Deep Fake

Gergő D. Farkas

A suspended metal grid, a childlike live voice, a relaxing musical sound. Where are we? The performer puts down the microphone, baby-crawling on stage. Look at the elflike ears: he/him or it/it? A metal grid is taken off from the chain and suddenly becomes THE WORLD: head-surfing board, walking distractor, sleeping coverlet. Does it ring a bell?

After a phony monologue, Gergo D. Farkas continues the storyboard with imagistic dance: geisha, ninja, voguing… kuso in a word. The ending scene is even more hilarious when the stage lights turn off, effectively closing our eyes for a sort of meditation. Someone from the audience left the theatre.

Deep Fake is a parody of the increasing inauthenticity of our era and Farkas lays out a few scenes in a reserved and structured manner. Actually, what he offers is just a backstage peep into this world of absurdity.

Hang Huang

Lizard-like slurs creep through thick hovering smoke as we enter the theatre. Gergő D. Farkas also creeps, and crawls, towards a metal grid hung from a chain, later unclipped for a passive inquisition of its form. Curiosity is eventually impurified by gurgling phone sex. Yes, really. A grotesque, sci-fi erotica. Dark humour is great. But over-indulgence can be difficult to endure, and paired with such abstraction, serves only to alienate audiences.

This bizarre perspective is not entirely unrelatable. An exacting solo is stylised with a Posh Spice coolness and is as guiltily addictive to watch as a TikTok video, or 100 of them. It’s mimicry that both ridicules and gratifies human insatiability for stimulus, especially the type that blinds our danger sensors. Our default reality is so riddled with deception that even illusions of benign intent are harmful.

Farkas’s speculations on inauthenticity are culturally apt, but if the chosen effects don’t immediately interest you, Deep Fake feels high-handed enough to be jarring.

Georgia Howlett

A creature with a computerised voice and alien-looking ears emerges from the dark. It is dressed in technician’s clothes and wears gloves. Detaching a grid hanged from its chain, it holds it in front of its face as if being imprisoned behind bars, then lifts it on top of its head as if it has managed to exit from a cage. Exhaling, it softly places it on its body like a blanket.

The interaction with the grid seems endless and my impatience increases. After an unexpected sharing of sexual fantasies, the creature finally announces that it is going to dance. Behind a smoky cloud suspended on the middle of the stage, it begins to dance, partially visible; fortunately, not a lap dance. Well-defined and linear movements guide its way and my gaze follows it voraciously.

Gergő D. Farkas (they/them) is immersed in an environment supported by the eerie music of Márton Csernovszky that resonates with our superficial world. They confront it with irony as they comfortably, confidently and, almost gloriously, leave it behind them.

Ariadne Mikou