School of Magical Politics - Extracurricular Session

An Oracle of the Real

Oracles are usually asked to speak about the future. This one refuses.

Drawing on an oral archive developed through her ongoing project School of Magical Politics, Eszter Némethi has been working with stories gathered in conversations with artists, pedagogues, activists and social scientists across Europe. Listening deeply to these voices, she has summoned an Oracle. This Oracle was trained as a tudós somewhere in the underworlds of the Carpathian Basin. Wry, pragmatic and equipped with a troublesome memory-cloak, she is compelled to speak not of what will come, but of the fragmented realities of our present.

The Oracle activates the archive by becoming it. Through short one-to-one consultations questions brought or discovered together open a space where embodied memory and listening become tools of political imagination. Part performance, part conversation, part ritual encounter, the work explores how we might remake reality together through speech and attention.

• Eszter Némethi is a Hungarian theatre maker and researcher based in Brussels. Her work explores the interplay between language, listening, and political imagination, creating participatory frameworks that foster collective reflection and engagement. Working across performance, conversation, and site-based research, Eszter designs formats that support sustained inquiry into how we speak, listen, and make sense together. At the core of her practice is a commitment to holding space for multiplicity and quiet voices.

Her current projects include School of Magical Politics, which investigates storytelling, play, and magical thinking as tools for navigating the political; and Geology of the Real, a performance research project focused on memory recall and the ethics of listening in performance. Eszter is drawn to the liminal spaces between people, systems, and imaginations. She holds an MA in Social Practice and the Creative Environment and is a graduate of the a.pass post-master program in Brussels. Her work has been presented in Ireland, Belgium, and internationally.