installation / 2 – 24 Mar 2023
HUIU Gallery (Hrvatsko udruženje interdisciplinarnih umjetnika)
Pula, Croatia

You can read more about the conceptualization of work in the pdf notebook (link here).

Photo: Maša Pirc, CONA archive.

The multi-channel sound installation Vitreous Sky by the intermedia artist Marko BATISTA is a continuation of the artist’s unique artistic reflection and exploration of modern post-fact society in relation to technological progress, or simply the ties within the society-nature-technology, in the context of ecocritical discourse, environmental policies and pressing humanist concepts (nature, the Anthropocene, the capitalist colonial matrix, etc.). It is somewhat a continuance of the positions instituted by the artist in the  Fluid Particles of Volcanic Ash (Gallery 001, 2017). Through this apocalyptic sound-and-space installation, the viewer – despite the absence of the Anthropocene – indirectly faces its presence through a devastated landscape with nothing but traces of a few surviving (post)humanoids. exhibition.

Photos from the opening: Dejan HABICHT / Moderna galerija, Ljubljana.

The exhibition revolves around two precisely crafted interactive, hybrid, visual-sound objects – prototypes of a dystopian habitat of our futures, created by the artist to address the project on two intertwined levels, i.e., the symbolic and the practical level of artistic representation. The Vitreous Sky installation is a visual-and-sound composition. In the visual part composed of a two-part mimetic installation with a 3D printer-produced postnatural environment, the artist establishes a dialogue between urban and rural habitats. The sonic structure of the installation rests on the electrolysis of toxic compounds, which produce a sound within an extended electronic system in the process of self-oscillation and extraction. Its placement in the center gives matter agency, endowing the work with openness in becoming and space for surprise. With the selected elements, or better yet, matters and materialities, Marko Batista not only explores but always reflects, which allows him to move away from moralism and enter into open, always fluid, and changing spaces, over which even the artist himself does not have complete control.

Photos: Jaka BABNIK, Marko BATISTA.

Marko BATISTA is Ljubljana based tech-mixed-media artist, sound researcher, video experimentalist and AV performer, born in Yugoslavia. Batista focuses on themes such as displaced sound-scapes, video transformation processes, networking data, collaboration, linking concepts, hybrid spaces, politics of art and other fields of contemporary media art. Graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana and finished Master of Arts degree from Central Saint Martins in London. Marko Batista is a founding member of experimental multimedia group Klon:Art:Resistance. In 2003 he collaborated on a project for 50th LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA: VV2. His works have been presented at ARS ELECTRONICA-Featured Art Scene in 2008, 10th INTERNATIONAL ISTANBUL BIENNIAL, BIX Facade KUNSTHAUS GRAZ, Cellsbutton#3-Indonesia, VIENNABIENNALE 2008, ELECTRONIC CHURCH Berlin, CCA Glasgow, SLOWTIME 2007, Museum of Modern Art-Ljubljana, PIXXELPOINT 2005, 15th International Festival of Computer Arts-Maribor, ZERO Gallery/TRANSMEDIALE.10-Berlin …

PREVIOUS EVENTS AND PERFORMANCES

installation / 16 Nov – 30 Dec 2022
KIBLIX 2022: Ljubezen in mir
Kibla, Maribor

live sound event / Friday, 18 Nov 2022, at 20:00
part of Parallel soundscapes
Kino Šiška, Ljubljana

installation / 22 – 24 Sept 2022
Speculum Artium 2022
Delavski dom in Trbovlje

sound event / Sunday, 10 July 2022
installation / 10 July – 18 Sept 2022
20th Festival of Contemporary Arts – Art Stays
Ptuj City Gallery

live sound event / Thursday, 5 May 2022, at 20:00
multi-channel sound installation / 5 – 29 May 2022
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana

COLOPHON
Artist: Marko BATISTA
Text: Jasmina ZALOŽNIK
Co-workers: Boštjan ČADEŽ, Brane ŽDRALO, Boris ŠALETIĆ
Translation and editing: Melita SILIČ
Curated by: Irena PIVKA, Brane ZORMAN
Organization: Irena PIVKA, Ana MIZERIT
Public relations: Matej TOMAŽIN, Mateja LAVRIČ

Production: Cona, Institute for Contemporary Arts Processing, 2022
Co-organization: Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova
Venue: + MSUM, Maistrova 3, Ljubljana, hosts the work Vitreous Sky