Judit Navratil
Szívküldi Lakótelep, 2018-ongoing
VR experience for Oculus Rift
The Szívküldi Lakótelep (szívküldi= heart-sent, lakótelep=social housing neighborhood) is a multi-layered virtual reality Social Housing Neighborhood that considers the possibilities and dangers of ‘home’ in cyberspace. This form is based on my upbringing being flown on large kites and growing up in a comfort flat on the 8th floor in the late communist era of Hungary. The Neighborhood’s districts build on each other. The shell of one area becomes the beginning structure for another, creating a self-recycling system. I started this project with a self-portrait “Base” that’s built of my own memories. I reserve some parts for myself as a diary (Uncomfy is Comfy), and other places welcome all people to ‘move in’ with their own treasures; for example the Cultural House, that I built as an archive of the Naming Gallery and its community in Oakland. The social and physical aspects of this project are just as important as the use of VR technology. The Digital Doulas Workshops, as collaborative experiments, used to function as consciousness-shaping gatherings in which we can face our anxieties, re-think our physical and psychological pre-pandemic conditions. Guests were invited to “move in” through entrance ceremonies. These communal forums – the Digital Doula Workshop, MÉTA Circles and Long Distance Somersault Group Rolling Workshop used to maintain balance between social and virtual realities, not knowing how soon #movingonline becomes our new reality. This is a long term project that has various different shapes, forms, manifestations and it can be shown as an installation with projections, or simply by the Tour Guide Videos that I recorded in TiltBrush. It can also be shown as a VR piece in a headset (whenever our physical reality allows.) I’ve started to rebuild it in MozillaHubs, which is the most accessible form of it.
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VIDEO LINK
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Judit Navratil’s practice is multivalent, engaging performance, social practices, drawing, as well as video and VR. The relationship between the real and virtual is personally significant to Judit, as she has moved between several different countries and cultures in her lifetime, and relies on digital means to connect to people and places in an attempt to construct “home.” Her projects are as much affective mappings of what it means to continuously oscillate between analog and digital, past and present. Navratil uses her body-device to keep balance through her compass-meditation: the Long Distance Somersault career. Rolling as far as she can helps her seeking higher alternatives and to gaze in the Eye of the Hurricane. Navratil earned an MFA in Painting at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2008 and an MFA at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2019. She has been exhibiting in Hungary, Canada, France, Korea and the Bay Area. Her work has been recognized through awards and residencies including the Cadogan Art Award, a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), the Dennis Leon and Christin Nelson Scholarship and a Presidential Scholarship for Anderson Ranch. She is currently an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
If you are interested in exhibiting or viewing this artistic VR experience, please send an email to us.
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