Igor & Ivan Buharov

The revolution of the animals was a failure, so now it’s time for a revolution of plants—if we take Igor and Ivan Buharov’s word for it, that is. This duo of artists-filmmakers-musicians from Budapest, known for their surrealistic, often hilarious films, presents an extraordinary new project for steirischer herbst that combines installation and performance. They turn Volkshaus, the Graz headquarters of the Communist Party of Austria, into an anarchist laboratory of the revolution-to-come, where interspecies exchange will finally be achieved. Plants have the most widespread and nuanced networks of communication, the artists claim, and therefore in times of mass surveillance, they may well be our best allies in seeking out new channels for secure communication and data transfer. Drawing on extrasensory practices as well as theories of bioenergetics and electromagnetics, the Buharovs deploy a dizzyingly broad range of transcultural references—from obsidian mirrors, used as tools of divination in Mesoamerican cultures, to esoteric western inventions such as the Tesla disk. The installation is kicked off by a surrealistic audiovisual performance developed together with the Buharovs’ closest associates, a multitalented cast of artists, musicians, and performers from Hungary. Alongside their new work, a video installation at Volkshaus features their recent Most of the souls that live here (2016). Here, avid viewers can discover more about how the revolution of the animals went wrong, in what the artists themselves describe as a “psychedelic crypto-anarchist-buddhist, necrorealist propaganda film.”