ConcertoQuieto at Riga Gallery, Novigrad
The research-art project “Concerto Quieto,” named after the Italian name for the Mirna River in Istria, is one of those increasingly present contemporary artistic practices that call for a transdisciplinary approach to the relationship between humans and the natural environment, where natural sciences are at a standstill, opening up new worlds and possibilities. Kruno Jošt, a multimedia artist who has been applying such a practice for years, deals with the interrelationships of science, art, and sustainable development on his permaculture estate near Lovinac in Lika.
One such approach is the form of a scientific laboratory through which Kruno Jošt explores how remediation of the river is created through the medium of sound, i.e., how microbes (non-humans) can help in the decomposition of the river’s toxic sediment without intrusive impact on the environment.
He applies a similar approach to the micro-location of the Mirna River’s flow and estuary. Its area abounds with rich flora and fauna and is an important location for the migration, overwintering, and nesting of water habitat birds. Regardless of the fact that the Mirna (still) is not a polluted river, due to erosion processes, wastewater from settlements, and artificial fertilizers, its natural biological and landscape diversity is endangered year after year.
For the needs of the exhibition in the Rigo Gallery, Kruno Jošt visits the Mirna River several times. In doing so, he collects water and sediment samples, stays alone with the river, listens to it, observes its flows, writes notes, and makes photo documentation. Jošt observes the micro-world from the collected samples of the Mirna River through a microscope. Based on the enlarged living “images” of microbes, he singles out those in which he finds abstract forms that he transfers to the medium of photography. In this way, he transforms the invisible world of microbes into visual forms that, with Jošt’s subsequent interventions, also gain a sound background – a composition for the micro-world of the Mirna River. Inspired by the findings from scientific research on sound frequencies that favor the numerical growth or reduction of individual microorganisms, Jošt creates a composition for the micro-world of the Mirna River.