Urška Preis, Ivana Vogrinc Vidali, Tery Žeželj: IN THE GROUNDWATERS OF THE BODY – installation

installation
(Slovenia)

The full evening event In the Groundwaters of the Body takes the form of an immersive journey delving into the re-imagination of bodies as porous multivariable communities. This immersive journey attempts to increase sensibilisation for other perspectives and intervene in our standard ways of representing the world and establishing our relationship towards it. Stops on the journey, created by various artists and scientists in collaboration, draw inspiration from both science as well as traditional knowledge, arising from a close relationship with and dependence on nature, linguistics and uttering the unknown, from sensual experiences and tasting. ŠD Tabor is to become a polygon of roads that momentarily blur the boundary between human and non-human, between the human experience and one of an-other.

Multicpieces Landscape – the closing act of the immersive journey In the Groundwaters of the Body – follows a two-year art research project on the relationship with the environment and various bodies that co-create multivariable communities as our habitats of action and change. Understanding the environment both as a process as well as an entity consisting of different relationships, these landscapes strive to find methods for surpassing the binary opposites, for instance nature-culture or dead-alive divides. This research project drew conceptual inspiration from the holobiont as an object of cognition that surpasses individual categories and rather turns its gaze towards the body as a porous environment of different organisms that give birth to life. A quest for different narratives emerges as another key research theme, aligned with Astrida Neimanis and Rachel Loewen Walker’s position that our manner of living in and with the world depends on the manner we imagine this very world to be. The key question, then, is how to imagine it differently.

Authors and curators: Urška Preis, Ivana Vogrinc Vidali, Tery Žeželj and their changing microbiota
Set design: Urška Preis v sodelovanju z/in collaboration with: Ivana Vogrinc Vidali & Tery Žeželj
Interview with Pavel Medvešček: Ivana Vogrinc Vidali
Author and mentor of the soil tasting workshop: masharu
Author and performer of the narrative station: Špela Frlic
Author of the lecture: Anna Dragoš
Author of videos: Ana Pečar
Expert advice: Tomaž Accetto
Technical support: Manca Vukelič
Hostesses and performers: Hana Obreza, Naša Kolenik, Zala Tomažič, Lana Papež, Lara Matos, Ana Cvelfar, Ajda Nina Škvarč
Producers: Maja Vižin, Ajda Koloini
Public relations: Tamara Bračič Vidmar
Produced by: Bunker, Ljubljana
Supported by: Evropska unija – program Ustvarjalna Evropa: Kultura, ACT – Art, Climate, Transition, Ministrstvo za kulturo RS, Mestna občina Ljubljana
Partner: ŠD Tabor
Thanks to: Andreja Kopač, Gaja Naja Rojec, Kristian Božak Kavčič, Aljoša Cetinski

Photo by: Urška Preis, Tery Žeželj