exhibitions / 17 – 18 Nov 2022, at 17:00
Robertina ŠEBJANIČ: Line |  +1233m  –1233m
Jata C: Chronolith

live sound events / Thursday, 17 Nov, at 20:00
Colin BLACK: Triangulation
Robertina ŠEBJANIČ: Line |  +1233m  –1233m

live sound events / Friday, 18 Nov, at 20:00
Marko BATISTA: Vitreous Sky
Jata C: Chronolith

The Steklenik Gallery in collaboration with Kino Šiška presents a series of four sound events and two installations under the joint title Parallel Soundscapes, which will take place between November 17 and 18, 2022, at Kino Šiška. The exhibitions Chronolith and Line | +1233m –1233m will be accessible from 17:00, and the sound events will start at 20:00 each day.

Parallel Soundscapes present an overview of the current production of the Steklenik Gallery for Sound, Bioacoustics and Art. The selected works of art explore and question various and at the same time rather related topics of mankind’s relationship to nature and itself. From one’s own movement patterns and interactions with the environment, to issues of the material conceptualization of living and non-living things; the participating artists call for a revaluation of seemingly established views and attitudes towards nature, society and our individual interconnectedness in their intertwining systems.

Participating artists: Marko BATISTA, Colin BLACK, Robertina ŠEBJANIČ and Jata C (beepblip, OR poiesis, Boštjan PEROVŠEK, Bojana ŠALJIĆ PODEŠVA, Brane ZORMAN).

PURCHASE A TICKET FOR THE SOUND EVENTS

THURSDAY, 17 Nov 2022

Colin BLACK: Triangulation
sound event

On Thursday, November, 2022, the artist Colin BLACK will present his work Triangulation, which is based on the research of the angles, distances, connection and positioning of one’s own body. The goal is to expose the idea that our ecologies are not as stable as once thought, as they change and are in constant flux within themselves and with each other. Through the artistic process of sound trigonometry, listeners are offered opportunities for self-reflection and re-evaluation of how we map space and environments and how memory abstracts the charting of a place.

The work consists of the artist’s personal sound recordings collected on travels from the Arctic Circle to the Australian desert and many other acoustic ecologies in between. The collected album of sound places aims to reveal the ever-increasing presence of imprints of human activity. Additionally, the artist’s process subtly encourages the audience to triangulate their own personal position in the world with issues of global sustainability and our shared survival on planet Earth.

Colin Black, PhD, is an internationally renowned sound artist who won the 2015 New York Festivals Award for Best Sound Art, Prix Italia 2003 (Best Composed Work) and was shortlisted as a finalist at Prix Phonurgia Nova (France), Prix Marulić (Croatia), Grand Prix Nova (Romania) and the APRA Professional Development Awards (Australia). He has received several national and international commissions to create innovative sound installations in Australia, USA and Europe. As a curator, he has participated in international festivals and presentations of award-winning Australian acoustic and radio art, including at Resonance104.4fm (London), Kunstradio (ÖRF, Austria) and Toronto’s New Adventures In Sound Art (Toronto). He recently became a visiting research fellow at Goldsmiths University in London and a lecturer at Southern Cross University (Australia). He previously held occasional academic lectures at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, Germany, and the University of Technology in Sydney.

Robertina ŠEBJANIČ: Line |  +1233m  –1233m
sound event and installation

On Thursday, November 17, 2022, the artist Robertina ŠEBJANIČ will present her sound work Line | +1233m –1233m, which now rises above sea level in a vertical line from the depths of the sea that represent her multi-year opus. The sound work and the installation combine a slice of the sea’s influence in a vertical band deep below and above the horizon. The text of the work published in the volume was prepared by Lena ORTEGA.

As written by the artist: According to the Renaissance mathematician Evangelista Torricelli, the discoverer of atmospheric pressure, “we live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air, which is known by irrefutable experiments to have weight.” The atmosphere is an ocean and the ocean is the atmosphere, with its turbulence, presence and microclimate.

The sonority of the deep sea, in pressure, atmospheres that our body cannot reach, transforms into sonorities unknown to us. The work questions the sonoritiesof the atmosphere at a point –1233m deep in the Adriatic Sea and, through intertwining sonorities, climbs to 1233m above sea level. The audio-visual narrative speaks of our (dis)connection with aquatic situations, the aquaforming that takes place deep below the decks of our ships due to our industrialization of seascapes.

Robertina ŠEBJANIČ is an artist whose work deals with the biological, (geo)political and cultural reality of aquatic environments, investigating the impact of humanity on other organisms. Her projects call for the development of empathetic strategies aimed at recognizing other (non-human) species. In her analysis of the Anthropocene and its theoretical framework, the artist uses the terms “aquatocene” and “aquaforming”, which denote the human influence on aquatic environments. Her works have been awarded and nominated for Prix Ars Electronica, Starts Prize and Falling Walls, among others.

Lena ORTEGA ATRISTAIN (Leena Lee) is a sound artist, researcher, designer and teacher with an MA in Visual Arts and a PhD in Art History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her doctoral studies focused on contemporary art that works with nature/natural phenomena as a medium, where she approaches these constructions from the context of atmosphere and the embodied experience of nature.

FRIDAY, 18 Nov 2022

Marko BATISTA: Vitreous Sky
sound event

On Friday, November 18, 2022, Marko BATISTA will perform his sound work Vitreous Sky, which is a continuation of the author’s artistic reflection and exploration of modern, post-factual society in relation to technological progress or simply relations in the society–nature–technology triangle in the context of ecocritical discourse, environmental policies and current humanistic concepts. The sound work will be established through the electrolysis of toxic compounds, which produce a sound image within an extended electronic system in the process of self-oscillation and extraction.

This is an idiosyncratic continuation of the positions established by the author with the project Fluid Particles of Volcanic Ash (Gallery 001, 2017), an apocalyptic sound-spatial installation in which, despite the absence of the Anthropocene, its indirect presence is clearly presented to the viewer: a devastated landscape in which remain only traces of a handful of surviving (post)humanoids. The text of the work published in the volume was prepared by Jasmina ZALOŽNIK.

Marko BATISTA is a Ljubljana-based intermedia artist and experimenter working with audiovisual content. He graduated in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO) in Ljubljana, and then completed his master’s studies at Central Saint Martins in London. He works at the intersection between art and science and collaborates with various important venues. Together with ALUO students, he designed an art project as part of the 50th Venice Biennial VV2. At the invitation of the curators, he was a guest at the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Ars Electronica in Linz, the Berlin Transmediale festival and NET. Audio in London. For many years, he has been cooperating with local festivals of intermediate art Pixxelpoint and MFRU in Maribor. He presented his entire opus at the Carinthian Gallery of Fine Arts, Dvorana Jedinstvo in Zagreb, the Vžigalica Gallery in Ljubljana and the DDT Trbovlje Gallery. He has been cooperating with the Cona Institute for many years. Curator Boris Groys presented his work as part of the U3 edition in the Museum of Modern Art. He was also included in all retrospective exhibitions of Slovenian art presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova.

Jasmina ZALOŽNIK is a playwright, theatrologist, reviewer/critic and producer in the field of contemporary performative arts and new media art forms. She completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Visual Culture and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen in Great Britain. She is an active member of the Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia collective, the City of Women and professional associations. She publishes articles in scientific and theoretical journals in Slovenia and abroad.

Jata C: Chronolith
sound event and installation

On Friday, November 18, 2022, the bioacoustic group Jata C will present its sound work and installation Chronolith, which thematizes the world of rocks, temporality and our ingrained interdependence. The work will consist of a multi-channel sound composition with a stone installation that will act as a simple stone instrument.

In the research process, Jata C cooperates with scientists from the fields of micropaleontology, geology and physics, as well as the project’s supporter, the Marmor Hotavlje company. In addition to the sound from the stone, which is captured with various field recording devices (geophones, contact microphones), sound is also generated from images (spectral analysis of stone scans with a sound modulator). Processed recordings and databases are composed into an electroacoustic composition with a score for live performance. Through digital analysis, image-to-sound translation and vibration measurements, they create their own artistic interpretation of the material sound of the lithosphere.

Jata C (beepblip, OR poiesis, Boštjan PEROVŠEK, Bojana ŠALJIĆ PODEŠVA, Brane ZORMAN) is an artistic group whose members share a fondness for field recordings, bioacoustics and sound ecology. They combine the research of auditory perceptions with ecological and social topics, which they expand with scientific discourse and original ideas about sound environments. In the compositions, recordings from the immediate environment are transformed into speculative projections for the future and auditory perceptions of the present. In their work, they use a wide range of devices to capture acoustic phenomena. Their recording methods include so-called deep listening with a non-anthropocentric attitude towards biotic and non-biotic entities.

Ida HIRŠENFELDER (beepblip) works in the field of sound and intermedia art. She is interested in media history, archives, their disappearance and media archaeology. She collaborates with the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, the Topography of Sound festival and within the radioCona programme.

Petra KAPŠ (OR poiesis) is an artist and researcher of sound, auditory perception and poetic performance. She expands words in the sonorous spheres of time/space poetry. With all the digital dimensions, the physical presence of the body is central to her.

Boštjan PEROVŠEK, artist, composer and sound designer, composes experimental electroacoustic music. His speciality is the creation of bioacoustic music based on the sounds of animals, especially insects. He collaborates with the SAETA group, and also creates music for film and theatre, performances, multimedia installations and soundscapes for museums and galleries.

Bojana ŠALJIĆ PODEŠVA, a composer, devotes herself mostly to researching sound as an entity that affects the listener physically and substantively. Her music oscillates between complete abstraction and complex semantic languages. She is the recipient of a number of awards for concert works, stage and film music.

Brane ZORMAN is an intermedia artist, composer, sound manipulator, producer and curator. He composes sound works for theatre, intermedia and dance performances. He performs electroacoustic solo compositions and improvisations with domestic and foreign artists in surround sound.

Colophon
Artists: Colin Black, Robertina ŠEBJANIČ, Marko BATISTA and Jata C (beepblip, OR poiesis, Boštjan PEROVŠEK, Bojana ŠALJIĆ PODEŠVA, Brane ZORMAN)
Production: Cona for the Steklenik Gallery, 2022
Organisation: Irena PIVKA
Public relations: Matej TOMAŽIN
Design: Matej TOMAŽIN
Co-organisation: Kino Šiška
Venue: Kino Šiška

The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and European Union from the European Regional Development Fund.