Kruno Jošt

“Natural Intelligence” pays tribute to Ivan Ladislav Galeta, renewed Croatian video and conceptual artist. Performance shows a very simple act of mowing with hand scythe, in the spiral form from the centre towards the outer edge and after finishing mowing returning to the centre of the spiral from where mowing started. This act evokes tradition, work, agriculture, the relationship between man and nature in past times, though the very name of the performance has additional suggestions. “Natural intelligence” is the antithesis of today’s much hyped “artificial intelligence”. By a simple action, which I learned from my grandfather who was a farmer I want to say that nature has an intelligence that should be given attention and respect.

Symbol of spiral has a reference in many artists who use it in their work, perhaps most prominent being “Spiral Jetty” by Robert Smithson. I also want to remember anecdote from Galeta’s life where he mows in the shape of a spiral on his property in  a small Croatian village (as opposed to the usual way of mowing in the shape of a rectangle) and thus attracts the curiosity of passers-by who approach him with the desire to correct his work, to which Galeta answers: “If I didn’t mow like this, they would never approach me and never talk about why I mow like this”.

Spiral is a direct trace that man leaves in his relationship with nature and symbolizes life and growth, evolution and expansion. A large number of plants and animals develop in a series of patterns that are directly related to the spiral. From the shape of DNA known as the “double helix” to seashells, cones and fingerprints, the growth of hair on the head (during the performance I stops and pas due respect to the spiral on my head).

It symbolizes development, expansion, rotation and progress – the cyclical nature of evolution where rhythms repeat. It evokes the archetypal path of growth and transformation, both physically and spiritually. The spiral is the bridge between the harmony in the cosmos and the harmony within us — the infinite resonance or life energy. Connection and union with divine and cosmic energies. Revolutions of time, stars, planets and ways of natural progress.

The performance “Natural Intelligence” was designed and performed by Kruno Jošt, produced by UKE in 2023.

During nonconsecutive three months artist in residency in Halland region of Sweden, a research was conducted around the problematic toxic sediment created by extensive industrial history of the Borås city on the Viskan river as a part of proposals for the theme of artistic “ecological literacy”.

During residency, for the project purposes Viskan was visited on many occasion. Canoe travel was undertaken to collect samples of the river that were later used to examine microbiological life of the river.

As known from scientific research, some forms of toxicity can be remediated with microorganisms so this was taken as an inspiration to look into ways of enlarging their numbers and activity locally.

Microorganisms can be influenced trough certain sound frequencies in certain volumes that in some cases enlarges their number in shorter time, and without any unwanted effects to environment.

After conducting a research on sound frequencies and its influences on observed microorganisms in the collected samples some of them were designed for the informance (informative performance) on the river itself.

Canoe was arranged into a vessel that can take one participants on the river trip. This canoe had an installation for playing sounds beneficial for the bacteria, but was also tailored for each participant to get into a state of appreciation of the river. At the same time participants could release what is known as Miracle Enzyme, organic compound beneficial for the microorganisms that was created in a prior workshop. An intimate visual reference was tailored for each individual observance of Viskan river and its inhabitants, with accompanying sound and information about micro and macro cosmos.

Research and performative action were executed during Art Inside Out residency Between the Rains in region Halland, Sweden in 2022.

Whole photo-log can be seen below

Post-normal Art is a diary that draws its inspiration on the Ziauddin Sadar text “Welcome to Postnormal Times” from 2009. in the form of a blog with texts, parts of Sadar’s translated texts, photographs, sound and video shorts.

Diary is leading us deeper in understanding how to manage post normal times with art practice, what that practice should be, and how to realize it.

Complexity, Chaos and Contradiction is a set of screenshots taken from online map depicting parts of agricultural fields in  the USA. Almost like abstract paintings, certain technical feel, with circular geometrical shapes mostly, in the effect of grids, remind of technical drawings, digital tools and visuals representing matrix, digital technical, non human and machine like. CCC creates a base for understanding of how agriculture is shaping the world, reorganizing it to its industrial needs.

Photo of a found object, an oak tree leaf that has fallen on the snow. Radiated by the sun, leaf has accumulated enough energy to melt its own image in inverse, a sort of its own cast in the snow.

Photo is a part of  Minor Disturbances with participation of following artists: Rita Cachão, Henry Collins, Edith Doove, Bruno Duarte, Margarete Jahrmann, Kruno Jošt, Jason Karaindros, Robert Maddox-Harle, Ollivier Moreels & Jean-Louis Vincendeau, Sana Murrani,Guiherme Pontes, Michael Punt,Aparna Sharma and Paul Towey.

Inspired by Charles Ives vision of spatially distributed creativity in his unfinished Universe Symphony, The Faculty of Minor Disturbances (FMD) sent out an invitation to create a minor disturbance as we corralled the forces of the universe together with 2I/Borisov, an interstellar comet which visited the solar system.

Ives’s The Unanswered Question was said to be written under the influence of by the New England writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

See participating works here >>

Nature Like is an artist research of coexistence with his immediate environment using permacultural methods and photography that documents seasonal time-span.

NK uses artists labor to develop and organize “multi-cultural” garden (not “mono-cultural”) that will eventually become permanent and autonomous – people independent. Slide show documents artist arrangement of the garden, using its shape like a painter would use a canvas, and gardening materials as a paint. Elements of this composition include wind, sun, rain,  microbes, fungi, plants, insects, soil, stone, compost, birds, larva, worms, frogs, snakes and other small animals, straw bales, water, wood, plastic canvas (tarp), plastic cups and water containers, water hoses, plastic compost containers, snow and temperature.

MSF at Stützpunkt ​Teufelsberg gallery, Berlin, is an installation that uses renewable energy, plant, light and sound to create elements that are presented in need of questioning relations of “us” and “nature”.

Installation produces light and sound frequencies that are beneficial to the plant. It is a mobile installation that is powered by sun light over photo-voltaic panel. Electricity is than stored in a battery that powers recycled mobile phone playing specific frequencies for the plant. Battery also powers a light that shines trough red and blue led diodes benefiting plant growth and fruit development.

MSF is art that is beneficial to the plant. It is not solely here to be an art piece for human observation. thus, it is asking a question of art production – who is it for and why, art institutions – who they present art and why, and reasons for art in Anthropocene.

Installation that utilizes sound, light and living plant, “Sound  Fertilizer” is presented at Cologne gallery Tiefgarage situated in multicultural Ebertplatz, between 22. and 26. July 2018.

Zucchini plant is positioned at the middle of the gallery, a light bulb above and two mobile phones with sets of frequencies placed next to the plant. Zucchini has been planted in the straw bale at Center for Creative Solution in Croatia and after few months transported with  car over the half-borders (borders running only on one side of the neighboring countries) to Cologne. Cucurbita L has no known origin, some coming from USA and some from India. Its multiculturalism resembles every large EU city with its multicultural inhabitants and especially Cologne’s Ebertplatz where it is situated. 

Light used has spectrum of 4000K that enables growth and flowering, while two recycled mobile phones (non functioning, used only as sound players) play sets of frequencies created especially for zucchini plant.

Sound Fertilizer encourages plant to grow in healthy and stable conditions, inside the gallery. Technology enabled art for the plant can also pos3e a question of its environment – anthropocentric culture that grows on both neo-liberal capitalism and/or social state of liberal humanism, while neither of options are furthering away from unbalanced relationship of people as subject and plants as object.

This installation makes plant a subject, as sound is artistically produced and intended for a plant.

16 Channel sound Fertilizer presented at Büro für Bestimmte Dinge, Berlin, in April 2017, with opening talk by Kruno Jošt.

16 small speakers are connected to multichannel sound card run by the computer. Each channel plays a sound or song that was researched as the one beneficial to the plants – from classical to binaural, from high frequencies to traditional sitar sounds. This conglomerate of sounds was not intended only for human gallery visitors, but for the plants as well.

More photos can be find here >>

Close Encouners is interactive sound sculpture produced in collaboration between Karl Heinz Jeron and Kruno Jošt for Potato Day of Lovinac municipality. Name of the sculpture comes from a cult movie, but now with a set of frequencies it is not aliens communicating to us, but potatoes.

“16 Channels Sound Fertilizer” sound installation uses renewable energy sources to run multiple speakers that are playing the sounds offered by various sound-for-plants researchers. Sounds include different frequency ranges, noise generators and musical interpretations as well as sound compositions offered by French mathematician and physicist Joel Sternheimer who developed a study on protein synthesis activation. Installation is questioning an alternative to “art-for-humans” position as well as alternative to industrial agriculture and its extensive usage of pesticide and chemical fertilizers that is contributing to climate change.

“In some situations water is full of energy, sometimes it is sluggish and exhausted; in some conditions it dies. “To an untrained eye dead water still looks like water. So we expect it to do the same job as healthy energetic water.” Charlie Ryrie, author of The Healing Energies of Water.”
ecosway.com/ecosway/en_US/hexagon_03.jsp

“Harvard researchers investigated 6,214 cases of major depression for factors that would predict transition to bipolar disorder. Clinical characteristics such as age of onset or atypical symptoms did not predict manic episodes. Risk factors included younger age, black race/ethnicity, and a less than high school education. A history of social phobia, anxiety disorder, child abuse, and recent problems with social support were also associated with increased risk. Results will appear in an upcoming Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.”

Environmental Factors Drive Mania

De(con)struction found its way into issue number 3 of on-line magazine MAKE8ELIEVE: 3rd issues topic was OIL.

with:
Jennifer Axner, Julie Badin, Hélène Baril, Kristen Baumlier, Mehdi Benkler, Edward Burtynsky, Arnaud Cohen, Valerie Constantino, Stephanie Craig, Olivier De Sagazan, Cédric De Smedt, Jason DeMarte, Adam Dumont, Edouard Duvernay, Jane Fulton Alt, Olivier Garraud, Mihai Grecu, Henry Hargreaves, David Herbold, Ryan Hopkinson & Christopher Raeburn, Rebecca Horne, Franck Hoursiangou, Kennedy James, Harris Johnson, Kruno Jost, Sofia Karlström, Amir Hossein Keihani, Florent Konné, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, Liberate Tate, Katie Loesel, Antonio Maia & Fernando Belfiore, Michael Massaia, Lauren McCleary, Elizabeth McCue, Michelle Marie Murphy, Sorin Oncu, Holly Parker, Vincent Petitpierre, Sarah Pickering, Wilson Roscoe, Evan Roth, Mary Rothlisberger, Fred Rougerune Loison, Diego Sanchez, Wolfgang Stiller, Arya Sukapura Putra, Marc Neys Swoon, Jean-Jacques Tachdjian, Carlos Vergara, Paul White, Christophe Wlaeminck, Marshall McLuhan, Slavoj Žižek, M.I.A., Roland Barthes, Yohji Yamamoto, Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing.

www.make8elieve.com

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki is a showcase of works answering the question How would you host an ancient alien? The artists in the exhibition responded to an international call for proposals inspired by Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles, a book detailing how the human species originated from extraterrestrial beings. These distant relatives are scheduled to return to the earth in December 2012.

Participating artists have proposed a variety of convivial acts to welcome Annunaki families from the planet Nibiru upon their return visit to earth after a 3,600-year orbit. The projects take a variety of forms, from an intergalactic calling card to a bed away from home, collegial gestures of kindness that reveal the customs that we embrace as human citizens of earth.

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki provides a constructive take on Sitchin’s mythology, one of the many associated with the year 2012. Exhibition is held in Open Space Artist Run Centre (Victoria, Canada), November 16, 2012 – December 21, 2012.

Among many, I am am the one, who has been contacted by Annunaki, many times, sometimes while asleep, sometimes awake. They inform me over and over again of their visit, and I know I have to await for them and clean my temple. I have to await and take care of the temple that will host them. And that temple is me.

Most of us are unaware that Annunaki is/are not of mater, but of spirit, and to host them you do not clean the interior of your house, but interior of your self. One cleans it with rigour, spiritual and mental, in taking out the trash, and taking in the health and beauty.

When Annunaki comes, we greet It to our temple, we let It to ourself, and we carry It where we go, we feed It what we eat, It sleeps when we sleep, It sees what we see. That is why if we host them we have to restrain from bad habits, we have to restrain from manipulative toughs, we have to restrain from hurting ourself and others. When we host It we do it with pleasure and It lives trough us.

De(con)structing Conformity – video documentation from GentleJunk on Vimeo.

De(con)structing Conformity is performance done during the opening of the exhibition REFLECTION – Ecology of Cultural Landscape on 22nd November 2012. in gallery Scheier, Čakovec, Croatia.
In De(con)structing Conformity Kruno Jošt together with collaborators Maja Kohek and Simon Podlauf destroys an armchair as a symbol of conformity in contemporary society. The armchair represents a passive attitude in an even more passive society where one doesn’t want to lose their armchair while making political moves. It gives us false security and is as such a symbol of power. The de(con)struction of the symbol enables reflection on our own conformity. The question now is how we confront conformity in contemporary society?