Young Dionysos Part I-IV. 2014-2019 120 min.
Documentation and installation of a four-day concert series based in part on Nietzsche’s The birth of tragedy.
Dancer: Salla-Maria Santos, Loops:Sunny Seppä, Piano: Sándor Vály, Camera: Nea Lindgrén and Sándor Vály
Act I-III. 2014 15:00 min. (Video installation)
Three action paintig documentaries that are part of the Young Dionysos project. Impressions of a couple making love with red paint on a large canvas.
Cello Suites 2019 18:00 min (Video installation)
Cello Suites is an experimental musical experiment that is part of the Young Dionysos project.
Retrospective / Selected Works, 2020 4:30 (Video installation)
Protest against overproduction and repetition.
I burned forty of my paintings and put their ashes in urns. On the urns, I marked the names of the paintings, their dates of birth and destruction.
Since the recipient can no longer see the painting, he can only rely on the title of the painting on the urn – through which he can construct, according to his own intellect, an alternative to the original painting, using his imagination. Thus, although the painting has been destroyed, a new image can be created in itself by each recipient. In effect, the destroyed painting can be replaced by as many images as there are people who have seen the urns.
Sacred Songs Part I-III, ( audiovisual installation) 2018-2019 59 min.
My work was conceived during contemplation at church when I noticed the space formed by the lack of dance, when every single art form is present in churches from painting, to sculpture, to music, to architecture, from the stained glass windows to the joinery. The church is an internal image of the human world reflected outwards by the soul. A vision in form! All this was created by artists in order to communicate with God. Art is communication, alliance, the deepest primordial expressive force of the human soul. But how could dance be overlooked?
This is the issue and the gap that the Sacred Songs work addresses. The absence of dance that has grown into a complex audiovisual work, the ultimate aim of which was to reintegrate dance into sacred spaces, to which I wanted to give a poetic yet provocative language.
Cast: Júlia Heéger, Tiina Sysimusta, Anna Erika Kivinen
Spanish Street Project I-V. 2003-2014 ( Video installation) 33:00 min
Documentation of street art works, painting improvisations from the Malaga area and works from my pilgrimage on El Camino (Santiago de Compostela).
Sound Diary Part I. 63:00 min ( Audio-visual installation)
The installation is part of the Spanish Street Project. Between 2003 and 2014 I made seven pilgrimages to Spain and Portugal. On these trips I worked with a Zoom M1 360 degree microphone. Sound Diary Part I. Sound experiments, impression-sound snippets, sound and film documentation of my work with different materials found during my travels.
In Memorian for Space, 2009 120 min (Camino film)
Documentary film about the El Camino pilgrimage route.
Die Toteninsel, 2014 55:00 min (AV installation)
Music by Éva Polgár and Sándor Vály
Libretto by Karl Georg Zwerenz
Die Toteninsel is a fictional reconstruction of a lost score for the music of Jenő Zádor (1894-1977), based on a libretto by the German poet Karl Geor Zwerenz (1874-1933). The theme of the libretto for Die Toteninsel (1919) is based on a painting of the same title by the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), which, in keeping with the style of the time, culminates in a romantic triangle drama. The music for Die Toteninsel was composed by the Hungarian-born Jenő Zádor, who emigrated to the United States at the beginning of the Second World War. The piece was performed once in 1927 at the Royal Hungarian Opera House and then fell into oblivion. The score of the piece has been lost, so we do not know how it was originally scored.
Cast: Juha Valkeapää, Nea Lindgrén, Éva Polgár, Miakel Jurmu, J.K. Ihalainen, Mikael Jurmu, Tuukka Tammisaari, Zoltán Márkus
Selection from an artist’s Life
A selection of my short films made between 1999 and 2019.
The title of the work is not a reference to self-mythology, but to the creative and economic situation of the 90s, which created an absurd atmosphere for many artists – a moment when I woke up in the morning and saw that I only had one tube of green paint left, I should do something with it. I painted a green painting that day and then finished my year of painting. I had to look for other media if I didn’t want to sit idly by and watch what was happening.
I had a first generation video camera and some blank video cassettes. I started experimenting with these for my own entertainment.
The first films were looped movement experiments that documented the stages of a creative process and showed the comic madness of creation through the loop.
Since my technical equipment was very primitive, I resorted to solutions that were more akin to craftsmanship than to digital techniques. I later consciously kept this “technique” even when I had the opportunity to solve technical problems more easily.
The characters in my films transcend personal self-mythology by touching the eternal creator who narrates the act, the background to the process of creation, that which often remains invisible to the audience.
Cast: Juha Valkeapää, Nea Lindgrén, Kaja Kann, Sándor Vály
Selection from an artist’s Life
Le siége de l’air I. 2:09 min
The artist and Death I – 4:14 min
Epilog – 3:33
Dadatalk- 2:42 min
The birth of woman- 2:33 min
Selfpaint – 2:10 min
Dadawork – 3:28
The critics – 1:43 min
Le siége de l’air II.
The point – 3:12 min
Blind painting – 2:51 min
L’art pour l’art – 2:52 min
L’idée – 2:41 min
The artist and Death II. – 4:01 min
Duo – 4:13 min
10 second Loop films
Le magicien
Dada ballet
La boite
La peinture No.1
La peinture No.2
Chair de réve No.1
Chair de réve No.2
Chair de réve No.3
Dadawork No.1
Danse macabre No.1
Dialogue
Auto-peinture
La mort á venise No.1
La mort á venise No.2
La mort á venise No.3
L’ile morts No.1
L’ile morts No.2
L’ile morts No.3
L’astronaute
Peinture aveugle
Death in Venice, 2013 67:14 min
Dadaist film about the relationship between the artist and death and its consequences.
Milky Way and Nervous System, 2020 50 min. (Audiovisual installation)
Music by Éva Polgár and Sándor Vály, Film by Sándor Vály
Milky Way
The background of the birth of “Milky Way” is based on a purely elemental and emotional experience, an experience born from the sight of the Milky Way, which, stretching above humanity, connects peoples, history, cultures, families, friends and lovers. It connects humanity, past, present and future. We look at the same sky as our ancestors and the same sky our grandchildren will look at when we are gone. The Milky Way is the collective anthology of humanity.
Nervous system
The human nervous system is a project based on visual and associative experience that has evoked in us roots, fibres, pathways. In contrast to the Milky Way, we were confronted with a more recognisable, symmetrical system. In this work, it is this symmetry that interested us, how it appears in music and film.
Bruegel Variations, document film 2008 45:00 min
Installation and AV concert documentary ( Éva Polgár and Sándor Vály)
Transposition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s paintings into scores and music.
Mondrian Variations, 2012 54:00 min
Installation and AV concert documentation ( Éva Polgár and Sándor Vály)
Transposition of Piet Mondrian’s paintings into scores and music
Cello Drawing I-IV. 2017-2021 25:00 min
The cello graphics are experimental work. The work deals with the problem of control, which explores the tension between two different creative processes at the same time.
Sound test
Experimental films – intersections, relationships, interactions between sound and moving image. Exploring the interplay between sound and film, from mathematical systems to Dadaism.
SoundTest I-IV 2019 5. min. x 5
Vinyl 04:00 2019
Fly Recording I-II 10:40 min 2019
Glass Work 2021 11:20
Karawane 2018 02:40
Music for 10 italian police cars and eight cellos 2020 05:40
Butterfly (Kaspar) 2021 05:00
DrumTest I 2018 03:30
DrumTest II 2018 07:20
SoundTest 2018 05:30
Suites, 2017 02:00
String Quartet, 2021 02:50
String Quartet (Dervish) 2021 10:20
Der tod und das Mädchen 2004 5:00 min
Video installation.
Silent film based on the piece of the same title by Franz Schubert.
Cast: Helena Liski, Juha Valkeapää
Lament for Asinara 2021 21:00min
Concert and documentary on the history of the island of Asinara in Sardinia.
“Lament for Asinara” is a project about the collective history of Sardinia and Austro-Hungary during the First World War. In 1915, some 50 000 prisoners of war left Serbian territory on foot, of whom the remaining 24 000 eventually embarked for the prisoner of war camp on the island of Asinara. Most of the prisoners died in miserable conditions from cholera to cannibalism.
Lament (Asinara) documentary film 4:00 min
This film is part of my work Lament for Asinara.
I wrote a Hungarian lament from the First World War on a memory card and put it into a wireless speaker. I took the speaker to the island of Asinara and buried it behind the back of the ossario. The lamentations played for two days from underground.
Love Song ( Donori) document film. 2021 2:40 min
In 2021 I was invited to the “Contemporary Festival di Arte e Avanguardia”, festival (Sardegna, Donori, Italy) I asked a local resident, Salvatore, to sing a love song in Sardinian. After recording, I saved the song and the documentation on a memory card and then inserted it into a wireless speaker. The speaker was buried in a vineyard on the outskirts of Donori where the song was played from underground for two days.
B-45 (Berlin 1945) 2010 15:00 min.
The story has a real background. At the same time as the Soviet army arrived in Berlin, orders were issued to collect the artefacts. Strikingly, the soldiers did not collect the works of the great masters at first, but nude paintings. The film depicts a fictional scene when a Soviet soldier first encounters Titian’s Venus de Tiziano. The soldier overturns the view of art that European culture had hitherto held and places it back in a world perceived from a very different cultural perspective, where Venus ( art) is restored to her original role.
Actor: Juha Valkeapää
My personal message to the Universe, 2002 25 min (Dwi Setianto – Sándor Vály)
In 1972, NASA sent a message into space. (Pioneer-10.) It was the first physical message to be engraved on a gold-plated aluminium plate. The contents of the plaque were described in the language of science, with information that could obviously be a sign of homo sapiens intelligence, but at the same time said nothing about what it is like to be human. The idea for the performance was to correct this message from Nasa and to express it in the language of art. What does it feel like to be human? How do we understand ourselves?
The birth of tragedy, 2004 26:34 min (Juha Valkeapää – Sándor Vály)
Documentary about a performance at the Kastellaanimaja Gallery in Tallinn, based on Nietzsche’s The birth of tragedy
Unbearable Lightness of Destiny, 2005 22:03 min (Juha Valkeapää – Sándor Vály)
Documentary about a performance at the Hungarian House of Science in Helsinki, dealing with the conflict between man and destiny.
One Hundred Thousand Years of Solitude, 2009 30 min (Juha Valkeapää – Sándor Vály)
Documentary about the performance at the Hungarian House of Science in Helsinki, which dealt with the critique of culture and Christian mythology.
The Birth of Art 2003 10:04min (Dwi Setianto – Sándor Vály)
Documentary about a performance at the Lönström Art Museum, based on Vilmos Zolnay’s theory of art and presenting an alternative to the birth of art.
Dilemma I-II 2020 04:31 min 07:14 min (Nea Lindgén – Sándor Vály)
The dilemma is a critique of a social and power system, starting from the basic situation of a couple.
After stroke, 2022 5:30 min
Computer and mathematical linguist Marcus Kraht plays the violin again for the first time in four years after a stroke, with the help of his daughter.
Vita-Morte (italia – sicilia) 2002 30:00 min (Video installation)
A documentary about the dead in the cemetery of Taormina, Sicily, inviting the viewer to meditate.
Memory Works / Five Improvisations / Juha Valkeapää 2005 40:40 min
Documentary on the work of sound artist Juha Valkeapää
Dutch Futurismo Audiovisual project to celebrate the 100th birthday of Dadaism.
Cast: Éva Polgár, Nea Lindgrén, Mikael Jurmu, Sándor Vály
Ihalainen -Vály
An audiovisual project by poet J.K.Ihalainen and Sándor Vály. 1992-2020
The performances functioned as performative AV concerts, with countless video works, some of which have been lost.
Videos, 1992-2020
Ei Tuo Punainen, 6:30 min
Herran rukous, 06:30
Ihosi alla, 6:42
Istuvat ei tanssi, 6:50
Kohtuttomuusteoria, 5:10
Muistinmenetys, 7:20
Herran rukous, 6:30
Ostoksilla, 5:50
Papukaija, 2:50
Talivaara, 3:30
Vihreä tee, 3:10
Varkaita, 8:40
Eri-pari Ihmiset 07:02 min.
Tanssi 02:42 min.
Pietari Suuri I 7:48 min
Pietari Suuri II 4:18 min
Experimental films 2001-2022
Cosmic Daybook I-VII. 2001 30:00 min
Amore / Mare, 2002 04:17 min
Arte Povera-Italian Graffiti, 2002 25 min
Mandala, 2002 02:43 min
Buddha / Dance, 2002 03:47 min
Epiloge, 2002 02:32 min
Portre, 2002 05:20 min
Taormina / in memorian Csontváry, 2002 07 min
Technobeach, 2002 03:22 min
Gilgamesh (animatio), 2002 18:00 min
Talazüek, 2002 02:24 min
Ritual, 2003 08:34 min
Cosmic Daybook (document), 2003 120 min.
Pain, 2003 05:12 min
Dance Macabre, 2004 08:10 min
Vita-Morte, 2004 13:14 min
Life-Death, 2004 05:11 min
GlassBallet, 2005 08:11 min
Näkymätön pilari / Raimo Lang. Doc.film, 2005 60 min
Virgo Dei, 2017 08:27 min.
Jargon – Juha Valkeapää performance, 2011 9 min
French Films / Convict (videoklippi) 201202:44
Prelude, 2020 Film: 07:13 min
Hair Painting, 2020 Film: 02:55 min
Titi, 2022 54 min
