The beauty of the exhibition Contact with Yourself is that it manages to display these different approaches to the same issue. The gallery exhibits works by Ravasz from 2004 and 2009, and a film by van der Werve. You see a humming top that looks like a ballerina. The thing with that golden head and legs and red body makes pirouettes once fast, then it slows down and begins to rock – you can’t spot when the loop begins, but the moments are always different. The movement seems to be once old and tired, then fresh and energetic, as if it were never-ending. In the background you can hear an accordion, some touching music with points of subtle drama, but it’s never pushy. Should we live this way?
The second film by Ravasz shows you how fragile your life is: on those wonderful longish yellow cobblestones – you can hardly find these in Budapest anymore, not counting the Illek Vince Street – that I have touched with delight for its pure beauty, there floats a transparent doll made from some nylon sack, drifted by the wind, flying here and there, once some air gets to its head, then it lifts its leg like Sack Ronaldino, then it nods while lying, only to stretch out against the vertical surface. The setting, the edge of the road with those worn-off stones and grass, and even light reflected from some glass surface, is where we also wish to go, even if we know we would not be rocked by the wind in such a funny way.
Guido van der Werve has a different viewpoint, as far as space or dramaturgy are concerned, especially if we compare him with Ravasz – but still, there is something that binds the two ways of attention and thinking together. An icebreaker ship is nearing out of the white, and a man is walking at constant speed ahead of it. Both are in the distance, so the man’s presence is not more characteristic than the ship that closely follows him like a whale. The two front anchor racks are her eyes, and the white bottom is clearly divided from the greyish black body. The radar slowly turning around at the top actually makes the ship look like a living creature. The comforting roar comes in waves –not even yet harmonious and peaceful. The camera moves slightly up and down, as if waiting for somebody. That is all what happens, and we guess so at the first moment already, but the excitement of the scene maintains attention on such a level that we feel bad when it’s over. We, here and now, know that we must enjoy what is given. We learned the lesson.