You do a lot of things – you're credited as an animated film director, an author ('Milk Sculpture', 'Track Matrices'), a poet ('Border Circle', 'Personal Reasons'), a graphic artist, an illustrator and a researcher. How do you feel about these roles and what are the proportional relations between them?

It's strange for me to hear that I am working on many many things. I don't have so many activities, and I have trouble even if I have to put an occupation next to my name.

I would prefer to say that I don't want to decide what genre I am working in, because it is the content that interests me, not the form. I see the world from one role, which is the role of creation.

I would like to get to know certain phenomena and areas in more depth and see them in a different light. These areas are not so far from each other, and I am interested in the same things in the real sciences as I am in, say, the horoscope. The other thing is that an artist is constantly dressing up in skins and impersonating something different. To this transformation you add your personality, so that while understanding the world you express and discover yourself.

What drew you to animation filmmaking? Do you plan to make more films, and if so, with what kind of approach?

I've loved drawing for as long as I can remember. I studied live-action film directing, but my attitude to directing is that if it's live, it has to be realistic, so I'm more into documentaries. As a viewer, I like fiction, and in animation – because it's more stylized than film – I move more freely, I don't get bogged down in instructing the actors right from the start. I'd like to do more animation, but the long and monotonous process of animation is quite far from me. That's why I'm more attracted to unique graphics and poetry writing, because both immediately bring the effect that I had and made me want to transpose.

You are also currently writing the monthly Animation series for Artmagazine. Why do you think there is a right for authored animation in a fine art magazine?

I write mostly about the directors of the former Pannonia Film Studio, because the diversity that separates the individual styles within the studio is fascinating. The cartoons, while often made for television for entertainment purposes, have a distinctive visual identity. Even more interesting than these are the author's short films, as their frames could be displayed in an exhibition space.

The unusual compositions, the bold colour schemes, the form-disruptive brushwork or even the creative collage often pass unnoticed because the film has a temporal dimension: it passes.

It would be good to look at directors as visual artists also, and this should be the case today too. The series should be continued with creators from the contemporary animation scene.

Following your work, you seem to have a very close relationship between text and image. You've also been working in the genre of book trailers in recent years, which is a strange genre and also somewhere between moving image and text. How should we imagine it? Can you tell us a bit about this genre?

The book trailer is a cinematic trailer of a book. A good trailer does not give away the plot, but it conveys the mood and dynamics of the book. Last year, I was commissioned by the magazine Műút to make six short films in the form of clips, and then another one for Lászó Garaczi's novel 'Weszteg'. The trailers I made are very free in their treatment of this genre, because fortunately the client didn't want to break into the market with them. Free of commercial content, i.e. with more abstract content, using the found footage technique, the result was a few clips with original music by my brother Dániel Láng.

How do you approach the relationship between text and image when you illustrate? How do you start to illustrate a book?

I really like to illustrate because I like to have a framework for something, but at the same time I like to use my imagination. In a work to be illustrated, I don't have to decide what to illustrate, it's up to me to decide which part of the text to highlight, and most of the time it's not conscious, it's what I'm influenced by. Because I can only draw well what has affected me – otherwise I would have to report failed attempts. I read the work first, so I get into the mood of the piece – that's where the style comes from, so to speak. I tune into the rhythm of the piece – let's say that becomes the technique. The rest is not so translatable, because it's good if the picture doesn't show the same thing as the text. For example, I never take descriptions literally.

On Facebook you have a creative page where you post your own drawings. Looking at these images, the titles and descriptions often seem important too, as they put them in a philosophical, melancholic and humorous context. How does that work for you, the text comes first and then the drawing?

No, in this series the drawing always comes first, and then the text, just as a title. When I start drawing, I don't know what the title of the picture will be, but when I finish it, it usually gives itself. I guess it's like when you give birth, you look at your child and name it Gertrude or Joseph. But that's not really how children are named. So sometimes a child who looks like Jolán becomes Gertrude and a Norbert becomes Joseph. That's why I sometimes like to put an ironic caption under the picture, which makes you rethink everything.

You are currently living between Romania and Hungary, and you have been located in both countries during your life. What do you think are the advantages of this?

Both places have their advantages, and unfortunately they cannot be merged, because they are spatially separate, even though I am the connecting element.

Sometimes I feel like a passerelle.

Sometimes it's good to step out of what you're in, like when you're drawing, and take a step back to look at what you were in. And it's especially nice to have two homey mediums for stepping out, a safety net so that stepping back doesn't send you off the cliff.

You will also have an exhibition at this year's Primanima in BABtér and you will be a jury member of the Young Directors Competition. Can you tell us a bit about your exhibition? What are you planning?

For the exhibition I am bringing my latest drawings, a series called 'Timelines'. In November 2022, after a long hiatus, I started drawing again, namely because – without any plan – I bought a box of expired photographic paper at Soós photo. I tried drawing with graphite pencil on the back of the paper and realised that I was in the mood. A hundred blank 9x13 sheets of paper are a tabula rasa. So I started drawing almost daily, as if I were taking a photograph, sometimes of things I saw, sometimes of things I imagined, and it became a routine of making diary-like prints.