Project Description: “A Plague in London” is a mixed-media production situated at the intersection of performative arts and digital scenography. Based on Daniel Defoe’s 1722 archival-style account, the work explores the structural and psychological dynamics of systemic crisis and social isolation. Directed by Kristóf Szabó, the production utilizes Defoe’s text as a conceptual framework to analyze the sociopolitical mechanisms of a pandemic—ranging from institutional denial and the enforcement of urban confinement to the eventual erosion of communal structures.
Visual and Medial Strategy: The production is characterized by a multi-layered visual dramaturgy, where Ivó Kovács’s video art functions as a spatial and temporal mediator. Rather than serving as a purely illustrative background, the digital layer operates as a generative environment that reflects the interiority of the protagonists and the oppressive atmospheric silence of a city under lockdown. The visual components analyze the tension between the historical archival source and contemporary digital aesthetics, translating the 17th-century experience of quarantine into a modern medial discourse. Kovács’s work focuses on the abstraction of architectural boundaries and the visualization of the “Planet of Viruses” concept, examining the human condition through a lens of digital depth and spatial deconstruction.
Credits:
Artistic Direction, Set Design & Sound Dramaturgy: Kristóf Szabó
Video Art: Ivó Kovács
Performance: Maximilian von Mühlen, Boshi Nawa, Lili Oksanen
Source Material: Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
Kristóf Szabó / F.A.C.E. Ensemble: Reviernacht – Aus der Liebe gehen (Reviernacht – Leaving Love Behind)
About migration and memory – mixed media theater | Premiere Fri, Nov. 14, 2025
Text, direction: Kristóf Szabó Performance: Natalia Voskoboynikova (singer, voice-art, physical theatre), Ivan Zilli (actor) Narration: Marcus Mies, Julia Karl Video art: Ivó Kovács Stage design objects: Boshi Nawa Sound: New Music, various artists
“What is home? A memory? An ideal? A longing for—what? Have our longings, but also those of our parents and grandparents, shaped us? In surreal images, the mixed-media production Reviernacht combines spoken theater, new music, and visual arts into an artistic experience for all the senses.
The evening invites the audience to take a look at themselves and see what has shaped them: their personal past, their decisions in the present, and their ability to cross boundaries.”
Supported by: Cultural Office of the City of Cologne
Jury Award at iMapp Bucharest – Winners League 2024 – Legacy’
‘Luminbird’
3D/ video: Ivó Kovács Music: József Iszlai
Original ‘Big-wing’ motion courtesy of Derengo Animation, special thanks to La Luz.
Organizers:
Municipality of Bucharest, through CREART – Centre for Creation, Art, and Tradition of Bucharest
iMapp Bucharest – Winners League partner:
Parliament of Romania – Chamber of Deputies
iMapp Bucharest – Winners League International partners:
Chongqing Light Festival – CHINA, Video Mapping Festival Lille – FRANCE, Genius Loci Weimar Festival – GERMANY, 1minute Projection Mapping Competition – JAPAN, Zsolnay Light Festival – HUNGARY, ILO – International Light Festivals Organization
“SEARCHLIGHT | Keresőfény” VR 360 HOME video edition
use your mouse or device to navigate in space
SEARCHLIGHT is a site specific light installation – this is a VR 360 mono shortened version of the original 8 minutes long video-loop. Installation: KOVÁCS Ivó Creative Management: Let it Be! art agency Organizers: Déri Museum, dr. István PUSKÁS Co-organizers: Csokonai Theater, Cívis House Sponsor: National Cultural Fund Special thanks: Tamás Herzceg, Glowing Bulbs March 5th – 28th, 2021 at the Lighthouse x Gallery, 67. Piac Street, Debrecen, Hungary
Due to “COVID times”, we are releasing an abbreviated video version of the three-projector light installation in a VR360 video format. The exhibition version is also COVID-proof, as the public cannot enter the Lighthouse x gallery. The exhibition reflects this situation. The three walls of the gallery are projected around by the projectors as panoramas so that the perspective of the 3D animation can be understood from the street front window. The perspective view automatically selects the viewer’s position. Since the Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti the space of a painting has become and act like a “window” in the European tradition. Originally, the reconciliation of the perspective point of view was used to bring/drag the viewer into the space of the image, but now the window of the image is blocked by the physical glass of the gallery, which is a metaphor for the objective cause – the epidemic situation. Perspective simultaneously eliminates the distance between the viewer and the image, but also arbitrarily selects the viewer’s position and point of interpretation. This separation is physically edited and enforced by the windowpane. Rotating mirrors illuminate the space round and round, much like the way of a spectator’s gaze scans the gallery space as passing along the street. In the projected and endless 8-minute video-loop, we pass through a cold library-like space reminiscent of a repetitive maze. At an inaccessible distance we see the reflection of trees, but there is no connection between the natural and the artificial world. As the rotating spotlight illuminates every new corner of the maze – the light expresses our desire for a scientific cure that will eventually find a solution to the COVID epidemic situation. The infinitely repetitive video cycle reflects the usual human scenario where humanity first conquers nature and then casts its faith in science to ward off the effects of the previously destroyed circumstances of (human) life. Somehow we should stop this endlessly recurring circle of death and sorrow.
in Hungarian:
A „COVID-idők” miatt kiadjuk a három projektoros fényinstallációnak a rövidített VR360 video változatát. A kiállítási változat szintén COVID-biztos, mivel a közönség nem léphet be a Lighthouse x galériába. A kiállítás ezt a helyzetet tükrözi. A galéria három falát panorámaként vetítik körbe a projektorok, hogy a 3D-s animáció perspektívája az utcafronti ablakból válik érthetővé. A perspektivikus nézet automatikusan kiválasztja a néző pozícióját. A reneszánsz Leon Battista Alberti óta egy festmény tere “ablak” lett az európai festészeti hagyományban. Eredetileg a perspektívikus nézőpont egyeztetése a néző képtérbe vonását szolgálta, de jelenleg a kép ablakát a galéria fizikai üvege blokkolja, ami az objektív ok – a járványos helyzet – metaforája. A perspektíva egyszerre kiküszöböli a néző és a kép közötti távolságot, de önkényesen kiválasztja a néző helyzetét és értelmezési pontját is. Ezt a szétválasztást fizikailag szerkeszti és kényszeríti ki az ablaküveg. A forgó tükrök körbe-körbe világítják be a teret, ahhoz hasonlatosan, ahogy az utcán elhaladó nézők a galéria térét páztázzák. A vetített és végtelenített 8 perces videóban egy hideg könyvtárszerű téren haladunk át, amely egy ismétlődő labirintusra emlékeztet. Elérhetetlen távolságban fák tükröződését látjuk, de a természeti és a mesterséges világ között nincs kapcsolat. Ahogy a forgó reflektor megvilágítja a labirintus minden újabb sarkát – a fény kifejezik a kívánságunkat a tudományos gyógymód iránti, amely végül majd megoldást talál a Covid-járvány helyzetre. A végtelenül megismétlődő videociklus a szokásos emberi forgatókönyvet tükrözi, amikor az emberiség először meghódítja a természetet, majd a tudományba veti hitét, hogy kivédje az (emberi) élet korábban elpusztított körülményeiből fakadó hatásokat. Valahogy le kellene állítanunk ezt a végtelenül ismétlődő halálos kört.
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