ATLANTIS ▪︎ Manja Ristić & Aleksandar Lazar
Opening: Thursday, June 11, 7 p.m.
The exhibition Atlantis presents a new collaborative investigation by artists Manja Ristić and Aleksandar Lazar, grounded in the sonic geography of the Atlantic Ocean and its energetic, historical and ecological turbulences. Beginning with the underwater canyon of Nazaré in Portugal – one of the most dramatic oceanic phenomena in the world – the artists develop an interdisciplinary work that weaves together sound, visual structures and the memory of place.
Nazaré, where waves over thirty metres high collide with the shore, becomes a site for examining the relationship between natural forces and anthropogenic traces. Microplastics, chemical imbalances, disrupted currents and damaged ecosystems enter the work as concrete frequencies – as noises and vibrations that shape the acoustic landscape. Hydrophone, field and terra-phone recordings become mnemonic structures, ways of sensing how a place remembers and how its energy settles into bodies and materials.
The visual layer created by Aleksandar Lazar: multi-channel video installations, holographic projections, and cymatic feedback structures, reveals the landscape from within, through its vibrational matrix and the micro-kinetics of light. Rather than depicting the landscape, the work opens access to its internal dynamics.
Atlantis is a work about listening as an ethical act – listening to landscapes, bodies, the ocean, and their hidden micro-structures. The exhibition invites visitors to immerse themselves in a synesthetic field in which sound and image transform one another, revealing that every place, when approached through attentive listening, is an infinite archive.
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Manja Ristić is a sound artist, violinist, composer and curator born in Belgrade. At the center of her practice is the exploration of the poetics of space, ecological listening, and the subtle interrelationships of memory, ecology, and embodied experience. She is the author of the practice of mnemonic topography, a listening technique through which sound becomes a means of mapping memories and invisible layers of the landscape. Her work is characterized by immersive soundscapes and a methodologically thoughtful integration of documentary sonic recordings with speculative and abstract sound structures, forming layered compositions that resonate with emotional, social and political depth. (https://manjaristic.blogspot.com/)
Aleksandar Lazar is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is based on the intersection of visual and sound art. Through his practice, he strives to deepen the human understanding of the connection between sound and image by exploring new ways of combining these elements into a coherent and meaningful artistic expression. Therefore, his works are often immersive and involve multisensory activation and can be characterized as synesthetic art, or “visual music”. Lazar is the winner of several awards for extended media and innovative approaches to graphics, he has achieved numerous collaborations with local and international artists, and he has participated in various scientific/artistic symposia and art and science festivals.