In the Dust of This Planet: A Marriage of Flame and Flame – Homage to Darkness
Solar Eclipse at the Synagogue
András Cséfalvay & Gabriela Šaturová
Natália Sýkorová & Oliver Tor
Performances and Curator-Led Tours
accompanying the exhibitions A Marriage of Flame and Flame and In the Dust of This Planet
Curators: Edith Lázár, Lýdia Pribišová
Venue: Ján Koniarek Gallery – Synagogue
Date & Time: 12 August 2026, from 18:00
Maximum eclipse: 20:06 CEST
András Cséfalvay with Gabriela Šaturová, and Natália Sýkorová with Oliver Torr, will meet us at the threshold of the Trnava Synagogue, where darkness ceases to be an absence and becomes a channel through which older forms of intelligence once spoke. Darkness and silence become a space where myth and technology interact, where belief systems long considered extinct restart within the architecture of the synagogue, built precisely for this kind of listening. For a moment we become part of a mystical vision of new beginnings and worlds beyond the endless cycles of computational systems, offered to us through this unique view of the Sun. For the duration of the eclipse, this brief breaking of light, the artists will open a ritual line of communication between the sky and the Synagogue. Come and stand in the shadow of the Sun.
Natália Sýkorová and Oliver Torr open the towers of the sun eclipse, singing in tongues composed for the sun that is about to disappear, and full of hope, urgently awaiting its return and instead lean toward what has not yet come to pass. Their voices intertwine with the language that the exhibition itself has been absorbing for weeks, half-formed from the whispers of visitors, bent and bent again by orbital telemetry. Dark mirrors rise toward the boundary with the sky, which is no longer discernible in daylight; the artists consult their self-made instruments, small oracles created for this single eclipse, and in the sun’s disappearance they see not an end, but an opening—a new beginning that arrives precisely at the moment when sight fails.
Gabriela Šaturová is appearing as Cosmia, the cosmos incorporate, and sings about the great sacrifice that each body needs to make to sustain itself into the future. As the flame of the sun is devoured by an other greater flame, a dark sun appears during an eclipse, just for a moment, only foreshadowing the great dark flame that will come. Darkness is not a time for clarity, for knowing by understanding, but knowledge comes through experience, from depth yet unencountered. During the performance a selection of arias is sung from Prometheus Unbound, video opera by András Cséfalvay.
