THE GROUND REPORT
SPEKULATIVER WETTERBERICHT
2025
Mixed Media Installation
(Readymades, Textilien)
Videoprojektion (11‘10), Sound
Performerin: Artiola Syla
im Auftrag von
Galeria 17
Ausstellungen
„In the Making IV – Queer Ecology“,
DUO mit Luiza Thaqi, Galeria 17, Prishtina (XK), 2025
unterstützt von
Galeria 17
Bildrecht (SKE)
Otto Mauer Fonds
Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Kunst, Kultur, Medien und Sport (Republik Österreich)
Österreichische Botschaft Prishtina
Die erste Recherche wurde im Rahmen eines vom Land Steiermark vergebenen
Artist-in-Residence-Stipendiums entwickelt.
THE GROUND REPORT
Die Installation nimmt die Form eines Wetterberichts an, in dem die begrabenen Flüsse Prishtinas (Vellusha, Prishtina) – einst quer durch die Stadt verlaufend, heute in die Tiefe gezwungen – wieder an die Oberfläche treten.
Diese verborgenen Wasseradern tragen Erinnerungen an Überschwemmungen, verlorene Gärten und unterdrückte Strömungen in sich – Echos von Auslöschung und Unsichtbarkeit.
Im Zentrum dieser Vorhersage erhebt sich der begrabene Fluss „Angry Vellusha“ und beginnt zu sprechen. Vellusha begegnet Kulshedra – einer mythologischen, schlangenähnlichen weiblichen* Gestalt, die gefürchtet ist, weil sie Fluten, Dürren und zerstörerische Stürme bringt. Beide verkörpern Kräfte, die als ungestüm, gefährlich oder übermäßig gelten – insbesondere, wenn sie mit weiblicher* Präsenz und Macht verbunden sind.
Die Wettervorhersage wird so zu einem Raum des Widerstands und der Imagination, in dem unsichtbare Strömungen, weibliche* Wut und spekulatives Denken zu einem dringlichen, kollektiven Wetter der Gegenwart verwoben werden.
IN THE MAKING IV – QUEER ECOLOGY
exhibition text
In a dynamic network, where natural and social elements intertwine through co-creation, mediation, and collective survival, a hybrid and inevitable reality emerges for safeguarding ecological and social equilibrium. Within this configuration, conceptions of agency grounded exclusively in the human are surpassed, opening new pathways for posthuman perspectives and multi-agent interactions. Lena Violetta Leitner and Luiza Thaqi reveal this continuously shifting dynamic—between species, among different entities, and across time. (…)
In Lena Violetta Leitner’s work “The Ground Report” we are reminded that our relationship with the capital’s rivers, Vellusha and Prishtevka, was not severed with their burial. On the contrary, she re-links this communication through a speculative, urgent, and collective weather forecast that recalls floods, droughts, and destructive storms. In this way, the mythical curse of the kulshedra is revived, and the voice of the Vellusha resounds from beneath the ground as a living memory, irreconcilable with silence. By digging the intersections between narrative and memory, the individual and the collective, lived experience and discovery, we uncover fertile fissures where hybrid meanings flourish once again.
Thus, within the gallery, non-human actors—organic and inorganic matter, soil and time interact with human practices, politics, and activity, revealing how power, knowledge, and belonging circulate through hybrid pathways. The exhibition traces the movement of materials from one place to another; it reflects ecological data translated into community memory; it offers a weather forecast that surpasses agencies confined solely to the human.
***
Under the theme of Queer Ecology, we seek to offer an inclusive language—a language that honours and recognizes the personality of the natural world, liberating it from the conventional objectification of living matter. This approach highlights interactions with nonorganic actors while also unfolding flexible identities that reconfigure notions of territory and time. In doing so, it releases ecological perception from rigid boundaries and situates it within a state of continuous renegotiation and co-creation.
Fitore Isufi Shukriu
curator
(excerpt)
