Today the real of photography is a field in which billions of photographs linger, lives, reproduces themselves, flickers with the frequency of the digital screen, ornaments themselves with likes, comments and remarks, and constantly battles for the fleeting attention – which seem so fleeting that it seems that fort his »new« photography one does not even need the »old« photographic attention – because it is being replaced by some other more profound, for some even ominous, attention of the eye of the apparatus of algorithms. Does it even matter nowadays how we as humans see and experience photographs? Is it the more pertinent question what does the Google see? Indeed, what do the “glasses” see? It seems as we would be looking through the transparent screen, as a “window to the world” (as was long the description of photography) whereas in fact we are looking at the screen – at the veil of transparency, shrouding the reality. If one would be able to go through the glasses – what kind of the world would one find there?

The Rabbit Hole projects simultaneously question the present-day reality and unveil the ways of its technological embeddedness while hinting on the possibilities of its future permutations.

The accompanying programme will be in Slovene with an exception of 27 February event which will be held in English and will be happening in M3 + M4 Conference Hall.

In cooperation with Membrana Institute and Fotografija magazine

Held as part of the Slovenia 2050 Festival

Exhibition opening: 20 January 2020 at 20.00

Curators (Membrana): Jasna Jernejšek, Jan Babnik

Artists: Marion Balac (France), Jojakim Cortis & Adrian Sonderegger (Switzerland), Miha Godec & Valerie Wolf Gang (Slovenia), Simon Menner (Germany), Špela Škulj (Slovenia)

From the early belief in the power of photography to ‘steal souls’ to the present-day belief in its power to ‘steal data’, our understanding of the origin of the medium’s special power has changed and evolved – from being anchored in the perception of photography as a magical emanation of reality to currently stemming from its embeddedness in data systems (and its power of manipulation) within the omnipresent apparatus of social surveillance.

In practices as diverse as photojournalism and spiritualism, photography has been invested with the notion that it can reveal more than the human eye, piercing the reality and turning unseen into seen, absent into present, distant into close, transgressing both the limitations of human perception and physical limitations of space and time. That is builds illusory and fantastical landscapes, whilst dispelling illusory perceptions of the world. Photography has created a new – expressly photographic – dimension of seeing and has never ceased to excite our explorative spirit in probing into the unknown, invisible, incomprehensible, exaggerated, enchanted – i.e. the world of magic.

This special power of photography has persisted to this very day, with the difference that the onetime ‘analogue’ magic has been replaced by a new, much more elusive, uncontrollable and inscrutable magic of algorithmic equations, machine vision, virtual and enhanced realities – the magic of our dystopic future. Photography has never been denied its original mystical aspects – and thus continues to be one of the most magical modern-day technologies.

V torek, 5. novembra 2019, ogled predstavitev v Prvem preddverju ne bo mogoč. Hvala za razumevanje.

You are cordially invited to attend the opening of the Widows and an Orphan photo exhibition to be held on Tuesday, 9 March 2020, at 8 pm.


Artists: Ajda Bevc, Petra Bukovinski, Hana Jesih, Maša Majce Mesarič, Ajda Schmidt, Jan Virant
Curated by: Radovan Jenko

Critic: Nataša Kovšca

In collaboration with Membrana 

The group exhibition Instinct represents the works of an international team of artists, who explore how the relationship between animals and humans is ideologically emphasized or concealed with images, and how the concept of instinct defines the process of photography and the photographic representation.

The artists thematize the different aspects of animal representation and address the complex attitude of humans towards animals, their coexistence and the significance of all of this from different points of view: from the conceptual treatment of pets and their respective mythologies (Alexandra Soldatova), the anthropomorphic representation of animals in popular culture and the phenomenon of interspiecies subcultures (Anja Carr), the commercialization and aestheticization of animals, the wild and nature itself (Vanja Bučan), the technological modification of animal extracts in the pharmaceutical industry and the strategies for their advertising (Daniel Szalai), to taxidermy as a standard practice for the conservation of animal carcasses and their classification for the purpose of research and exhibition (Klaus Pichler).

With the cultural marginalization of animals, as John Berger describes the relationship of humans towards animals that took place throughout the 20th century, animals have become consumer goods. The coexistence and the magical belief that shaped the human attitude towards animals has long ago moved aside, making way for the capitalistic production process. Today, humans need animals mainly as a source of food, use them as amusement and spoil them as pets.

An archetypal sewn boat from the Adriatic Sea

The exceptional sewn boat is the most ancient example of an entirely sewn boat ever found in Mediterranean, as it has been dated between the last quarter of the 12th c. and the last quarter of the 10th c. BC. The sewing technique employed for the assemblage of the planking and the related water tightness system are unparalleled. Due to its architectural characteristics, the type of assembly and the early date of the boat, the ship of Zambratija could be considered the archetypal example of sewing boats identified within the Adriatic geographical zone.