Petra Feriancová: Porifera
Study room project
Curated by: Judit Angel
September 29 to November 4,2022
Opening: September 29th, 6 p.m.
venue: tranzit.sk, Beskydská 12, 81105 Bratislava
open: Tuesday – Friday: 2:30 -6.30 p.m.
The study room is part of tranzit’s new program, and functions as a library, research, and learning lab as well as a display space for individual art projects. It combines the dynamics of lectures, workshops, conversations, and participatory activities with moments of reflection and immersion. The art projects presented here relate to tranzit’s general program based on a critique of the Anthropocene, and address issues such as the environmental crisis, modernity, and decoloniality, collaborative practices of knowledge production, and the politics of everyday life.
The first in a series of upcoming presentations is Petra Feriancová’s Porifera installation, based on her long-term research on animalhood. What is an animal? What are the differences between living beings and non-living matter, between animals and plants? How do humans relate to animals? What is life? – are questions she constantly addresses, be it about (mostly) photographic archives, texts or found objects. While she views breeding as connected with motherhood and (pro)creation, for her, the underwater world represents a source for explorations into the origins of life, the evolution of species and the question of immortality.
Poriferans, commonly known as sponges, are considered to be the simplest and earliest multicellular organisms, the first animals. They have unique regenerative capacities and symbiotic properties, and are regarded as ecosystem engineers, as they create space used by diverse invertebrate communities and some vertebrates. The installation in the study room makes use of both natural and fabricated sponges as well as texts which interact with the existing knowledge of the visitors, while urging them to think about the position of humans in the universe, the fragility and durability of life, the immensity of nature and the limits of our knowledge.
Petra Feriancová was born in 1977 in Bratislava. She works with photography, sculpture, and installation, while also creating books. She explores the archives of people closest to her and other materials, interpreting and re-organizing them in a non-linear manner in the pursuit of finding alternative structures for how meaning and matter are constructed and perceived.
ERSTE Foundation is main partner of tranzit.
Petra Feriancová: Porifera, 2017/2021
Installation, dimensions adjustable
Related
Grounding ~ Seeding
Downloads
Poster_P.pdf (pdf, 182 kb)