Interview with Laura Tóth and Máté Czakó: On digital communication in artistic research and practice

Laura Tóth Photo by Dániel Nagy / Máté Czakó Photo by Viktor Marosi

Digital technologies vastly influence practically all aspects of contemporary life. Should performance artists respond and adapt to these trends, or should they keep and protect the physical essence of their art? 

Laura: We all live in the same reality, it is therefore inevitable that we are influenced by trends. The problem starts when the word "should" appears. Why do we think we should? Greater community reach, professional acceptance, or an appearing necessity in applications and its topics? It may be naive to think that it is up to individual taste, interest and worldview how much we use these trends in our practice, but it is certainly very individual how much digital technologies affect us.

Máté: Whether I integrate digital tools into my performance is really up to me. The important thing is that this decision serves the purpose for which the work is created, the experience that the work wants to convey. However, there are aspects of the performing arts e.g. marketing, promotion, tendering where the choice may not be free and the notion of 'must' raised by Laura rightly comes into play. Is it possible to create a performance without digital tools? And present it? And keep it alive?

What opportunities, challenges or traps do you as a performance artist see in digital transformation? 

Máté: As performing artists working with dance and movement, we believe in the extraordinary expressive power of the body, but communication has changed so much with the development of digital technologies that we have to use different methods to fight for the viewer's gaze and not to lose to virtual impulses.

Laura: There are many challenges that are already being explored by experts, for me as a performing artist who has started virtual communication from childhood, I feel I am transcending myself when I create and when I meet the community of viewers. And the next question that Máté raised, if I've been able to work on myself to be able to connect live, what tools do I have to enable others to connect with me and with each other at that moment. 

Máté: I am finding in my own personal experience that it is becoming increasingly difficult to lift our eyes from the phone in our hands.

What digital tools contributed to your research, creation and communication within the iCoDaCo project? When using them, how do you approach the fragile borderlines between “virtual” and “physical”?

Laura: My experience is that the virtual imprint of our work and the virtual connection during iCoDaCo does not fully capture the values, experiences and moments that are important to me. Perhaps I would rather say that it covers a segment of it and sometimes creates new realities. It is, let's say, extremely fascinating to wonder how the virtual imprint of our work can be realised in the minds of others, and how far it is from our own goals. Then again, it brings back the idea of the need to invent new ways of creating online and offline connections.

I believe perhaps more in the idea that "butterfly jolts" in different places but at the same time, are somewhere converging. For now, I see technology as a framework and a point of check-in for different stations.

Máté: Obviously lots of searches on the internet, lots of music from Spotify.
What are important companions for me personally: my iPad and my pencil. I'm extremely graphomaniacal and the ability to combine this habit of mine with photos, videos, voice notes, in addition to drawings, and even to modify all these montages endlessly and freely… Wonderful! Unfortunately, the cupboards are already full of my notes...