Temporary Being
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Dates2017 - Ongoing
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Author
written by curator of project, Kriss Sagan:
Anna moved to Berlin in 2013 with a bunch of backpacks and a bicycle with her boyfriend at the time. Her interest led her to Neue Schule für Fotografie, where she connected to the local art scene while preserving her unique documentary vision. During the years in Berlin, Anna was moving back and forth between her two homes, Berlin and Budapest, which resulted in a documentary photography project, called Temporary Being, where she initiated a conversation with her closest friends about the Berliner experience and the meaning of ‘home’.
Started off as a school assignment, Temporary Being offers a soft, yet intense perception of Berlin, through the perspectives of her closest friends, the non-Berliner Berliners. Foreigners, who arrived from different corners of the world gathering in the German capital. Anna began to explore her friends’ experience of living abroad, while manifesting her very own link and impression of these people through a mixture of photography and interviews.
Where are you from? What is this place and why did you come here? How do our origins influence our Berliner experience? Do we feel at home here? Are we able to feel ourselves at home in this place, which is known as a temporary destination? What does make Berlin a home for you?
8 friends, 8 interviews, 8 perspectives, 8 months of the grey sky per year. Welcome to Anna’s Berlin. The first part of the ‘Temporary Being’ project, where she shares her endless love for her friends and her mixed feelings about Berlin.
POST_COVID comment from Anna Vera Lengyel, person behind the project:
Covid-19 locked us into our "homes" and I would like to continue this project with online interviews, videos and photos to further explore what's home now, where do we find it, is it physical or rather a mental state? Are we still comfortable with going home, being at home or it newly transferred into something frustrating and final, how do we preserve the sacredness of home when some of us exploited their physical home's all potential during lock-downs and spent way too much time "there".. Furthermore, the original project was naturally interested in the cosmopolitan lifestyle, will it be available in the close future or expats risk more than before when leaving their birthplace?
Project is only complete with interview excerpts.