Night Demons with Invasive Alien Plants

Drop-in workshop and pop-up exhibition

Workshop on Saturday, 21 June 2025, 9–11 p.m.

Join us for the Wild Garden Utopia: Night Demons with Invasive Alien Plants event on Summer Museum Night, Saturday, 21 June 2025 at 9 p.m.

Together with the Slovene Ethnographic Museum we are organizing a drop-in workshop run by Bence György Pálinkás and Kitti Gosztola. The workshop is the final chapter of the artists' eight year common project Wild Garden Utopia.

The concept of the workshop is based on the motif of the Japanese scroll Night Parade of One Hundred Demons from the Kos Collection of Japanese Art, kept by the Slovene Ethnographic Museum. The scroll is one of the numerous versions of the artwork depicting processions of various supernatural creatures (known as yōkai, oni, or tsukumogami) that march through the city streets at night. Legend has it that people should avoid them and not leave their homes at night, lest the demons kill or spirit them away.

Conceived by Hungarian artists Bence György Pálinkás and Kitti Gosztola, the workshop takes as its starting point a scene in which two demons carry plants “that come alive during the museum night.” In the artists’ interpretation, two masked demons will offer tastings of Japanese knotweed, an invasive alien plant species that was brought to Europe from Japan. Workshop participants will be able to try a dried paste made from the young shoots of Japanese knotweed collected in two different locations: a nature reserve and an urban environment. During the tasting, the demons will take them on an imaginary exploration of the origin of the plant and its flavors, thus touching on issues of alienness, locality, and the spectrum between wilderness and culture.

As part of the event, the original Japanese scroll brought to Slovenia by art historian, ethnologist, and diplomat France Kos will be exhibited at the +MSUM. Kos worked as a curator for the Slovene Ethnographic Museum between 1937 and 1943, and after the war, as a Yugoslav diplomat. Between 1959 and 1962, he served as ambassador to Japan, where, as an enthusiast and connoisseur, he purchased and assembled an extensive collection of Japanese paintings, prints, ceramics and porcelain.

After the event, the scroll, masks, and plants will remain on display in +MSUM as a short-term exhibition.

Kitti Gosztola and Bence György Pálinkás have been working together since 2016 on projects focusing on the perception and representation of so-called invasive alien species. Their workshops, installations, videos, and audio works tell stories of green xenophobia, eco-patriotism, the various notions of utility, and ways of coexistence. They have worked with institutions and organizations such as the Volkskundemuseum in Vienna, the Kunsthalle in Bratislava, the Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian members of tranzit.org, the Art Encounters biennale in Timisoara, the DYSTOPIE sound art festival in Berlin and The Morning Boat residency program on the island of Jersey.

Project curators: Adela Železnik (MG+MSUM) and Tina Palaić (SEM)

The project is part of Moderna galerija's program Models of Coexistence.
 

Supported by: