KLIMATON - SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

Performance, 30 minutes, 2025
Premiere: RIXC Art Science Festival, 17 October 2025


ARTISTIC DIRECTION / PRODUCTION:
Adnan Softić, Nina Softić

COMPOSED AND PERFORMED BY: Normal Babyy 
VIDEO STAGE: komposter

SUPPORTED BY: Franco-German Cultural Fund

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“Scratching the surface is about curiosity. It is a piece composed for — but in many ways, by — Klimaton Arctic.
In our art, we often aim to give agency to machines and other objects. In this case, the instrument played us, the artists, ever since we learned about it. It made us curious about the ongoing processes in the Arctic and the troubles in scientific communication; its undulations inspired Elza’s movements on the floor; its quasi-autonomous nature prompted a dialogue with Kris in composing the piece.
Ultimately, just like the Klimaton platform and the MOSAiC research, we too have only barely scratched the surface of the big questions surrounding the future of our planet — what that means for us (humans or other carbon-based life forms), and the moral and philosophical implications.”

NORMAL BABYY is a Riga-based interdisciplinary duo of Elza Auguste Zīverte and Kristofers Knesis, whose practice merges performance, sound, and conceptual experimentation. Their work explores perception, agency, and systems of control, often positioning non-human forces—mechanical, material, algorithmic, and ecological—as collaborators. Through this interplay of structure and improvisation, they examine freedom, authorship, and resistance within artistic, social, and environmental frameworks.