KIBLIX 2024 | Imprints of Gravity

KIBLIX 2024 | Imprints of Gravity
6–14 December 2024
MMC KIBLA

On Friday, 6 December 2024, at 7 p.m., we invite you to MMC KIBLA for the opening of the group exhibition Imprints of Gravity featuring the projects LAND by Branimir Štivić, GRACE, an attempt at touching by GVR Institute for Contemporary Art and The Digital Wilds: Reflections in the Virtual World by Jaka Waldhütter, Monika Pocrnjić and workshop participants.

Branimir Štivić
LAND, 2024
installation (aluminum, brass, LED panels, custom elektronics, debris)

The techno-floating island is an ancient artifact from a bygone era of tourist-oriented post-Ford capitalism. It is the only legacy of a long-lost civilization. The last landmass outlived its creators even after the catastrophic rise in sea levels, the tidal wave of microplastics, fuel oil, global warming, and mass exploitation. Irradiation web servers have survived all these years, transmitting encrypted information to transoceanic antennas. Inscrutable graphics resembling paleotourism routes depicting the last uninhabited landmass left on the watery planet Earth and unknown objects from which the habits and traditional customs of ancient bathers have been reconstructed using machine learning methods. The exact origin of this floating island is unknown, but the ancient techno-station does not escape the ravages of time and the curiosity of the observer…

Branimir Štivić (1991) graduated in New Media from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts (2021) and in Information and Software Engineering from the Varaždin Faculty of Organisation and Informatics (2015). His artistic work involves sound and light installations, audio/visual performances, live film, expanded cinema performance, programming art, AI and sound for contemporary dance performances. He predominantly starts with sound, using technology and programming codes as the primary medium in his recent works for a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the mediality of air, breathing, wind, pneumatics, soil, LED technology, the physicality of pixels, lost footage, neural synthesis, animism, and the vitality of objects and matter in the age of the Technosphere and the Anthropocene.
He is a member of the ARBAJT Collective, where he focuses on questioning the relationship between art and work. He collaborated with DB Indoš: House of Extreme Music Theatre in performances I:O: and Kužni Ifrit. His works have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Atelieri Žitnjak, Šira, Prozori, Lauba, Pogon Jedinstvo, Kazamat, NMG@Praktika, Gallery SC. He performed at Device_art 7.021, 25fps, Vector Hack, ZEZ, Sonica, SineLinea, Monoplay and Barutana. As part of the “on-the-fly” artist-in-residence program, he performed at Het Orgelpark in Amsterdam; in the frame of the ZEZxSonica AIR program, he performed as a SHAPE+ artist in Cankarjev Dom in Ljubljana. He participated in the Reassemble Lab: Weatherscapes laboratory, organized by the FIBER Festival Amsterdam.

https://branimirstivic.com/

The work was produced by the Metamedia association, as part of the Summer Sessions program, co-funded by the City of Pula, Region of Istria, Kultura Nova Foundation and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.

< Branimir Štivić: Land, 2024

GRACE
an attempt at touching

“All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.” – Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

While the mass media chase emotional hurricanes and provide fast food information, grace works on the level of tiny bursts, gentle connections, and quiet interventions. Grace is driven by emptiness. Megabytes reach other continents in seconds and expand their spare parts. Let's take off our shoes. Let's get off the ground. Every person and every object is involved. Take one. With the feeling of gravity.

Painting with light dissolves the wall and opens up the silence. Everyone present exhales observations and inhales new ones. We think with our souls and our understanding melts gently like an ice cube in a glass of warm water. Every gesture in this attempt at touching is like the woman from the Rijksmuseum pouring milk from a jug into a bowl in mock silence and concentration. Grace is not a code, but an interweaving of our senses in the fragile context of before and after.

"I woke up from the common nightmare into my own and I saw an angel in it. It stood in the sun and called out in a loud voice to all the birds flying in the sky." – Tomaž Šalamun and Iva Jevtić

production: GVR Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana
co-production: Cirkulacija², Kino Šiška, ACE KIBLA
The project is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana

< Photo: Sunčan Stone

Jaka Waldhütter, Monika Pocrnjić and workshop participants
The Digital Wilds: Reflections in the Virtual World, 2024
virtual exhibition of digital collages and avatars in Spatial

The Digital Wilds: Reflections in the Virtual World is the result of six days of workshops exploring the links between nature, identity and virtual reality. During the creative process, participants questioned what nature means to them and how technology such as virtual reality can become a space for personal expression and co-creation. The virtual exhibition highlights how technology does not divide but connects - nature, individuals and community. The creative process revealed how virtual worlds can serve as a space for reflection and expression, while fostering a sense of connectedness.

< generated with DALL-E