The first poem of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies repeated for 24 hours, in a performance by Anna Veronika Hargitai. “The Might of Vulnerability” as an agnostic credo in the ritualised performance of the poem.

Hargitai interprets Rilke’s elegy as an artistic manifesto. Through the key motif of the poem – the “stronger existence” (stärkeres Dasein) – her performance aims to convey a finer sense of being that lifts us out of our indifferent and alienating world, reduced to a series of everyday routines and evidences. By chanting the poem as a mantra, Hargitai becomes a mediator of the transcendence inherent in Rilke’s poetry for the audience. The visitors can get closer to the dimensions of their own sensibility by becoming part of the performance. The performance is not an act of escapism, but it invites us to experience the higher sphere of our being, the celebration of the moment and our own fallibility.

The cities, streets, and landscapes projected during the performance are metaphors of constantly being on the road. The stream of still and moving images prompts the participant to perceive the surrounding world and encourages the reception of nuances in the everyday, from beauty to ugliness.

Anna Veronika Hargitai is a performer and jazz singer currently pursuing a degree at Folkwang University of Arts in Essen as a “Jazz Performing Artist”. Her ensemble “Veronika Hargitai Quartet” recorded their first EP “Etudes” in February 2023. Hargitai leads and composes for her own projects, and doubles as a lyricist.

In the 2022-23 academic year she was one of the twenty-four selected participants of the Free Interdisciplinary Performance Lab led by Marina Abramović as guest professor. As a closing act for the project, she performed her solo piece “In my head, it’s a neatly draped room” for nine consecutive days (six hours per day), as part of the “54 Hours Performances” long durational performance at the Museum Folkwang in Essen. The “Die Macht der Zerbrechlichkeit – The Might of Vulnerability” is her first solo performance in Budapest.

Curators: Orsolya Dóczy and Márton Tóth
Graphic design: Luca Benke