Coining Utopias explores what it means to shape visions of radical possibility in a time of ecological collapse, technological saturation, and socio-political fragmentation. To coin is to create, form, design, work, and prepare something that circulates – an idea, a gesture, a relationship – and to put that something into circulation. Utopia, literally a “no-place,” traditionally understood as a plan or vision of something idealised and thus unattainable, has always existed beyond reach.
The works in the exhibition do not offer escape from crises or dazzling visions of a perfect world, but instead provide temporary refuges, speculative gestures, and ways of being that emerge within contemporary fragmentation – not outside it. Experimental and interdisciplinary, these works present speculative acts of resistance, empathy, and creative transformation. The artists engage with visible and invisible environments – from contested border zones, regenerative ecosystems, and biomes to manipulated biologies and posthuman desires. Their works interrogate dominant systems, expose ideological manipulations, and challenge anthropocentric hierarchies. Where utopia was once the domain of manifestos, here it is reimagined as an open, processual space of imagination and action, offering new ways of living with and within the world; a possibility to not only envision a different world, but to perceive and begin co-creating it – a utopia as a practice unfolding here and now.
Michael Valiquette exposes the illusion of national utopias by confronting viewers with the harsh realities of border crossings between the US, Mexico, and Canada. Through documentary-style photography, he critically examines the polarising nature of US border policy, whose increasingly severe consequences are etched on the bodies of those attempting the crossings. Rejecting the notion of the border as an abstract concept, he calls for greater empathy and responsibility.
Andrew Carnie and Darya Warner root utopian possibility in soil and environment. Their artistic practice fosters intimate relationships with nature and its biomes, enacting an ethics of circularity and return, highlighting the interdependence of humans and nature, as well as mutual care as the only foundation for a brighter future. They propose a utopia grounded not in technological innovation but in radical reciprocity with the environment we inhabit.
Angelina Almukhametova and Stephanie Rothenberg envision techno-biological utopias where synthetic systems coexist with the living. Almukhametova’s cybernetic system uses neon light – once a symbol of excess – to nurture algae, opening a vision of futures where technologies care for and cohabit with living organisms instead of exploiting them. Rothenberg, meanwhile, presents a speculative installation of cyborg oysters that transform consumer desire into ecological awareness, satirising so-called blue economies and critiquing the market’s appropriation of utopian promises.
Špela Petrič reveals the hidden infrastructures of industrial agriculture, showing how automation shapes our food systems. Using AI-generated images and data from robotic greenhouses, she exposes how technological promises of total automation conceal realities of control, optimisation, and disembodiment.
Jude Abu Zaineh explores the entanglement of diasporic identity with microbial life bound to a specific time and place. Petri dishes containing invisible colonies of bacteria and ferments create metaphorical links to the ongoing evolution of cultural and geographic landscapes, becoming archives of memory – both bacterial and cultural – that uncover quiet acts of resistance and transformation.
In her trilogy (Decoy, Birdsong, and Etude for Birds), Leena Saarinen listens beyond the human. Through mimicry, whistling, and sonic translation of birdsong, she imagines a world with a shared interspecies language, one that is not just a human privilege. She dismantles linguistic hierarchies, suggesting that utopia may begin with the attempt to speak with rather than over other living beings – in communication between birdsong and human response.
Temporary interventions by Adam W. Brown and Melisa Cano further expand the exhibition’s vision. Brown provocatively reimagines medieval miracles through microbial interventions, “infecting” Eucharistic wafers with blood-red bacteria to destabilise boundaries between the sacred and the profane, science and faith, nature and myth. In an age of spectacle, his work questions what counts as evidence, faith, or forgery, creating a utopia that is embodied, sceptical, scientific, and mythological at once.
Cano’s installation activates only when visitors quiet their voices, creating a responsive sonic space shaped by light, temperature, and presence. In this way, silence becomes a collective sonic act of attunement. Her work suggests that utopia need not be proclaimed through loud declarations or grand gestures, but may be found in shared listening – in the subtle interweaving of environment, body, and technology, where consciousness arises from silence and care.
Coining Utopias proposes that the future is not a finished or predetermined plan, but a space of continual rehearsal, movement, and change. The artists offer not a single vision, but diverse tools for sensing, attuning, adapting, and imagining. Here, utopia is not an unattainable ideal, but a possibility of building new relationships with others, with nature, with unseen structures, and with our own bodies, coining a shared existence with a more-than-human world.
Jude Abu Zaineh, Angelina Almukhametova, Andrew Carnie, Darya Warner, Leena Saarinen, Stephanie Rothenberg, Špela Petrič, Michael Valiquette // Adam W. Brown, Melisa Cano
Free admission.
9. 9.–5. 10. 2025
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TTT2025* / Taboo – Transgression – Transcendence in Art & Science colophon
Supported by: Kapelica, Cirkulacija 2, Pixxelpoint, Intellect, InArts – Interactive Arts Lab, Xcenter, GO! 2025
Founder: Dalila Honorato
Organising committee: Dalila Honorato (Ionian University), Jasna Jernejšek (Kino Šiška), Uroš Veber & Lara Mejač (Project Atol), Peter Purg (University of Nova Gorica)
Producers: Lara Mejač, Uroš Veber
Exhibition curator: Jasna Jernejšek
Performances curators: Dalila Honorato, Jasna Jernejšek, Peter Purg, Uroš Veber
Screenings curator: Maria Chalkou
Reels curators: Marc Dusseiller, Adam Zaretsky
Proofreading and translation: Daniel Sheppard
Design: Ioanna Logaki
