Robert Gragger Retu(r)ned
Collegium Hungaricum Berlin — 8 July – 18 October 2024 — With Zsolt Török (creative coder) — Curated by Zsuzsanna Petró
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’s voice was recorded on shellac. The recording has survived and was provided for this work by the Lautarchiv der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The installation brings it back into the building he built: the recording was loaded into a touchscreen granular synthesizer programmed by Török — an instrument that lets the archive become something you play rather than something you observe. The installation formed the sound space of an exhibition with works by doctoral candidates and was the flagship of the CH100 centenary programme.
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 instrument was first played on stage at the Echoing Archives live performance at the same venue in June 2024, the kick-off of the work.
