KASARNE c/o VUNU presents
TRANSPEED
Róza El-Hassan, Stano Filko, Andrej Dúbravský, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Botond Keresztesi, Réka Lőrincz, Gábor Pintér, Selma Selman, Milica Tomic, Dorottya Vékony
Curated by Niki Bernath & Peter Bencze
opening night: 9 July, 18:00
10.7. - 31.8. 2025 Kasárne/Kulturpark, Košice
“Whoever controls a territory owns it not according to the laws of nations, but according to the law of speed.”
Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics (1977)
This statement by the French philosopher and urban planner Paul Virilio, the founder of the concept of dromology (theory of speed), comes from his seminal book Speed and Politics. In it, Virilio points out that speed is not only a technical quantity, but also a fundamental political force that determines the way
in which spaces, the bodies of societies, are controlled. Speed, he argues, becomes an instrument of power, applied from military strategies to everyday movement in urban space.
The exhibition project TRANSPEED explores the ontology of movement in the era of constant mobility and accelerated life and aims to open the question of whether our movement is still an expression of freedom, or has become a mechanism of control or, ultimately, a symptom of alienation. The exhibition focuses
on the automobile as one of the most widespread technological objects of modernity. Today, it is no longer just a means of transportation, but an interface, a kind of medium between man, machine and Earth. The automobile as an object of desire, status, but also an ecological burden, shows itself as an image of the civilizational tension between technological optimism and environmental catastrophe. The production, function and subsequent destruction of automobiles have fundamental planetary consequences, yet most of us use it, like many other machines and tools.
The car is not understood here as a neutral vehicle, but as a key symbol of our time. It embodies the paradox between freedom of movement and restriction within economic, infrastructural and ecological systems. It is a tool of progress, but also a sign of civilizational decline. In the era of hypermobility, the automobile becomes a metaphor for globalization, the compression of time and the overcoming of space, as well as the slow erosion of identity across cultural and geographical boundaries.
The exhibition presents works that perceive the automobile as an ontological apparatus, a technology that shapes perception, movement and presence. The artists explore how the automobile affects our experience of time, space and self.
Supported by Košice Self-governing Region and Slovak Art Council
Special thanks to K13 - Košice Cultural Centres
