Rooted in Error

installation, infrared video, plants, LED grow lights, solenoids, sound, found materials
Farsickness/Homesickness/Homelessness
Curated by ART BOX | artboxportal.com
Exhibition link: artboxportal.com/ekologija-eksproprijacija-rekonstrukcija-relokacija
Creative District, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2022

In this mixed-media installation, Stevan Kojić constructs a fragile, hybrid habitat from found objects, living plants, and reappropriated industrial detritus. At its core lies a slanted rain gutter — salvaged from a derelict factory nearby — suspended diagonally across the gallery, its lower end resting in a shallow trench of earth and wild vegetation transplanted from the surrounding urban terrain.

Embedded within this living strip are solenoids that rhythmically strike the metal gutter, generating an erratic acoustic pulse: a prosthetic rain, an artificial weathering. A Raspberry Pi and infrared camera capture live footage of a small tree illuminated by LED grow lights, transmitting spectral images to an old CRT television. This technological loop sustains visibility and presence — even in darkness — while referencing both surveillance and biospheric illusion.

The gesture is at once poetic and infrastructural: the installation occupies a former workshop floor where drainage channels, now transformed into soil beds, suggest a reclaiming of ecological agency within an environment shaped by post-industrial transition. Rainwater from a leaky roof is meant to irrigate the transplanted flora, creating an if/then condition of speculative sustainability.

The work Rooted in Error oscillates between states of displacement and adaptation, evoking both rootedness and precarity. It is not a stable system, but an open circuit — fragile, reactive, absurd — where mechanisms of life-support emerge from remnants of abandonment.

stevan kojic

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Self-Sustaining System of Absurdity – The New Extractivism