Opening of the exhibition On the Ground among the Animals by Italian artist Marina Caneve. The artist explores the ambiguities inherent in the dominating role played by human beings over nature and the tensions that emerge from the human relationship with other animals. The project takes its cue from an analytical study of the network of ecological corridors promoted by the European Union, as part of the Natura 2000 project to preserve fauna, flora and biodiversity.

Triennial of Art and Environment EKO 9 opens its doors! Come with us. If you dare.

On the opening night of the EKO 9 Triennial, we invite you to a concert in the garden of the old sanatorium by Masaž, a fresh group of Aleksander Cavazza, Timotej Poznič, and Sinja Smokvina, who create alternative electropop.

The Wisdom Hours season closes with a visit to the main exhibition of the Triennial of Art and Environment EKO 9, titled Eyes in the Stone. In addition to art that conveys important messages about the environment, we will also focus on the former lung dispensary building at Tyrševa ulica 19 and sit in its green immediate surroundings.

The lecture How to bridge the gap between science and the community – the case of the climate crisis is based on the results of the work of the ZELEN.KOM project which is led by Faculty of Arts of the University of Maribor.

You are invited to the first guided tour of Eyes in the Stone, the main exhibition of the Triennial of Art and Environment EKO 9. Jure Kirbiš, the artistic director of the ninth edition of the triennial, will guide you through the exhibition.

In cooperation with the Grossmann Festival, we invite you to an exhibition of 20 Posters for 20 Years of Grossmann at the Vetrinjski dvor. With the opening of the new accompanying environment, we are announcing the 20th edition of the festival, which will take place in Ljutomer and the surrounding area from 11 to 15 June 2024.

We will meet in a building in the city centre on Tyrševa ulica 19, that has been abandoned for quite a few years. It’s semi-dark rooms and corners are now a temporary home for artworks with very important messages. We’ve prepared some challenges, that you will unravel.  Our tour is going to end with a shorter creative hangout in the garden of the Old sanatorium.

Together with students and mentors of Institut Raum und Gestalt from TU Graz  we will think about the spaces, which are neither full nor empty, neither functionless nor useless.

Our surroundings are filled with stories of the unusual, if not the supernatural. They are man’s way of linking space and time, replacing history. Stories from the past often bridge the gap between reality and the supernatural, and thus continue to capture our attention today. We will learn about some of them during Sunday’s hike to the Devil’s Rocks, led by art historian Simon Žlahtič.

The Earths habitable ability is reducing and hence forcing us, to research new perspectives and search for innovative solutions. Many of those go above the anthropocentric worldview and are encouraging reflections about reevaluating the human relationship with environment and other living beings. The garden and the lung dispensary in centre of Maribor, that are abandoned, are a representation of the persistence and appropriation of living beings, that reside there. Their perseverance and resilience is mirrored in their biological processes, that have in the past 10 years, without human intervention, settled the place. Their properties became an inspiration for artworks created by students. With it, they are challenging well established norms of observing, are checking and broadening the limits of our understanding and shaping new visions of our shared, more than human, future.

In his lecture, Gal Kirn will define the concept of partisan ecology and place it in the context of the Second World War and the Yugoslav partisan struggle (National Liberation Struggle). He will interpret a number of partisan artworks and their authors who tried to depict the immense sensitivity to the non-human world, plants, animals and especially the forest. The author argues that in contrast to the fascist occupation and domination over humans and nature, the partisan movement sought to build a solidarity between the partisans and animals/nature.

In partnership with the Tkalka Gallery, we are launching the second collateral environment of the Triennial EKO 9. Tkalka opened its doors last year and in the course of a year has presented a number of exhibitions that are thematically linked to the themes that we are foregrounding with the Triennial EKO. Together, we invite you to a solo exhibition by Ajda Kadunc, a breakthrough artist of the younger generation, titled Propagation. The exhibition will be presented at the Tkalka Gallery.

You are cordially invited to the presentation of the book Men Face Down by Matjaž Wenzel. The book was created with the support of the Maribor Art Gallery and the EMPACT project as part of the triennial exhibition EKO 9, which is this year entitled Eyes in the Stone.

For this themed tour and lunchtime talk, EKO 9’s artistic director Jure Kirbiš is joined by his artistic advisor Markus Waitschacher and artist Vid Koprivšek. The topic of the talk will be installations linked to the premises of the old sanatorium, where the ninth edition of the EKO Triennial is taking place. The old sanatorium is characterised by its collective memory and modernist architectural design. Some of the artists in the exhibition Eyes in the Stone respond to the character of the spaces, others use objects found in the space, and still others refer to the history of the sanatorium.

As part of this year’s Summer Museum Night, we invite you to a guided tour of the exhibition Eyes in the Stone. It will be led by Jure Kirbiš, artistic director of EKO 9 and curator at the Maribor Art Gallery. The tour will be followed by hanging out in the garden of the old sanatorium with DJ Problématique.

Boris Kolar will take us through the different worlds that emerge in and along the various rivers, streams, ponds, springs and embankments in Maribor, where we will get to know both the biological and the cultural and historical life of these waters.

For a thematic guided tour and talk on 27 June at 13:00 in the old sanatorium, the EKO 9 project leader Živa Kleindienst will be joined by artist Ana Čavić and artist Thomas Hörl. This time they will shed light on the topic of storytelling in different media through a conversation. We will discuss the themes of horror, folklore, landscape and nature as the content and backdrop of stories.

UGM joins the Art Camp, in the Maribor City Park, with it’s EKO 9 workshop. For creating, we will need and colect waste cardboard. Do you know from what cardboard is made of? From trees! We invite you to help us return the cardboard to it’s original form and with that, create a garden from newly made trees.

You are invited to the opening of the fourth EKO 9 Collateral environment, featuring the artist Saša Bezjak. She has created a series of twenty-one original drawings on textile, inspired by the photographs of Terezija Mostler, one of the first Slovenian photographers, who lived and worked in Trata. The photographs on which the embroidered drawings are based are from the collection of the Museum of Madness and depict a now distant way of life in the Slovenian countryside of the past. At a workshop on compassion for nature, held at the Museum of Madness in Trate in September 2023, participants embroidered Saša Bezjak’s drawings into fabric. The series of drawings and embroideries entitled Needle in a Haystack (2024) will be on display at the exhibition at the Judgement Tower of the Maribor Minoriti until 31 August 2024.

In the beautiful atmosphere of the Maribor Puppet Theatre’s Auditorium, we will be watching The Wicker Man (1973) as part of the event Letni kino Minoriti, annual open air cinema. This cult classic of British folk horror has been restored to 4K for its 50th anniversary, and as a final cut. The screening will be followed by a discussion about the film with film critic Marcel Štefančič Jr., moderated by Žiga Brdnik.

In the city center, on Tyrševa ulica, stands an almost 100 years old villa. It’s been abandoned for the past few years, but now it’s a temporary home for many artworks. These artworks hold important stories and messages. You are welcome to see them, if you don’t mind being a little scared.

We invite you to the garden of the old sanatorium on Tyrševa 19, for a lecture by Neja Rakušček on body and ecological horror. The lecture is part of the triennial EKO 9: Eyes in the Stone and is organised in cooperation with the Pekarna Magdalenske mreže and Film Factory, which are running the Film Genres through Social Criticism series for the second year in a row, as a continuation of the History of Film series (2021) and the Theory of Film series (2022). After the lecture, Dr Maja Pan will be in conversation with the guest.

You are invited to a guided tour of the main exhibition of the Triennial of Art and the Environment EKO 9, entitled Eyes in the Stone, which opened in May in the old sanatorium of Dr Černič at Tyrševa 19. You will be guided through the exhibition by the project manager of EKO 9, Živa Kleindienst, on Saturday, 13 July 2024, at 11:00.

We invite you to a workshop with artist Saša Bezjak. First, we will walk to the exhibition space in the Judgement Tower to see her exhibition of sewn drawings, Needle in a Haystack. The artist will be available to answer our questions about the inspiration, creation and message of her artworks.

We are inviting children, to bring interesting found objects, to the workshop. The objects can be small, big, multi or single-coloured. After visiting the Eyes in the Stone exhibition, in which we will see artworks made from ordinary, everyday items, we will create our own statues and out of them, a spatial layout on the garden of old sanatorium.

In this workshop we will learn about wild plants that can be used as wild food in our daily diet or as medicinal plants for various medical conditions. We will collect and taste the plants in the field and serve ourselves a traveller’s wild snack from a basket. The aim of the workshop is for each participant, regardless of their background, to learn some new plants that they can use in their own kitchen and for their own health. We know that wild plants are known for their mineral content, vitamins and various nutrients that are essential for our bodies. However, as there are also plants that can harm us, special care is needed.

The storytelling ensemble of Biserka Bobnar, Lea Hedl, Robert Kereži, Sabina Kotnik, Agica Kovše and Metka Lipnik will take us into the evening with folk tales with elements of the scary.

Vabimo vas na sobotno vodstvo po osrednji razstavi Trienala umetnost in okolje EKO 9: Oči v skali. Vodja projekta EKO 9 Živa Kleindienst vam bo predstavila umetniške projekte, ki skozi šok, nelagodje, grožnjo, občutek brezizhodnosti, pa tudi kritično obravnavo ponujajo priložnost za katarzo v soočenju z okoljsko krizo.

Invited experts from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, contemporary art, cultural anthropology, conservation and heritage science will discuss the social implications of revitalised heritage sites in the urban environment for today’s communities. Among other things, we will address the question of the possibilities of interpreting cultural heritage in relation to contemporary artistic practices and highlight the conservation, architectural and landscape architectural challenges of revitalising heritage settings in the face of climate change.

Dr. Eva Sapač, art historian and conservation advisor at the IPCHS, will present the building history of the modernist villa on Tyrševa, while Dr. Jerneja Ferlež will tell the exciting life story of the owner of the sanatorium, Dr. Mirko Černič, who lived with his family on the first floor of the villa. Join us!

In the scope of the closing events of EKO 9 Triennial, we invite you to a series of artist talks with artists Ana Čavić, Ana Likar and Ana Pečar, moderated by Živa Kleindienst. Three groundbreaking visual artists of different generations, working in video, performative practices, sound, drawing, storytelling, collage and other visual media, will present their interdisciplinary artistic practices.

The participatory performance Act I sees Čavić partially unfurling a five-metre-long paper scroll on a table and inviting the audience to assist her by ‘scrolling’ along while she simultaneously narrates and illustrates the unfolding story mapped out on the elaborately decorated scroll. A meandering text “thread” enables Čavić to take different story paths and, depending on the path taken, to illustrate the story in different ways, thus ensuring that the story is never performed in the same way twice. At the same time, Čavić encourages the audience to “feel” their way through the story by scrolling for, as they follow its literal and figurative twist and turns, they set the momentum of the storytelling performance alongside the performer.

We are entering this haunted house on Tyrševa 19, this planet terror in order to understand and to make peace with the troubled spirits our presence on Earth has awakened. Join EKO 9 artistic director Jure Kirbiš for a final guided tour of the main exhibition of the triennial, Eyes in the Stone.

For one evening the scenic garden of the old sanatorium will immerse into an eerie atmosphere which will be created by a selection of short animated films entitled Monsters and Other Species curated by the festival’s director Olga Bobrowska. 

pridinajazz is a creative initiative driven by textile and sound designer Tomaž Tomljanović/dualik as music selector and visual artist Toni Soprano Meneglejte as video and light designer. The duo started the thematic series of jazz events at GT22, where they dedicate their time to exploring new directions in contemporary jazz music, ways of listening and engagement within the local community.

In November, an exhibition of black-and-white photographs by Matjaž Wenzel entitled Men Face Down will be on display along the promenade of the City Park, where you will follow well-known middle-generation from the world of art and culture in Maribor, in suspense. After the opening of the exhibition, which will be on Monday, 4 November, at 19:00 and will take place at the beginning of the promenade, we invite you to join us at wine bar Polek, Tyrševa ulica 13.