Kinga Toth
area: (performative) Literature, Visual-Sound Poetry
Key Facts
nationality
Hungaryarea
(performative) Literature, Visual-Sound Poetryresidence
Sarvarrecommending institution
BMEIAtime period
November 2024 - December 2024Kinga Toth is a linguist, visual-sound poet, illustrator and cultural manager. Tóth writes in German, Hungarian and English and presents her texts in installations, exhibitions and performances. She is also a founder of an organization for equal rights and women's representation in the literary world in Hungary.
In 2020 she received the Hugo Ball Award and the Bernard Heidsieck Prix for her intermedia/international work. In 2021 she was a guest artist at Villa Waldberta and her text-photo installations can be seen in Tallinn, her graphic poems in Center Pompidou. She is currently working with the composer Silvia Rosani on “Electrical Jungles” (a project with literature, performance, music and participatory modern theater) as part of the Hannsmann Poethen Stipendium, Stuttgart.
Since 2021, Kinga Toth has been researching nun art and has also been dealing with the life/creation of nuns in her artistic practice. In 2023/2024 she was a fellow of the DaaD artists' program in Berlin, her vocal album will be published in autumn and her next book of poetry - an ecofeminist prayer book - will be published by Matthes&Seitz in 2025.
Most recently published: Maislieder (2019, Thanhäuser), PARTY (2020, parasitenpresse), OFFSPRING (2020, YAMA),TRANSIT (2021, SuKulTur),Mondgesichter (2022, Matthes&Seitz), AnnaMaria sings/singt/énekel (2023, trilingual art album, Prae)
In 2014, Kinga Toth began writing her book “Moon Faces”, which deals with rare and hereditary diseases and conditions and can be categorized as flash fiction. Over the past few years, graphics, videos, montages, audio material and music have also been created to accompany this work, but she has still not quite achieved her goal of reaching as many people as possible. This year, the author revisited the text while editing the German-language version with the publisher Matthes&Seitz and was amazed to discover how much more topical it has become as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the question of how it can appeal to readers and how it can dissolve the boundaries of both the book and the reading experience was still unanswered. Toth has begun to write a play that depicts an extraordinarily personal and organic unity or symbiosis between a woman and a machine in the light of physical illnesses or conditions or changes. WOMAN and MACHINE live and breathe together, transform, dance, bond, unite. These actions simultaneously reflect on our increasingly modern, almost incomprehensible world of science, but also on the desperate desire we have had for more than 100 years: to build a bond with the Other we have created, which has outgrown us and no longer needs us.
During her residency at MQ, the artist wants to find this “new skin” (the surface or meeting point of human-machine, artist-other, artist-sick), the new surface with the help of texts and create performance, video and sound poetry pieces.