(még csak) 20 Éves a Bélaműhely
Kedves Barátaink, Támogatóink és Érdeklődők!
Bélaműhely Sound Art was founded in 2007 with a playful idea: to make electronic music without electricity. We began building instruments from discarded objects and everyday materials, exploring the sounds they could produce. Under the artistic direction of co-founder István Rimóczi, the collective brings together experience in music, theatre and instrument-making. Our experiments have developed into concerts, participatory performances, educational workshops and public artworks.
Curiosity about sound remains at the heart of our work. We create instruments with distinctive sounds and playing techniques from wood, stone, metal, tubes and strings. By reusing materials, we discover new possibilities in objects that might otherwise be discarded.
Our public art projects bring playable sound installations into parks, streets, squares and courtyards. Our large wooden and stone instruments invite people of different ages and backgrounds to explore sound together. Community instrument-building workshops welcome participation throughout the process, from discovering the materials to assembling the instruments and making music together. This involvement creates a personal connection to the finished instrument and encourages shared responsibility for public spaces.
In our participatory art practice, the audience shapes the event. The Conductor Game allows anyone to direct the ensemble through gestures, with each movement receiving an immediate musical response. Hangszercsépelő offers opportunities to try out instruments and improvise together. No previous musical training is required: curiosity and a willingness to play are enough.
Our educational work combines instrument-making, rhythm, movement, listening and improvisation. We work with children, adults, school groups and communities experiencing social disadvantage. Participants discover how sound is produced while practising attention, patience, cooperation and independent initiative.
Our work in popular music brings driving rhythms, recurring musical themes and free improvisation together with the unusual timbres of our handmade instruments. The Dance Music Jamshop combines live music with movement and collective play, while our theatre and performance collaborations explore the relationship between sound, gesture and action. We continually draw on the experience gained through performances and workshops in Hungary and abroad.
“Bélaműhely is a collective dedicated to the democratisation of music.”
— Kristóf Weber, Rebuilding the Collective Will to Play, PRAE.HU, 2023. Translated from Hungarian.
