Aranyalmás Rácalmás – The Golden Apples of Rácalmás

2025, Golden Apples, Happening

Golden Apples: a visual poem in five episodes
Created for the 5th International Symposium of Land Art, 2025 | Rácalmás, Hungary

About the project
Aranyalmás Rácalmás (Golden Apple Rácalmás) is a site-specific visual poem exploring memory, dreams, and transience. The project’s name plays with Hungarian words: Rácalmás is a town whose name contains the word “apple,” and Aranyalmás adds the image of a “golden apple,” a rare fruit symbolizing the uniqueness and value of the place.

The series unfolds in five episodes, where golden apples guide the visitor through questions of presence, attention, and letting go. Each episode combines objects, gestures, participatory actions, and photography to create ephemeral narratives across the island and the bridge.

Prologue

On the island, among trees and grasses, the promise of paradise appears both evident and hidden.
Every apple becomes a question, a memory, a dream, and a treasure.
Some apples embark on a journey along the water, carried by currents of life and time; others remain, waiting to be discovered.
This project is about transience, choice, and transformation, and how we preserve and reshape memories.

Episodes Overview

Episode 1. Almák-Álmok / Apples-Dreams
Apples are the fruits of nature. Dreams are the hidden fruits of the soul.
Golden apples are hidden on the island among roots and driftwood. To those who find them – joy.

Episode 2. Álomfogó – Almafogó / Dreamcatcher – Apple Catcher
A special catcher gathers dreams and wishes. Visitors can tie pebbles, feathers, or knots to its threads, leaving traces of their own stories.

Episode 3. Fűggöny / Grass Curtain
Grasses woven into a mat frame a golden apple at the center – the heart of the island. Visitors can photograph through the golden apple, capturing fleeting moments.

Episode 4. Különleges? / Something Special?
Among a hundred crumpled paper balls, a golden apple shines in the sun. This object invites reflection on how we seek the special and how it transforms perception.

Episode 5. Híd álma – Hét alma / Dream of the Bridge – Seven Apples
Seven golden apples are cast into the water from the bridge, drifting away like dreams released into the flow of life. Visitors witness the happening and the act of letting go.

Process

The project was created during August 12–19, 2025 in Rácalmás, Hungary, as part of the symposium dedicated to Sándor Márai’s The Herbalist and in homage to the work of Mária Bartuszová.

An artist book documents the visual poem and the process of the Golden Apples project.

Exhibited at

“Bridge” exhibition, 2025, Rácalmás, Hungary
“In the Footsteps of Time” exhibition, 2026, Várnegyed Galéria, Budapest, Hungary

Απουσία / Απ’ ουσία

2025, Happening

2025

installation, participatory action, living archive

A reading corner appears ordinary.

A table.
A chair.
A stack of newspapers.

Something is missing.

But the newspapers cannot be read.

Parts of the text are missing.
Images disappear.
Words are cut away.

The absence is not empty.

It becomes a space where meaning is reconstructed.

Words disappear.
Images disappear.

The empty spaces begin to speak.

What disappears?

What remains?

The viewer enters the work.

Reading becomes searching.
Looking becomes interpretation.

The absence becomes visible.

///

Absence becomes a space for imagination.

A place where what is missing
begins to matter.

///

The work continues through absence.

The work continues through what is missing.

The work continues through participation.

///

Proofs of Presence: Living Archive

__________________________________________________

traces of the work

Tom Sawyer Museum

Happening, Malevich's Brigade

2014 | Happening

Event: Night of Museums
Venue: Courtyard of the Artists’ House, Yekaterinburg, Russia
Date: 17 May 2014
Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade

“Why not? It isn’t every day that a fellow gets a chance to whitewash a fence.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Setup

For the Night of Museums, the Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade brought Tom Sawyer’s famous whitewashing episode into the courtyard of the Artists’ House.

Visitors were invited to join the work in exchange for an object:

a button,
a dead rat with a string attached,
the largest apple,
a second-hand kite,
and other offerings.

The reference comes from the episode in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which Tom turns the task of whitewashing a fence into something the other boys want to do.

Here, the Brigade turned the same mechanism into a live artistic situation.

Everybody Joins

The Brigade began by whitewashing.

Then the visitors took over.

There were so many people willing to participate that the Brigade soon found itself standing aside, watching the work continue by itself. By the end of the action, all surfaces in the courtyard that were due to be whitewashed had been painted.

The work was no longer being carried out by the artists alone.

It had become a collective activity — initiated by the Brigade, but produced through the participation of everyone who joined.

The museum event became a temporary space of shared work, exchange and play.

Everyone participated. Everything did.

A Situation Instead of an Object

Tom Sawyer Museum does not produce a permanent artwork. Its form is the situation itself: a familiar task, a simple exchange, a crowd, and a shift in who is doing the work.

The Brigade creates the conditions for participation, then lets the situation take over.

Exhibition Context

Tom Sawyer Museum was presented during the Night of Museums in the courtyard of the Artists’ House in Yekaterinburg on 17 May 2014.

Original project documentation →

Back to Malers’ Brigade

Wedding of the Tower and the Metro

2006, Happening, R²

2006

Format: public performance, happening, video documentation (44 minutes)

Location: Russia, Yekaterinburg city center and metro stations

Partners: State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA), ParaRam gallery

About the Project

Wedding of the Tower and the Metro is a multi-day public performance reimagining key landmarks of Yekaterinburg through the lens of local Ural traditions. The project creates a new living mythology for the city by symbolically uniting two urban giants — the Tower (he), an unfinished TV tower and prominent telecommunications structure, and the Metro (she), the city’s underground transit system.

The project unfolds as a ritual action reflecting deep archetypes and urban legends, expressing both the hopes and fears of the city’s residents. Through ceremonial acts and symbolic gestures, the performance seeks to harmonize unseen forces within the city and prevent potential catastrophe.

Background: The Question of the Tower and the Metro

Concerns about a possible earthquake in the Ural region have been growing.
For over 250 years, towers and underground spaces have been seen as the city’s main mythical and generative symbols.
Today, the unfinished TV tower is the city’s apex tower symbol, while the metro is its main subterranean presence.
These two giants effectively “meet” near the Circus area in the city center.

The Myth

The Tower and the Metro represent vast, intangible City Giants—beings with immense, mysterious bodies resting beneath the urban layers. Though currently still, their forces pull toward each other. Should they awaken suddenly or clash, disaster such as an earthquake could follow.

The myth is not just a story but includes ritual actions designed to control these forces and protect the city.

The Ritual — The Wedding

The Giants’ longing for union has reached a peak — the time has come to hold their Wedding.

If this ritual is not performed, the Giants may pass each other by, and the symbolic “Child” — the city’s future potential — will never be born. Alternatively, a chaotic union could bring disaster.

Additional Context

This myth draws from ancient, pre-Ellin traditions and familiar motifs of Titans and Titanesses. The Tower and Metro stand as symbolic Titans within the city landscape.

The myth partly explains the origins and roles of these urban forms and partly prescribes complex ritual actions that help channel and contain hidden powers, ensuring the city’s well-being.

The Performance

On August 25–26, 2006, Yekaterinburg witnessed a collective celebration of the Wedding of the Tower and the Metro.

This ritual involved local artists, residents, and guests, bringing the myth to life through a series of staged actions:

Public announcement of the upcoming Wedding (2006, August 18).

The solemn Wedding ceremony — a modern ritual binding the Giants (2006, August 25).

A communal feast — an ancient ritual that unites participants and seals the ceremony’s success (2006 August 25).

The Fertilization rite — participants crafted miniature Tower figures symbolizing the Tower’s “seed” (2006 August 26).

And discreetly placed them throughout metro stations and trains (2006 August 26).

Outcome

The action transcended artistic mystification, becoming a real and effective ritual. Just days after the event, news came that the long-frozen metro construction would resume.

Exhibitions and Screenings

September 2006 — International Festival Stop! Who’s Coming?, Moscow, special project of the Yekaterinburg branch of the State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA) StolpoTvorenie.

November 2006 — Video screening at the ParaRam art salon, Yekaterinburg.

2007 — As part of the StolpoTvorenie special project (Yekaterinburg GCCSA), nominated for the Innovation All-Russian competition award in the category Regional Contemporary Art Project.

2023 — Documentation of the project participated in the archival exhibition “Art without a ticket: the history of public art in Yekaterinburg” at the Ural Branch of the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

Möbius Pretzel

2006, Happening, Performance, Public Ritual, R², Urban Mythology, Video

August 19, 2006

Format: public performance, happening, video documentation (6:41)

Location: Russia, Yekaterinburg

Partners: State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA), Yekaterinburg bread factory Vseslav

The art project “The Möbius Pretzel” is part of a multi-stage process of creating an urban mythology.

It transfers a conceptual idea into public space, transforming the artistic act into a communal ritual. The mythologeme appears as an edible Möbius strip, and its consumption becomes a form of communion — a symbolic sharing of the city’s “body.”

The format of the project embodies a symbiosis of artistic performance, PR action, urban myth, and public ritual.

A record-breaking pretzel, made from a four-layer sponge ribbon (with a circumference of 4.5 meters, a height of 20 cm, and a weight of 52 kg), was generously baked by the Yekaterinburg bread factory Vseslav.

Ingredients used: Flour – 11 kg, Sugar – 8.7 kg, Eggs – 11 kg, Vegetable oil – 0.6 kg, Apricot confiture – 16 kg, Sugar syrup (for soaking) – 7.3 kg

Biscuit mass: 26 kg Exact dimensions: 1.5 × 2 meters Total weight: 52 kg
Length of the sponge ribbon: 4.5 meters

From the author:

A city is a multitude of layers — coexisting within a single whole, yet often not only disconnected, but unaware of each other’s existence.

A simplified model of the city might be imagined as a pretzel made from a multi-layered sponge ribbon, twisted into a Möbius strip — a kind of “pretzelization” of a mathematical ideal.

The Möbius strip possesses some curious properties: it has only one continuous surface, no “other” side, no inside or outside, and any object moving along it is gradually turned 180 degrees. In other words — it flips things upside down.

This leads one to think that perhaps our existence has no “reverse.” Everything — hellish abysses, heavenly gardens, mysterious depths of the spirit, and other dimensions — is already here, now, with us, on this side. That is to say: thisworldly.

To “absorb” the city, one must thoroughly chew the pretzel. This can be done extensively — gnawing on a single layer, or intensively — by biting through all the layers at once. Though in this case, of course, only within the limits of one fragment.