Katalin Erdődi announced as the next Executive Director of Trafó
Following the recommendation of a professional committee, the Municipal Assembly of Budapest elected Katalin Erdődi as the next Executive Director of Trafó House of Contemporary Arts. She will be taking over the position of Beáta Barda from 1 January 2025 and will be the head of the institution until 31 December 2029.
Katalin Erdődi is an independent curator, dramaturg and writer with nearly two decades of professional experience. Active both within Hungary and internationally, she is currently co-curator of next year’s Biennale Matter of Art in Prague. In her application, she named the creative producer and performing arts professional Judit Böröcz as her collaborating partner in the role of artistic director. The full application was published on the website of Revizor and can be read (in Hungarian) here.
With an open call published on 17 October 2023, the position had two applicants in total: the application of Martin Boross, artistic director of Stereo Akt, is also available to read (in Hungarian) on the website of Revizor.
Following the announcement of the Municipality of Budapest, Katalin Erdődi shared: “As a pluridisciplinary house for contemporary arts, Trafó is a unique cultural institution in Hungary that does extremely valuable work, therefore I am greatly honored to play a part in its story, not only as one of its former programmers, but as its director from January 2025. My aim is to ensure that Trafó continues and strengthens its role as a leading platform for free and critical thinking and artistic experimentation in the future. I will strive to intensify the dialogue between local and international artists, and also across the different artistic fields (performing arts, visual arts, music) that make up Trafó's profile. I believe that Trafó has the potential to become a pioneering institution not only locally, but also internationally, by embracing a transdisciplinary, or rather ‘undisciplined’, transgressive way of working, by highlighting the entanglements and synergies between the different artistic fields. I see Trafó not only as a cultural institution, but also as a public forum – therefore I believe that alongside supporting innovative artistic endeavors and experimentation, it also plays a key role in amplifying social issues and questions, giving voice to communities and opinions that are underrepresented in the wider public sphere."
On the 17th October (the 25th anniversary of Trafó) Mayor Gergely Karácsony spoke of Trafó as "one of the most exciting cultural venues for the renewal of tradition and the tradition of innovation". He said that not only must Budapest “protect its existing cultural values and cherish its traditions, it must also always give space to the new, the fresh – to foster and protect it, to help it blossom. Because a modern city should not only be a guardian of the old, but also an ally of the new."
Katalin Erdődi has previously worked as curator for brut Wien and steirischer herbst festival in Graz, and as artistic director of Imagetanz, an international festival for contemporary choreography and performance in Vienna. Between 2019 and 2020, she was member of the curatorial board of the City of Vienna, responsible for deciding about the municipal, project-based and structural funding of the independent performing arts field (dance, theatre, performance, and circus). In Hungary she has worked as performing arts programmer of Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, as producer at Flórián Workshop, Arcus Temporum Festival and Contemporary Drama Festival, and as curator for LudwigInzert.
She is also the co-founder of important local initiatives such as PLACCC Festival (with Fanni Nánay), an international festival focusing on site-specific performance and public art, Body Moving (with Ilona Kőhegyi and Gábor Pintér), an event series promoting contemporary dance in urban public space, and Social Honey, an initiative connecting urban beekeeping with participatory art.
In recent years, she has mainly focused on the situation of Hungary's rural areas and their socio-political transformation through collaborative art projects such as Watermelon Republic (2021, Thealter Szeged), News Medley (2020-2021, OFF-Biennale Budapest) and I like being a farmer and I would like to stay one (2017-2018, Ludwig Museum Budapest). In 2020, she received the Igor Zabel Award Grant for her locally embedded and inclusive curatorial practice.
