Current
Flow is a sound walk along the Drava River that addresses the riverine biosphere at a time of dwindling water resources. The phenomena of the power plant and the river as architects of urban structures will form the sonic object of the first part of the project’s research, which explores the geopolitical pressures surrounding the exploitation of natural resources and questions of community in relation to power plants.
Visitors are kindly asked to bring headphones and a phone.
- Audio Walk
Meeting point: at Studenška brv on Strma ulica (Lent side), Maribor
Authors: Jan Krmelj and Robertina Šebjanič
Production: Maska Ljubljana and Nagib Maribor
Graphic design: Niko Lapkovski
Financial support: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana, City of Maribor
Jan Krmelj and Robertina Šebjanič, as part of an artistic residency in Maribor, are exploring the Fala Hydroelectric Power Plant as a nexus between physics, ecology, and human stories. The project departs from the Fala Hydroelectric Power Plant on the Drava River, which has defined the development of the settlement ever since its construction; the material benefit of electricity generation was translated, in an almost metaphysical way, into the generation of communal potential. A cinema was built alongside the power plant; since most of the people employed in the settlement also worked at the power plant, electricity quite literally connected the community.
The project establishes a more-than-human (multispecies) ecosystem of perception, in which sound, light, and movement become carriers of relationships between human and non-human actors (flora and fauna, water, sediment, infrastructure). As part of the project, we enter a space where the Drava River does not merely flow through the landscape, but through bodies, thereby establishing a hybrid infrastructure sustained by turbines and electrical conductors, as well as by human bodies, themselves fundamentally driven by a specific flow of electricity. The Fala Hydroelectric Power Plant becomes a resonant chamber where the currents of water, electricity, and the invisible vibrations of living beings meet. Natural and human-made objects breathe with the space: they oscillate, circulate, and transmit forces that we cannot directly perceive. The rotation and movement of the planet, the resistance of water, the tension between stability and flow. The Fala Hydroelectric Power Plant and its surroundings become a space of mutual influence — where the human is no longer at the centre, but one of the frequencies within the wider, more-than-human orchestra of the world.
At the same time, with this transition, spaces of community have disintegrated: the cinema first became a bowling alley, and over the past decade has become a privately run hospitality establishment. Most of the residents in the surrounding area are no longer employed at the power plant; the site sends its surplus energy to other regions, while its surroundings have been emptied of history and serve as a place of residence for people who leave the area, together with its electrical current, day after day.
The residency will be presented in the form of a sound walk.
