DIRECTING SCENOGRAPHY ABOUT
DATA GARDEN
Choregie Project
Karmina Šilec
Premiere: 28. 11. 2025,
Minoriti Quarter, Maribor
Pharmakeia is a garden of plants that do not grow, do not breathe, do not wither; they are artificially created, yet remain vividly present. Their life derives from a code. The robotic mechanism is a spiritual prosthesis, a machine that does not produce a function, but a metaphor. In micro-robotic choreography, the movement of plants has no biological meaning – it is a process that places them in the role of post-natural entities. These anti-plants are ontological hybrids that replicate nature.Their movement is programmed, and the tension between controlled movement and symbolic autonomy creates bodies without sovereignty, bodies under control.
Pharmakeia objects are speculative organisms, unreal phantasmal entities, metaphysical apparatuses that operate without will: cyborg post-plants, bodies encoded in plastic. When they move, though not alive, they are bodies without a voice—and that is precisely why they gain power. They draw attention to the relationships between knowledge, power, control, and nature. Pharmakeia plants are uncodified, unidentified – their color, shape, and movement reject any classification and refuse to be useful.
Concept: Karmina Šilec
Music and sound: ansambel Kebataola, Živa Horvat, Andrej Kobal, Karmina Šilec
Scenography and Video:: Dorian Šilec Petek
Microrobotics: Jernej Ženko
Light design: Andrej Hajdinjak
Sound design: Danilo Ženko
more: https://www.carmina-slovenica.si/en/stage-production/5c10410abea547049fa04506310778af1afe49da/