Temple, 1996
Interdisciplinary theatrical performance, installation, sound, text – 60 minutes
Participants: Katalin Győrffy, Tjeerd Bosch
Venue: Theoréma Theatre, Independent Stage, Kálmán Nádasdy Hall, Vörösmarty Cultural Centre, Budapest, Hungary
Temple is a singularly staged, large-scale performative work that emerged in the experimental theatre scene of late-1990s post-communist Hungary – a period of cultural transition marked by aesthetic and ideological experimentation. The performance was conceived for a sacred moment in time – March 21, 1996, the spring equinox – thus invoking a mythic temporality that resonates with themes of equilibrium, rebirth, resurrection, and ritual renewal.
Conceptually and formally interdisciplinary, the piece weaves together theatrical, visual, musical, and installational elements into the dramaturgy of an intense ritualistic ceremony. The three performers – Csongink Kincsou (Barbara Bónyai), Mariel Korell (Katalin Győrffy), and Roberto Inqaliero (Tjeerd Bosch) – appear as mythic alter egos. They each embody archetypal forces: the feminine dark (embodied instinct, corporeality), the masculine geometry (rationality, order, suppression), and the Fool from the Tarot (a chaotic helper guided by intuition and chance).
The set design – consisting of a stepped wooden podium painted with grotesque figures, large paper backdrops, a wooden ladder, and a suspended projectionist – evokes both the ascetic spaces of medieval mystery plays and the raw minimalism of post-industrial body installations. The blackened stage floor and walls, distorted projected portraits, and lighting elements (strobe lights, candles, torches) play a critical role in generating an immersive atmosphere. Light functions not only as a visual medium but as a metaphysical agent – creating both presence and absence, visibility and shadow.
The performance unfolds in 12 segments, not in a linear narrative progression but in an analog, ritualistic sequence that traces the soul’s journey from self-destruction to self-recognition and ultimately, release. The recurring motif of birth-death-rebirth is made tangible through sacred gestures, face painting, noise-based soundscapes, animalistic vocalizations, and boundary-violating interactions with the audience (throwing eggs, dousing spectators with water, ingesting and vomiting black ink). This vocabulary of brutal theatricality recalls Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and aligns with the visceral body-based practices that defined Eastern European performance art of the 1990s.
Rather than telling a story, Temple constructs a magical event whose full realization depends on the audience’s physical and psychological presence. The 12 stations, each marked by a single sentence, resist interpretation in strictly verbal terms. Movement, the body, and sound become the principal agents of communication, giving rise to a proto-language – a form of archaic expression rooted in the unconscious strata of the human psyche. The work thus draws from shamanistic rites, Eastern theatrical traditions, and the strategies of contemporary performance art without directly referencing any specific religion, literature, or philosophy.
The objects used throughout the performance (sword, eggs, ink, seven-armed candelabrum, broom, enamel basins, mirror, paint, fan) are not props in the traditional sense but ritual instruments charged with symbolic force. The act of drinking and vomiting ink is not merely shocking; it becomes a metaphor for annihilation and transformation. Likewise, soaking the audience or dispersing paper piles with a fan suggests ephemerality and the impossibility of imposed order.
Temple represents a culmination of Bónyai’s Tardigrade Cycle (1994-1996), a formative period in her oeuvre characterized by raw, archetypal depictions of the human body. In this phase, the artist explores pre-cultural, instinctual dimensions of the figure, drawing from the trauma and visceral memory of childhood. The body is not representation but medium – a carrier of trauma, recollection, and existential anxiety. Viewed through this lens, Temple is not merely a theatrical event but a complex psychophysical happening, interrogating the body as language and as historical site.
The performance concludes with the lighting of a grotesque seven-armed candelabrum – a ritual of symbolic illumination, a metaphorical apotheosis. In this final gesture, Temple transforms into an alchemical ceremony whose goal is not understanding but transmutation: purification, reflection, and symbolic death. The piece aims not to be interpreted but to be endured – a theatrical form that abandons familiar structures to open new sensory and existential pathways for the viewer.