The voices in Hajnal Németh’s Crash – Passive Interview speak to us with the wisdom of hindsight and from a higher place about risk, choice and mortality, through a stunning mixed-media installation in the Museum Kiscell in Obuda. The Kiscell’s towering church space makes for a compelling setting for this intelligent and meditative work, which is comprised of a moodily-lit crashed BMW, a six channel operatic sound piece, and two quarter-sized doppelganger sculptures of the original car.

The silence of the chapel is broken by plaintive voices of the victims of car accidents who sing the stories of their misfortune, from misguided feelings of security and certainty before the event to the pain, regret and spiritual reflections that come after. The words themselves originate from interviews made by the artist with crash survivors, rephrased into a series of questions that can be answered only in the affirmative or the negative. The powerful script was enacted as an improvised piece of contemporary music in three acts by opera singers and is projected into the space around the smashed-up BMW to moving effect.

Crash – Passive Interview touches on the indeterminateness of individual destiny, the insight brought by near death experience, as well as the unsustainability of modern civilisation’s love-affair with fast cars, of which the manly BMW brand and the unrestricted speeds of the German autobahn are a potent symbol.  In one sense, the installation can be seen as an ultra-advanced road safety informational, while more metaphorically the work resonates with the experience and anticipation of ‘crash’ in everything from economic meltdown to ecological disaster and the emotional turmoil of human relationships.