Kalu [Luka Uršič]

Pod(hod)

Soundwalk

The sound walk addresses Ljubljana’s underpasses, largely abandoned areas, reveal the city’s inability to imagine new urban uses and meanings. Neglected underpasses beneath the paving stones of orderly streets and squares are becoming shelters for those unheard on the margins of society.

The author listens closely to the Ajdovščina underpass. Through real-time sound capture and processing, everyday noises, silences, footsteps and echoes are transformed into an immersive sonic experience that opens up a space for what has been left unspoken. It reveals moments of unexpected beauty and places the listener in relation to space as a living, multilayered organism of unheard realities.

The Ajdovščina underpass, built on the site of a former Emona cemetery, carries deeper historical layers. Walking through these underground corridors becomes a movement through the temporalities of the city, where life, death, memory and forgetting intertwine.

Pod(hod) is conceived as a collection of associations from a day in the lives of individuals on the margins of society. The titles of the sound segments, Tunings, Silent Prayers, Gatherings of the Found, Walk of Shame, Lives Before Shop Windows, Lullaby, Morning Again and A Fragile Confrontation with Reality, do not interpret these lives, but create a space of listening in which a sensitive, open relationship to the other and to the world can emerge.

The world holds you, like it or not.
It moves you with fire and wind when it’s hot.
You’re chasing your sleep and wasting your spot —
you better start living.
The world has you turning the dirt, unforgiving,
old gravity is pulling — but love, oh love,
the night that embraced you unraveled the night.

The sound walk addresses Ljubljana’s underpasses, largely abandoned areas, reveal the city’s inability to imagine new urban uses and meanings. Neglected underpasses beneath the paving stones of orderly streets and squares are becoming shelters for those unheard on the margins of society.

The author listens closely to the Ajdovščina underpass. Through real-time sound capture and processing, everyday noises, silences, footsteps and echoes are transformed into an immersive sonic experience that opens up a space for what has been left unspoken. It reveals moments of unexpected beauty and places the listener in relation to space as a living, multilayered organism of unheard realities.

The Ajdovščina underpass, built on the site of a former Emona cemetery, carries deeper historical layers. Walking through these underground corridors becomes a movement through the temporalities of the city, where life, death, memory and forgetting intertwine.

Pod(hod) is conceived as a collection of associations from a day in the lives of individuals on the margins of society. The titles of the sound segments, Tunings, Silent Prayers, Gatherings of the Found, Walk of Shame, Lives Before Shop Windows, Lullaby, Morning Again and A Fragile Confrontation with Reality, do not interpret these lives, but create a space of listening in which a sensitive, open relationship to the other and to the world can emerge.

The world holds you, like it or not.
It moves you with fire and wind when it’s hot.
You’re chasing your sleep and wasting your spot —
you better start living.
The world has you turning the dirt, unforgiving,
old gravity is pulling — but love, oh love,
the night that embraced you unraveled the night.

Luka Uršič
The Gift of Failure

4. 6.–30. 8. 2026, MGLC Grad Tivoli

On Thursday, June 4, 2026, at 19.30, the exhibition The Gift of Failure by Luka Uršič will open at the International Centre of Graphic Arts (Pod turnom 3, Ljubljana).

Failure as a point of departure for potential future success is today a key part of the artistic process. What might elsewhere be understood as an error or anomaly can become an expressive value and a space of freedom in art. With new works produced this year in the MGLC Print Studio, Luka Uršič explores the potential of his artistic practice as a reparative mechanism.

Through screenprinting interventions on the unsuccessful and discarded Polaroid photographs by others, the artist returns to the source of failure and symbolically takes on the blame and responsibility for failed actions. In this way, he confronts his own and others’ unease, while simultaneously attempting to approach the liberating possibility of redemptive correction and improvement.

Curator of the exhibition: Yasmín Martín Vodopivec

The exhibition will be on view at MGLC Grad Tivoli until 30 August.

 

The Metalka business building in Ljubljana is one of the key examples of Slovenian late modernism and early post-war commercial architecture. Metalka was built in 1963 according to plans by architects Edo Mihevc and Boris Leskovec, and was the first modern business high-rise in Slovenia. It emerged at a time when Ljubljana sought to develop as a modern socialist capital with a clearly articulated business centre.

In the sound walk Pod(hod), however, the artist approaches the exploration of space from another, non-architectural perspective. His interest lies in spontaneous use: in the time after design, construction, planning, and the comprehensive vision of the building and its wider project have run their course. How long, and with what degree of quality, can a space continue to live within a constantly changing environment and society? What, and who, inhabits the space unexpectedly?

The sound walk addresses the underpass, today a largely abandoned area that reveals the difficulty of imagining new urban contents. Neglected underpasses beneath the paving stones of orderly streets and squares become refuges for those unheard at the margins of society. The artist approaches the listening of space in an authorial and intimate way, giving voice to the unseen users of an abandoned space, as well as to the space itself, to its membrane. In doing so, he reflects on shifting, unstable social conditions and on the fragility of the spaces embedded within them.

Through the capture and processing of sound in real time, everyday noises, silences, footsteps, and echoes are transformed into an immersive sonic experience that opens a space for what has remained unspoken. The listener is placed in relation to space as a living, multilayered organism of unheard realities.

Kalu [Luka Uršič]

A visual artist, musician, and performer living and working in Ljubljana. His practice develops at the intersection of image and sound, where, through an intuitive process, he explores relationships between space, materiality, and perception. In his works, he creates suggestive, sensory experiences, while as a music producer he shapes soundscapes for various artistic projects and composes music for his own and collaborative productions.

Authorship and performance: Kalu [Luka Uršič]
Consulting: Brane Zorman
Producer: Alja Petric
Text preparation: Martina Valášková, Irena Pivka
Photography: Matej Tomažin
Partner: Skladišče 172
Production: Cona, 2026

The author of the walk was selected through the Open Call for New Sound Walks of the TO)pot Festival in 2025.

ACCESSIBILITY

Participation is possible regardless of language.

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