As a Hungarian citizen, the artist found it essential to reconsider this notion, as the Hungarian government views the country as Europe’s bulwark—the defending border. They have been conducting a determined, aggressive anti-migrant campaign for years, driving public opinion in a highly exclusionary direction. At the Serbian-Hungarian border, illegal human trafficking has been constant in recent years. In the vicinity of the border crossing, numerous abandoned and burnt-out cars could be found as remnants of police chases.
Delving into the concept of borders between countries—especially along the edge of the Schengen area—Us, living on the crust delivers an attempt to discover what the journey of becoming an outsider might mean today.
The photo series is based on a poem he wrote that can be interpreted in three ways. It combines the description of an illegal border-crossing process with his personal reflections on boundaries.
The Hungarian far-right party MiHazánk held a demonstration on the 11th of November, 2023, at the border, advocating for the reinforcement of the border barrier. He traveled there to capture photographs at the event and around the Schengen border.
He used various digital techniques to produce the images. His aim was to expand the boundaries of human vision across the electromagnetic spectrum, to highlight both physical barriers and the pettiness of human behavior. Each image was scanned from a small LCD screen from different perspectives. Highlighting the pixels in this way allowed the photos to be broken down into more defined units. Additionally, he reprocessed images taken from space—photographs captured in different spectra such as ultraviolet and infrared.
For the installation, he constructed two types of uniquely modified LCD screens. The displays were designed to establish a strong conceptual connection with the topic.
The project was presented in the Academy section of the Bratislava OFF Festival, where the installation received the ON Award