May 21–24 10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m. Peres Hall, City Hall
Haunted Waters – The Chemical Cocktail Bar
2 May 2026
Haunted Waters
The Chemical Cocktail Bar
A project curated by Nonhuman Nonsense (Sweden)
May 21–24
10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
Peres Hall, City Hall
Leo Fidjeland, Linnea Våglund, Filips Staņislavskis
Produced with the support of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, SciArt
Haunted Waters is a liquid archive of invisible presences, shaped like a cocktail bar. It is a growing collection of contaminated water samples from around the world, gathered by activists, scientists, swimmers, and citizens. Each sample, seemingly indistinguishable, is inhabited by “spirits”: chemical traces that tell stories of political decisions, accidents, conflicts, exploitation, and resistance. Like ghosts, these substances elude the eye, persist in places and bodies, and alter ecosystems and communities. Their complexity makes it difficult to fully understand their effects, while their presence bears witness to a collective history of responsibility.
For the occasion, the cocktail menu features the ghost of asbestos in the waters of the Isonzo, a presence linked to our region.
Nonhuman Nonsense
Leo Fidjeland, Linnea Våglund, and Filips Staņislavskis are Nonhuman Nonsense, a research-oriented art and design collective that operates at the intersection of art, science, philosophy, and technology to explore new forms of “social dreaming” and world-building. Their projects engage with the non-human: animals, objects, ecology, technology, and the spectres found between and beyond categories. They view the absurd, the “nonsense,” as an antidote to “common sense,” embracing paradoxical narratives to explore the ethical and metaphysical dimensions of their relationship with the (non-human) world. They are convinced that separating the human from the non-human is the true absurdity, which is why they embrace paradoxical narratives that challenge power structures and anthropocentrism.