Unfamiliar Area in Alkatraz | (Un)familiar Area: Diffused Agency

09 May 2025 > 30 May 2025 You are kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition (Un)Familiar Area: Diffused Agency by Beti Frim, Daša Vinšek, Karin Vrbek and Lara Žagar, on Friday, 9 May, at 7 pm, at Alkatraz Gallery, ACC Metelkova mesto. The exhibition stems from the on-line unit Unfamiliar Area and is curated by Lučka Zajc.

(Un)familiar Area: Diffused Agency
Beti Frim, Daša Vinšek, Karin Vrbek, Lara Žagar

The world we live in is not burning in flames, but rather gradually falling apart. The catastrophe is not something we have already survived or are still waiting for – it is the state we are currently in. Culture seems to be caught between chronic nostalgia and the loss of any possibility of genuine innovation, between the hyperproduction of stimuli and total numbness. In such a world, reality as shaped by capitalism has become a form of ideology – something we accept as an experiential given, something inevitable – without bothering to understand its construction. Capitalism today no longer needs apologists – its greatest trick is that it appears natural. When it becomes invisible, it has an even more ruthless effect: faceless, without centres of power, like a system that acts of its own accord, but with very concrete consequences.

The exhibition (Un)familiar Area inhabits the very crevice of this system. It stems from the eponymous web project conceived by Nina Baznik during the Covid-19 crisis, which, with its title image – of a confused, but sensitive spirit – already indicated territories of psychological landscapes of discomfort, disintegration and sensitivity. Although we observe the pandemic as a thing of the past, we still feel disoriented. The world has remained loose. It is in this context that the exhibition is situated as a selection of artists who have exhibited within the Unfamiliar Area platform, although their work does not simply bring another perspective on mental anguish or the thematization of the post-apocalypse. The works are meditations on the ruins of the world that is breaking apart before our eyes, and, simultaneously, a reminder that anthropocentrism is slowly fading away and that human is just another actor in an interspecies interdependence. The artists question the possibilities of co-existence, adaptation and survival in these ruins.

The works of art by Lara Žagar, Karin Vrbek and Beti Frim do not consider the future as a linear development, but rather as a space of tiny, sometimes almost invisible cracks, from which something unexpected grows. Their images, installations and spatial interventions establish a dialogue with the feelings of anxiety, alienation, loss – but do not stay on the side of helplessness in this contact. The exhibition thus becomes a space where capitalist ruins are not only a symbol of doom, but also a soil from which something new can emerge. If today we are in a period when there are no longer clear alternatives, when even success means only new fodder for the system, then it has become important to look at the edges, at the instabilities, at forms of survival that do not depend on control, but on cooperation – with each other, with other species and with the environment.

Together with the artists, we enter into the landscapes of decaying systems, but also into the weaving of new, more tender bonds. These are not catastrophic endings, but rather microcosmic studies of what remains and what emerges anew when dominant structures lose their power.

In the video animation titled Trashies (2023), Beti Frim uses 3D scans of waste to create a digital archipelago that presents discarded materials as a documentary fascination and as a geological trace of human presence. The animation is an exploration of waste as an object that simultaneously records, transforms and invites reflection on the human relationship to space. A similar hybrid environment is established in the work Glitch Nostalgia (2025), where an ambient karaoke-projection with an adaptation of the song Srne (Deer) by the ensemble of Miha Dovžan becomes an interactive audio-visual landscape. The visitor's voice during singing triggers animated glitch disturbances that symbolise the disintegration of memory, nature and love under the weight of digitalisation. In doing so, Beti Frim conceptualises nostalgia not only as an emotion, but also as ecological state – the world that is disappearing in fading connections.

In her work Static Relic (2025), Lara Žagar puts a soft veneer on the otherwise hard core of automotive technology – the gearbox, the mechanism in the guts of the machine that transmits power and enables movement. However, when this mechanical interface loses its function, it does not lose its meaning – rather, it transforms it. The object that once provided control over speed and direction becomes a 'zombie-object': a remnant of a world that still exists, but without the desire to dominate. The infantilisation of the machine here is not merely a critique of industrial logic, but an invitation to adopt a different attitude – one that seeks contact, not power; softness, not control.

In the interactive work entitled Transient (2020), Karin Vrbek and Daša Vinšek show the world after the catastrophe through the digital archive of a lone female doctor. Fragments of memory, medical experiments and audio-visual horror reveal the inner world of the protagonist, but also the world as such that has unravelled. The work unfolds serially and provides a slow, personal entry into a broken-down order. Moreover, Karin Vrbek presents a series of five posters titled Android Biology (2025), by means of which she explores what it means to be human – not as a biological fact, but as an embodied complexity. Icons of the beginning of life (a foetus), organic fibres and a font that resembles an unknown language and a potential interspecies code form a visual poetry of symbiosis and diffused agency. Instead of a centralised subject, a grid emerges – techno angels, gelatinous creatures and posthuman figures indicate a post-end-of-the-world world no longer based on control, but on collaboration. The fragments of thoughts 'we exist in a vacuum of notions', 'two-way communication = the only way you know love' act as reminders that complexity – not purity – is the focus of new existence.

In each of these works, different ways of persisting and transforming in a world that is no longer reliable or whole are delineated. But it is in this fractured, fragile landscape that new ways of relating — between species, technologies, memories and materials – are sprouting. The artists thus do not offer utopia, but rather microscopes to observe what remains and what defies. The exhibition is a meditation on the collapse of the world, as well as on the possibility of a new beginning that is not based on domination, but on interdependence and spontaneity. It is not a comforting utopia, but an invitation to listen attentively to the world that breathes past large systems.

Lučka Zajc

In her work, Beti Frim aka Pixel Bambi (2001) focuses on the theme of co-existence by combining digital and analogue media in audio-video narratives. By exploring post-internet aesthetics in combination with the natural, she seeks connections between different perspectives in a visually oversaturated world. In the field of art, she has exhibited in the Kres exhibition at Osmosis and participated in BIO28 with the Xenoscapers collective and in the 35th Ljubljana Graphic Biennial with her work From Moss-centric era. She is also active in the field of music, where she has participated in festivals, such as Sonica, Grounded, Niansa (Nuance) and Red Dawns with audio-visual projects, and works with the collectives Ustanova (Establishment) and Nimaš izbire (No Choice).

Lara Žagar (1993) creates long-term projects that explore the visual experience of the environment and her relationship to it. She combines research on living systems in the interplay between biomedical practices and the integration with field study and digital research methods. She is interested in the environmental, social and geopolitical changes that shape the present and influence the imaginary of possible futures. By engaging fiction as a working methodology, she explores its self-fulfilling potential – predicting dystopias and utopias and examining their possibilities and limitations.

Karin Vrbek (1998, Slovenj Gradec) is a person who happened to be here, in this moment, and analyses the experience of conscious existence. Her art? Hmm ... can we even call it that? It is up to you, but somehow everything that she does is connected to a sense of alienation. She will probably spend the rest of her life searching for the perfect words, the exact melody and the purest expression to sublimate separateness.

Daša Vinšek (1998, Slovenj Gradec) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana as a designer of unique objects. In her artworks, she transforms feelings and experiences into matter through a diverse range of media. Since she is an interior designer, in her artistic work, she is also fascinated by the design of holistic experiences and ambient settings. The direct contact with the material and the freedom of the work allows her to expand her horizons and explore unknown paths.

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Other Unfamiliar Area exhibitions

Nina Baznik: Unfamiliar area (Neznano področje)
and others (at the bottom of the page)
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Curated by: Lucija Zajc
Proof-reading: Sonja Benčina
Translation to English: Ana Makuc
Unfamiliar Area image design: Nina Baznik
Thanks to: SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts

Financial support: Ministry for Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City Council Ljubljana - Department for Culture