgy, ezt már most visszanézném
Dear Present,
I don’t know why I’m writing to you. Maybe someday it will matter that I did, but at the same time, I feel like I’m saying goodbye to you too soon again.
You’re still here, and yet I already miss you. In any case, I’m going to take a photo of this letter, just in case it might be good to look back on someday.
Schedule
I’ve been keeping a lot of things lately, anyway. Pictures, sentences, people, moments. Not because I’m particularly interested in them, or because they evoke anything in me, but rather because it will be good to have something to refer to someday, if I ever have to explain that anything happened in my life at all. Somehow, no moment is good enough for me to stay in it, yet it is too significant for me to let it go.
Oh well… It seems I’ve started remembering ahead of time again. I’ve started looking at what I’m in from the outside. I record it, I save it, so I won’t miss it for sure, but in doing so, I’m missing out on the very thing that is happening. Has the weight of my camera roll made me look forward to the future? Is this the moment I’ll later overestimate? Have I created a good enough memory?
I can’t know in advance. I’d rather save it, so that later there will be something to miss.
So, dear Present! I don’t know what I’m supposed to preserve of you. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. Either way, in the absence of actually living in the present, I’d rather switch on the future inside me and build the archive that will be good to look back on someday!
Take care of yourself.
We’ll meet again in an old photograph.
Puskás Marcell’s performance explores the phenomenon of Nostalgia for Present. The term describes a state in which, while experiencing a moment, we already perceive it as though it were a memory, thinking about how we will remember it in the future. The piece examines the peculiar situation in which, instead of experiencing the present itself, we begin to experience its future version, while continuously observing, recording, and interpreting what is happening in real time. As searching, preserving, and remembering begin to overlap, the present gradually becomes something to look back on in the future, making it increasingly difficult to simply be present within it.
The performance is technology-driven, incorporating interactive projections, live-generated visuals, live VJing, and live music. Sensors placed on the body and throughout the stage transform the visuals, music, and lighting in real time, allowing the dancer’s movement to directly influence the development of the performance. Technology is therefore not merely an addition to the piece, but an active part of the choreography and the experience of presence, continuously responding to changes taking place on stage.
A contemporary, technology-driven dance performance exploring the peculiar tension between experiencing the present and transforming it into a memory of the future. Interactive projections, live-generated visuals, VJing, live music, and movement-responsive visual elements come together to create an atmospheric, ever-changing stage world.
Musician Gábor Balázs; media artist, VJ, and visual designer Maxim Biljarszki; dancer Noémi Pataki, a member of the Duda Éva Company and Willany Leó; and media artist Marcell Puskás, whose interactive and intermedial works, as well as several solo exhibitions, have made him a presence on the contemporary art scene.
Gábor Balázs — Music
Maxim Biljarszki — Live VJ
Noémi Pataki — Dance
Marcell Puskás, Noémi Pataki – Choreography
Virág Klajkóné Rovó – Light design
Marcell Puskás — Director, Dramaturg
