Screening and talk
Friday, 29 August 2025, at 8 pm
Inner courtyard of Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana
Participating: Pablo Ballarín (ES/PL), Maja Bojanić (SI), Julie Černá (CZ), Ana Čigon (SI), Léo Mourey (FR/EE), Emilija Škarnulytė (LT)
Curator: Lene Lekše (SI)
PROGRAMME
Alien Act
Curator: Lene Lekše
Duration: 59’
The selected film programme reflects on borders as social constructs. Not only geographical and political, but also historical, perceptual, normative and existential. Borders that determine who enters and who exits, who is visible and who is erased, who has a voice and who among us is an alien. At a time when borders are closing and control is tightening, the question of how to think about borders, how to understand and cross them, becomes ever more urgent.
The title Alien Act is consciously formed in the singular and plays with the phrase Aliens Act, the law on foreigners that regulates the status of “others” on a state level. Yet act also means an action, activation, a call to surpass what is known and legalised. The films in the programme move between the concrete and the abstract, the political and the perceptual, memory and myth. A stone sings of freedom until it is overcome by the anxiety of its own weight; a border guard and his dog continue their absurd routine of surveillance as they observe migrants, activists, and sometimes even bison; on a psychedelic journey with aliens, a young girl explores the cracks of her memory; traces of heat in an apartment reveal the presence of a relative who was officially erased; in an idyllic cat garden by a live hedge we witness the brutality of European deportation policies and the shifting of responsibility; meanwhile, somewhere in the north, a siren swims through an abandoned NATO military complex, triggering cosmic reverberations.
The works address foreignness and alienation not only as representation, but also as gesture, disruption and necessity. The films and animations offer a form of escapism through which reality can be reconsidered. Through surrealist approaches, humour and absurd situations, social and political tensions are revealed. The programme poses questions of how to live with borders, how to perceive them, and most importantly, how to swim across them.
Czech Republic, 2025, 10’00”
The animated musical follows the journey of the anthropomorphized Stone of Destiny. On a path filled with mysterious encounters and hidden symbols, he is driven by a desire for freedom. Singing Stone is accompanied not only by newfound freedom, but also by a fear of failure.
Spain/Poland, 2024, 3’02”
A visit to the border between Belarus and Poland.
France/Estonia, 2025, 12’32”
A young woman struggles with memory loss. One night, aliens barge into her room and connect her to machines to study her brain. Once inside, they all discover her fading memories that blend into dreams in a melancholic and psychedelic trip.
Slovenia, 2025, 12’37”
An infrared camera moves through a suburban apartment, revealing traces of warmth left behind after one of its occupants was erased. In 1992, the Slovenian Ministry of the Interior quietly set in motion the erasure (izbris) – the removal of 25,671 people from Slovenia’s permanent residency records, most of whom were dual citizens of the former Yugoslavia. Among them was the artist’s great-grandmother, the very inhabitant portrayed in the film.
Slovenia, 2024, 9’44”
The film takes place on the estates of three cats of different social classes, who protect their territories with hedges and gates. Fragile neighborhood relations are shaken by stray cats crossing their borders, while feline statesmen devise a cunning plan that will inevitably demand innocent victims.
Lithuania, 2018, 11’00”
Shot in an abandoned Cold-War NATO submarine base in Olavsvern, Norway. The artist, performing as a siren, swims through the complex while cosmic signals and white noise traverse space, linking man, nature and machine into possible post-human mythologies.
Lene Lekše (1995) is a visual artist working at the intersection of sculpture, animation, video and scenography. In 2021 she graduated in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, and is currently continuing her studies in animated film at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the U3 Triennial at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana (Alive and Dead, 2019), Škuc Gallery, Krobath (Vienna), Kula Cetinjska (Belgrade), Lighting Guerrilla (Ljubljana) and Obrat Gallery (Maribor). Solo shows include Sokolovo oko (DobraVaga, 2019), Strategies of Whistling (Alkatraz, 2020), Serendipitously (P74, 2022), and Excavation site (Kuća Reichsmann, Đakovo, 2024). In 2021 she received the OHO Group Award and participated in the Residency Unlimited programme in New York.
VideoGarden (VideoDvorišče) is a programme of curated screenings and talks on art, video, and film. In the spring-summer period we step out of the dark cinema and the cold gallery space into the open air. In collaboration with Škuc Gallery we organize screening events in its inner courtyard.
DIVA Station is an online and physical archive that SCCA-Ljubljana has been developing since 2005 with the aim of researching, documenting, archiving and presenting art film, video and new media art.
In case of rain, the screening will be held in the gallery.
The talk with the present artists will be held in Slovene.
Free admission.
Cover image design: Brina Vidic
Organization: SCCA-Ljubljana/DIVA Station, Škuc Gallery
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City Municipality of Ljubljana – Department of Culture
