Entangled – Scattered

In the experimental performance sow, weave, breathe – Magia Cannabina, the audience first encounters the individual entanglements of six performers with a single material: hemp. On April 10, 2025, the Studio Gallery was temporarily transformed into a ritual spinning house (Fonó in Hungarian), where the performers repeated a variety of movements and gestures using hanging hemp fibers, spindles, seeds, and charcoal sticks. Some of these actions directly reflected the traditional process of turning hemp into canvas, but Ida Zsuzsanna Papp and her collaborators were equally interested in the magical practices historically associated with sowing hemp and communal spinning. Such ritual acts were often linked to fertility and a good harvest. According to popular belief, Friday was the most auspicious day for sowing – when magic was considered strongest – and the work was best done naked, at a time when neither the moon nor the sun was in the sky.^[1] While tilling the soil and sowing hemp were typically communal tasks or men’s responsibilities, women generally carried out the soaking, drying, retting, combing, and cleaning that prepared the “fluff” (or tow)^[2] for the most important stage: spinning. The yarn produced through spinning was then woven into canvas.

From a contemporary urban perspective, the intricacies of this process are almost impossible to fully grasp, and the performance did not aim to offer an ethnographic or cultural-historical account. Rather, it evoked the women’s communities that formed around spinning – spaces where work was accompanied by conversation, singing, friendship, and courtship. While weaving might seem more solitary, spinning was a social occasion that strengthened communal bonds. Preparation for the Studio Gallery performance was itself collaborative: the artists attended a retreat and even enacted a sowing ritual in the forest.

In this improvisational piece, the performers – initially appearing as separate entities – gradually began to interact, their (intimate) connections becoming more palpable. The repetitive movements of each individual slowly merged into a collective body, which in turn fragmented under the pull of an internal rhythm. As Papp explained, each performer brought personal experiences into the work, creating a bridge between collective ritual and individual perspective: some explored the difficulty of finding a partner, others the cyclical nature of women’s lives, or the traits of a folk-tale heroine meaningful to them.

As the hemp was unraveled, gathered, woven into hair, or used as a hiding place, the performers’ bonds deepened – both with each other and with the material itself. A distinctive ritual emerged between women and hemp, in which the focus shifted from processing fiber for practical use to a magical act of intertwining: bodies flowing into one another, and the material coming alive. Work-related tools – a distaff, spindle, and comb – also appeared, transformed into almost talismanic objects in the performers’ hands. This atmosphere was enhanced by live electronic music performed by Annamária Kmetyó, composed of rustles, noises, and “earth sounds” that echoed the non-linear, circular, and repetitive structure of the piece. Like the motions of spinning and weaving, the sound gradually formed a dense fabric, lifting the performance beyond its historical setting into an “eternal present.” Rather than treating peasant culture and the departure from rural life with nostalgia or pathos, the work approached them with curiosity and respect – through the personal positions, memories, and, at times, the absence of memory among the participants.

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Participants of the performance: Júlia Alma Kerekes, Annamária Kmetyó , Anna Martincsák, Ida Zsuzsanna Papp, Soóki-Tóth Anna, Hanga Viniczai

Video recorded, edited, and produced by: Dennis Michael Khieffer – ArtShift8

The video was created with the support of the Kontur Art Project and Kult Minor – Cultural Fund for National Minorities.

The performance video can be viewed between 22 July and 6 September 2025 in the basement rooms of the Ernest Zmeták Art Gallery in Nové Zámky, as part of Ida Zsuzsanna Papp’s solo exhibition Persona Cannabina.

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^[1] https://mek.oszk.hu/02100/02115/html/3-266.html

^[2] https://mek.oszk.hu/02700/02789/html/94.html