Requiem for a Bug out
2024
to bug out:
- (slang, intransitive, originally military) To leave (a place) hastily.
“It's time I bugged out of this town: it ain't safe no more.” - (slang, intransitive) To abandon someone without warning.
“I'm not gonna bug out on you, I promise.” - (slang, intransitive) To miss school, play truant, play hooky.
“I go to Stockton High, but normally I bug out.”
Requiem for a Bug out commemorates a community’s failed attempt at world building. At establishing contact. At playing a game. Bug out as in having to flee quickly. Bug out as in abandoning someone. Bug out as in skipping school. Their story unfinished, their tools left behind – artifacts of an endeavor now rendered obsolete. They went extinct, got wiped out, annihilated. A bug rolled over? A fallen treehouse? An electrocuted nest? Apparently, the accident wasn’t their fault. It had nothing to do with the game either.
The installation consists of a bird nest, a portable cassette recorder mounted on a torn tree, half-buried high voltage cables and some pairs of stretched out tin can walkie talkies. The cassette recorder is playing a slowly eroding tape loop that appears to be a voice memo of several different voices enumerating days from one to five.
Photos by Zsuzsi Simon and Benedek Bognár.
exhibited at
- 2024, Rianás, group exhibition, Boszorkánysziget, Szeged (HU)