Fantastic Glitch Swamp, 2025Swamp_Matter, 3-channel audio-visual installation, AR sound walk (Meadow, Echoes)
Wetlands, as liminal zones between land and water, defy simple definitions.
These vast areas of perpetual slow decay and uncontrollable growth play a crucial role in regulating climate and terrestrial processes in deep time. They have long evoked both eerie and magical visions of worlds beyond reality on one hand and the desire for control, exploitation, and transformation of this resistant terrain on the other.
photos by Tina Stariha
In Fantastic Glitch Swamp, elements of the marsh reclaim the urban landscape of present-day Ljubljana. The swamp seeps back with full force into what was once a diverse and fluid environment, devastated over centuries of the human colonisation of wetlands. This multimedia composition unfolds as a sound walk with augmented reality stations along the banks of the Ljubljanica River, while parts of the project are also presented as a video and AR installations in the Kamera exhibition space.
By entangling diverse media and elements – from field recordings of the bog’s unheard sounds to chimeric virtual beings – the work evokes a multitude of cultural, disciplinary, and technological attempts to contain the swamp, revealing their intrinsic gaps. Through glitch, it dismantles the limiting ideas and imaginaries of human exceptionalism, opening up a fantastically unstable zone beyond the ossified fantasy of the swamp, fluidly passing between multiple bodies and dimensions.
Authors: Swamp_Matter (Eva Garibaldi, Ana Laura Richter)
Editing & Compositing: Eva Garibaldi
3D modeling: Ana Laura Richter
Programing: Jernej Koprivnikar
Sound artist: Karmen Ponikvar
Curatorial support: Maja Burja
Scientific Advisory: Aleš Smrekar, ZRC SAZU Geografski inštitut Antona Melika, Prirodoslovni Muzej, direktor Miha Jamšek, dr. Tomi Trilar
Photos Tina Stariha, Eva Bevec
Co-financed by: Department of Culture of the City of Ljubljana
The project was selected through a public call and realized as part of the Cultural Euro 2024 program.
Thanks to: Maks Čelar, Simon Gmajner, Jan Kmet, Maja Šebenik, Video Art d. o. o., Klemen Brank, Saša Spačal, Lučka Centa