Robert Gragger Retu(r)ned
Collegium Hungaricum Berlin — July–September 2024 — With Zsolt Török (creative coder)
A sound and archival installation created by ANEZ and creative coder Zsolt Török for Collegium Hungaricum Berlin. Its subject is Róbert Gragger — the Hungarian scholar who founded the Collegium in 1916 — and the recordings he made a century ago.
In 1924, Gragger recorded his own voice onto wax cylinders. The recordings have survived. The installation brings them back into the building he built: the wax cylinder audio was processed, layered, and loaded into a custom sampler built for the work. Visitors access it through a touchscreen interface designed by Török — an instrument that lets the archive become something you play rather than something you observe.
The title holds the double meaning deliberately. Gragger returns to his institution a hundred years later. And the work proposes that return itself is not passive — it requires an act of making, of listening closely enough to reconstruct what was nearly lost.
The sampler developed for this installation became the instrument Török played during the Echoing Archives live performance at the same venue in June 2024.
