03/09 — 10/10/2025
Andrej Škufca, Katrin Euller & Miriam Stoney: Intruders, Uninvited Into Chaos
Curated by Laura Amann Marín
RAVNIKAR in collaboration with the Piran Coastal Galleries
www.ravnikar.org
“None of the insensate forms I saw that night corresponded to the human figure or any conceivable use…”
— Jorge Luis Borges, “There Are More Things”
What if telepathy isn’t science fiction, but the ground floor of existence — a pre-verbal shimmer that pulses beneath language, logic, and even love? Not the movie version, all mind-reading and militarized ESP, but something stranger: an ambient form of knowing, of tuning into the patterns that precede speech. Children sometimes live there. So do octopuses. Perception on the spectrum, dream logic, fungal networks — all operating on frequencies outside the normative bandwidth.
And what if the ones trying to speak to us aren’t even ‘human’ or care about our reception?
In the sci-fi films Solaris (1972), Stalker (1979), and Annihilation (2018), alien entities don’t invade — they persist. They radiate intelligence not through dialogue but through landscape, rhythm, mutation. They don’t want to destroy us. They don’t want to be us. They might not even notice us. And perhaps that’s the most terrifying thing of all. They destabilize not through violence, but through form. They operate on atmospheres rather than arguments.
Now imagine that this kind of slow, ambient, unfathomable consciousness exists not in deep space, but somewhere slightly less dramatic — say, between Koper and Piran.
And it’s made of slime.
Petola, the living skin of the Sečovlje salt pans, is a microbial mat of cyanobacteria, diatoms, and algae cultivated through centuries of embodied care. It is at once infrastructure, archive, and quiet collaborator. Without it, traditional salt production — artisanal, seasonal, gloriously unproductive by capitalist standards — wouldn’t work. Petola doesn’t speak, but it does remember. It does its thing. It is material memory — essential and alive.
This exhibition begins from the suspicion that we are not alone — not in the extraterrestrial sense, but in the epistemological one. That there are things in our immediate environment — microbial, architectural, mineral — that carry intention or resonance beyond our frames of understanding. That the coast itself might be trying to tell us something. The question is not whether we can understand, but whether we can learn to listen differently.
Like Borges’s furniture from nowhere, or the shimmer in Garland’s Annihilation, Petola resists categorization. It is alive, but not expressive; cultivated, but not owned. It’s a gooey witness to centuries of human labor, salt rituals, and ecological entanglement. It embodies the impossibility of ‘the natural’ existing separately from ‘the cultural’. It resists the extractive gaze. It insists on maintenance as a mode of relation. It is, quite literally, a slippery subject.
Meanwhile, just down the coast, Luka Koper orchestrates its own choreography — of cranes, containers, commodities, and cars. If Sečovlje is slow power, Koper is speed logic: 24/7 logistics in full capitalist bloom. Here, infrastructure doesn’t shimmer — it screams. It is extractive, efficient, scalable. The port and the pans form a coastal dialectic: two visions of the future, two temporalities, two kinds of intelligence.
The two-part exhibition Intruders, Uninvited Into Chaos stages this tension within an architectural, typological and socio-political encounter between a large-scale former salt warehouse on the coastline of Portorož and a Venetian Gothic palace on the main square of Koper — the former a concentration point of slow salty power and the latter a center of representation, of commercial and social life.
The works by Andrej Škufca, Katrin Euller, and Miriam Stoney form an alien landscape that remembers this coastal dialectic. It has become part of its DNA, its knowledge, its consciousness — but it is not the same anymore. This pulsating landscape remembers the petola’s patient production and the port’s restless ruckus as something it knew well in the past. But the landscape has evolved — without us, despite us, unbothered by us — and in melancholy moments it shares its electronic ode to a nature that never existed or is now long gone.
Škufca’s sculptural interventions suggest alternate users or use-cases: abstract, unplaceable, slightly menacing? Perhaps furniture for an unknown species, machines for or from a different mode of life — we don’t know. They are speculative prosthetics, functional in unreadable ways or dysfunctional in readable ones. Euller’s sound installation takes the artificial into overdrive, creating speculative resonance and a thick acoustic fog — not ambient as backdrop, but ambient as the matrix that envelops us. It is a zone you move through, or that moves through you. In the meanwhile Stoney’s short texts drift between narrative and non-narrative, inference and refusal. They do not explain; they translate — not in clear and known language, but like an unstable, arhythmic radio signal. But hey: isn’t the medium the message anyway?
Together, these works evoke a sort of ‘philosophical weird realism’ of the Petola. Not symbolism, not allegory, but proximity to a presence that does not reveal itself. They do not romanticize the alien. They dwell with it. They do not ask what it means. They ask how to stay with it, despite not knowing. What if the most radical politics now is not mastery, but maintenance? Not conquest, but curiosity? Not revelation, but relation?
The salt pans don’t ask to be understood and the port doesn’t ask to be loved. And the Zone — whether in science fiction or Slovenian infrastructure — doesn’t promise catharsis. It promises that you will get a little lost, and you better get comfortable with it. To enter this space is to enter that confusion willingly. Not to solve it, but to dwell in it. To let the alien speak — or not — and to listen anyway.
Curiosity got the better of fear.
We did not close our eyes.
By Laura Amann Marín, exhibition curator
Andrej Škufca (1987) is a visual artist and a member of the editorial team of the magazine Šum. His works have been presented, among others, at the National Museum of 21st Century Art MAXXI in Rome; Ludwig Museum in Budapest; Nitja Center for Contemporary Art in Oslo; Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova and Moderna galerija in Ljubljana; Maribor Art Gallery; and the 34th Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts (MGLC).
Laura Amann Marìn auraamann (1986) is a Vienna-based curator and architect, co-founder of Significant Other, a platform exploring intersections of art and architecture. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the De Appel Curatorial Programme Amsterdam, she was part of the curatorial team at Kunsthalle Wien with WHW. Her projects often focus on themes of madness, intimacy, desire, and sensuality as forms of knowledge and resistance. She has taught at the Vienna University of Technology and will become co-curatorial director of Shedhalle Zürich (2026–2030).
______________ SI
»Nobena od nerazumnih oblik, ki sem jih videl tiste noči, se ne sklada s človeško figuro ali kakšno zamisljivo uporabo …«
– Jorge Luis Borges, »There Are More Things« [Obstaja več stvari]
Kaj če telepatija ni znanstvena fantastika, temveč pritličje eksistence – predjezikovno svetlikanje, ki utripa pod jezikom, logiko, celo ljubeznijo? Ne filmska različica z branjem misli in militarizirano zunajčutno zaznavo, ampak nekaj bolj čudaškega: ambientalna oblika védenja oziroma uglašenosti na vzorce, ki predhodijo govoru. Tam včasih živijo otroci. In hobotnice. Zaznavanje na spektru, sanjska logika, omrežja gliv – vse to poteka na frekvencah izven normativnih pasovnih širin.
In kaj če to, kar skuša govoriti z nami, sploh ni »človeško« in mu ni mar, če sporočilo prejmemo?
V znanstvenofantastičnih filmih Solaris (1972), Stalker (1979) in Uničenje (2018) zunajzemeljske entitete ne izvedejo invazije – obdržijo se. Inteligence ne izžarevajo skozi dialog, temveč skozi pokrajino, ritem, mutacije. Ne želijo nas uničiti. Nočejo biti kot mi. Morda nas niti ne zaznajo. In prav to bi lahko bilo še najbolj zastrašujoče. Destabilizirajo ne skozi nasilje, ampak skozi formo. Operirajo z ozračji, ne argumenti.
Sedaj pa si predstavljajte, da neka taka počasna, ambientalna, nezamisljiva zavest obstaja ne v globokem vesolju, temveč na neki nekoliko manj dramatični lokaciji – denimo med Koprom in Piranom.
In da je sluzasta.
Petola, živa povrhnjica Sečoveljskih solin, je mikrobna plast cianobakterij, diatomej in alg, vzgojenih skozi stoletja utelešenega negovanja. Gre za infrastrukturo, arhiv in tihega kooperanta hkrati. Brez nje tradicionalna proizvodnja soli – obrtna, sezonska, veličastno neproduktivna glede na standardne kapitalizma – ne bi bila mogoča. Petola ne govori, si pa zapomni. Dela po svoje. Ona je materialni spomin – bistvena in živa.
Ta razstava izvira iz suma, da nismo sami – ne v zunajzemeljskem, temveč v epistemološkem smislu. Da se v našem neposrednem okolju – mikrobnem, arhitekturnem, mineralnem – nahajajo stvari, katerih namere in resonanca presegajo naše okvire razumevanja. Da nam morda obala skuša nekaj povedati. Vprašanje ni, ali zmoremo razumeti, ampak ali se zmoremo naučiti drugače poslušati.
Petola, kot velja tudi za Borgesovo pohištvo od nikoder ali pa svetlikanje v Garlandovem Uničenju, kljubuje kategorizaciji. Četudi je živa, se ne izraža; četudi je gojena, ni v nikogaršnji lasti. Je sluzasta priča stoletjem človeškega dela, solnih ritualov in ekološkega prepletanja. Uteleša nemožnost, da bi »naravno« obstajalo ločeno od »kulturnega«. Zoperstavlja se ekstraktivističnemu pogledu. Vztraja na vzdrževanju kot načinu relacije. Gre za spolzek teren, v več pomenih.
Medtem malo naprej ob obali Luka Koper orkestrira svojo koreografijo – z dvigali, kontejnerji, blagi in avtomobili. Če so Sečovlje moč dolgotrajnosti, je Koper logika hitrosti: 24/7 logistika v polnem kapitalističnem razcvetu. Tu se infrastruktura ne svetlika, ampak kriči. Je ekstrakcijska, učinkovita, skalabilna. Pristanišče in soline tvorijo obalno dialektiko: dve viziji prihodnosti, dve temporalnosti, dve vrsti inteligence.
Vsiljivci, nepovabljeni v kaos je razstava v dveh delih, ki to napetost uprizori znotraj arhitekturnega, tipološkega in družbeno-političnega soočenja med prostranim nekdanjim skladiščem soli na obali Portoroža in beneško gotsko palačo na glavnem trgu v Kopru – med točko zgoščevanja dolgotrajne solne moči na eni strani in središčem reprezentacije ter komercialnega in družabnega življenja na drugi.
Dela Andreja Škufce, Katrin Euller in Miriam Stoney tvorijo zunajzemeljsko pokrajino, ki pomni to obalno dialektiko. Postala je del njene DNA, njenega védenja, njene zavesti – a nič več ni ista. Ta pulzirajoča pokrajina se petoline vztrajne produkcije in nepretrganega trušča v pristanišču spominja kot nečesa, kar je v preteklosti dobro poznala. A pokrajina se je razvila – brez nas, navkljub nam, brez našega vmešavanja – in v momentih melanholije deli svojo elektronsko hvalnico naravi, ki nikdar ni obstajala ali pa je že dolgo ni več.
Skulpturne intervencije Andreja Škufce nakazujejo alternativne uporabnike ali primere rabe: abstraktne, neumestljive, nekoliko grozeče? Lahko bi šlo za pohištvo, namenjeno neznani obliki življenja, stroje, ki so namenjeni drugačnemu načinu življenja ali iz njega prihajajo – preprosto ne vemo. Gre za spekulativno prostetiko, ki je neberljivo funkcionalna ali berljivo disfunkcionalna. Zvočna instalacija Katrin Euller umetno prestavi v overdrive, s čimer ustvari spekulativne resonance in gosto akustično meglo – ambientalno ne v smislu ozadja, temveč matrice, ki nas obdaja. Območje, skozi katerega greš, ali pa gre ono skozi tebe. Medtem kratka besedila Miriam Stoney prehajajo med narativnim in nenarativnim, inferenco in zavrnitvijo. Ne razlagajo, temveč prevajajo – ne v jasnem in znanem jeziku, temveč kot nestanoviten, aritmičen radijski signal. Ampak hej, sporočilo naj bi vendar bil medij, kajne?
Ta dela skupaj izzovejo nekakšen »filozofski čudaški realizem« petole. Ne simbolizma, ne alegorije, temveč bližino prezence, ki se ne razkrije. Zunajzemeljskega ne romantizirajo. Z njim sobivajo. Ne sprašujejo, kaj pomeni. Sprašujejo, kako ostati ob njem, kljub temu da ne vemo. Kaj če v tem trenutku najbolj radikalna politika ni obvladanje, temveč oskrbovanje? Ne zavzetje, temveč vedoželjnost? Ne razkritje, temveč razmerje?
Soline ne iščejo razumevanja in pristanišče ne prosi ljubezni. In Območje – bodisi v znanstveni fantastiki bodisi v slovenski infrastrukturi – ne obljublja katarze. Obljublja, da se boš malo izgubil, in bolje bo, da se na to kar navadiš. Stopiti v ta prostor pomeni zavestno vstopiti v to zmedo. Ne da bi jo razrešili, temveč da bi v njej bivali. Da bi zunajzemeljskemu pustili spregovoriti – ali ne – in v vsakem primeru poslušali.
Vedoželjnost je premagala strah.
Nismo zamižali.
Andrej Škufca (1987) je vizualni umetnik in član uredniške ekipe revije Šum. Njegova dela so bila predstavljena, med drugimi, v Narodnem muzeju umetnosti 21. stoletja MAXXI v Rimu; Ludwig Muzeum v Budimpešti, Centru za sodobno umetnost Nitja v Oslu; Muzeju sodobne umetnosti Metelkova in Moderni galeriji v Ljubljani; Umetnostni galeriji v Mariboru; 34. grafičnem bienalu v Ljubljani (MGLC).
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