Katalin Juhász passed away on December the 26th 2015 at the age of seventy-two. A loner and old maid her entire life, she left behind a two-bedroom apartment in the outskirts of Budapest, and (amongst other things) 3 boxes containing a startling number of audio cassettes, all hand-labeled and catalogued. The tapes contain secretly recorded private conversations, monologues, and encounters taken from 1974 till her death in 2015. From the tapes, a previously unknown life of Katalin Juhász unfolds.

Katalin is the first experiment to explore this remarkable, real-life archive. For Blackbox Cph, it’ll take the form of a Transformation Game – a playful experience akin to larp, but with almost no elements of narrative fiction. Within the Game, players are invited to explore and engage with the spatialized archive, navigating through different stations of a life of everyday secrecy and mystery. Eventually, as with encountering any archive, the archive looks back.

Katalin Juhász passed away on December the 26th 2015 at the age of seventy-two. A loner and old maid her entire life, she left behind 3 boxes containing a startling number of catalogued audio cassettes containing private conversations, field and ambience recordings and collages of stray sounds. Katalin is the first experiment to explore this remarkable, real-life archive. We will open the archive, and upon looking at it, we allow it to look back at us.

Katalin is a shared experience of deep listening and deep responding. We will be guided through different playful exercises in imagination and attention; exploring and engaging with the sounds past, in order to re-imagine and transform the present — and ultimately ourselves.

Content Warnings: Katalin mildly touches upon the subjects of:
* Death or dying
* Surveillance and exposure

Players should be comfortable with:
* Being in the dark
* Being in the proximity of other players
* Listening to loud sounds

The experience is not suitable for people suffering from claustrophobia nor nyctophobia.

Presented by
Áron Birtalan: Áron Birtalan is a Hungarian artist who makes games and rituals in everyday environments. Working together with players and their imagination as an artistic medium, he explores the nature of human interaction by creating collaborative experiences, called ‘Transformation Games’. Through his work, Áron encourages people to tap into a playful territory, where art, games and magic mingle. His work draws upon the history of transformation through rites, and as a whole, ritual’s role in society.