Mz. Baltazars Laboratory

ABOUT SALINA ABAZA


Salina Abaza (*1986) is an interdisciplinary artist and curator, born in Damascus, Syria and currently based in Abkhazia. Salinas artistic work extracts intersections between the individual and collective experiences; it starts from themes stemming from personal narratives and their connections with larger political and social narratives, exploring the dynamics and tensions in these relationships. Keywords that recur in the projects are related to identity, memory, archives, authority and violence. Salinas’ creative process allows for the concept to dictate the mediums, often integrating the creative process into the work itself, resulting in a diverse range of disciplines – from design, to writing, video, new media art, installation and performance.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The story of beautiful Dzadza has been hidden away in a time capsule waiting to be activated in other times and places such as Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory. The time capsule takes the form of an old box. It contains different elements as “evidence” and “documents” of an elopement that took place in an undefined time in the Caucasus region between Dzadza and her lover, a woman. Among the documents are letters written in Abkhazian and Circassian languages, that were exchanged between the two, providing us today with backdrop information about the elopement and the nature of this relationship. The box also includes a song from Circassian folklore which is named after beautiful Dzadza and tells the story of her elopement.

1) Photo by Anya Galatonova
2) Photo unknown

WORKSHOP: HTML Zine Club VS AI Crawlers 💻
by

WHEN: Sat, 28.2.2026, 14:00-17:00

Are you bored by Social Media, filled with AI-Slops and unwanted data collections by tech giants?
Are you instead interested in a hand-crafted or personal web, that gives users space for safer expressions?
HTML Zine Club VS AI Crawlers is an event, that combines a talk and a workshop. It invites everyone, who is interested in the DIY or poetic web and as well seeking for the question, how to keep the web safer? HTML Zine Club is a small web community, where hand-made webpages are hosted. Nami Kim, admin of HTML Zine Club, will share her current research on safety and security issues of the personalised web.
At the event you can expect an introduction into hand-coded websites and playful webpage-encrypting methods to block AI Crawlers. Come by and explore!

💙 Additional information:
No technical knowledge is required. You are welcome to simply listen or actively participate. Feel free to bring your laptop, if you would like to try out the introduced techniques.

Workshop language: English and German
The workshop is free of charge.
Please register: [email protected]

some impressions from My Tool My Choice opening yesterday 💜
Thank you for coming by!

Visit us during opening hours:

So / Sun, 25.01.2026, 13:00-16:00
Mo / Mon, 26.01.2026, 13:00-16:00 / 17:30-19:30
further opening hours on request: [email protected]

Sat, 24.1.2026 – Fri, 30.1.2026 Exhibition
Fri, 30.1.2026, 19:00 Closing

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Algorithms, deepfakes and the constant flow of AI-slop challenge provoke us. We laugh briefly. We are disgusted, we rejoice. In small grassroots steps, we move through art, that wants to reclaim its tools.

Dominik, Lidia, Ryta, Tara, Johanna, Ruben and Marta are setting up an exhibition at Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory. It displays a great deal of humour, sometimes also their powerlessness, creates analogue spaces for thoughts, and invites visitors to reclaim old hardware. It creates small truths and allows even smaller fakes to grow. It builds art that becomes aware of its building blocks and materials again. The immeasurable abundance of reclaiming sovereignty over the common scope for action in the post-digital world.

See you there! 💜

FINISSAGE: This Friday
vanish. deflate by Verena Tscherner

Finissage & Xmas drinks: Friday 19.12.2025, 7pm

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
A motion sculpture of the eroding process of data travel in time
Since the beginning of FLUVIALE, Verena Tscherner has been collecting personal items from people attending events and exhibitions. The items handed in by visitors are captured using a 3D scanner, stored in digital memory and incorporated into the installation as 3D-printed replicas serving as individual “trace elements.” Under the influence of external forces, the objects move around in the breathing time capsule, interfering with each other and inevitably colliding. The collisions cause the objects to gradually break apart and grind each other down. An artificially triggered real weathering process has begun and is taking place before the eyes of the visitors. But the erosion process already began with the scanning. Inaccuracies, disruptive factors and scaling alter and simplify the information. The personal references and conceptual connections associated with the object have disappeared; even if the personal connection was recorded and stored in a text or other recording, it is now separated from the object, like the data sets of the 3D images and can only be artificially reconstructed, i.e., reassembled differently. They have followed the progress of entropy, the inexorable law of thermodynamics. Although data transfer serves and should serve to remember and preserve information and knowledge, the loss of information is already inherent in the transfer of data. The installation will travel along the line with the project and the FLUVIALE, accumulating more and more objects and making the space in the breathing time capsule increasingly cramped. Just as the transfer of information changes the objects, the development process is predictable with the objects decomposing beyond recognition and dissolving over time.
Text: Thomas J. Jelinek

See you soon!

Photos by .schranz