Echoes of the Abyss is a series of research-based art projects by Robertina Šebjanič addressing the critical yet overlooked issue of dumped chemical munitions and unexploded ordnance (UXO) on the ocean floor. Remnants of past geopolitical conflicts, these submerged weapons continue to disrupt human lives, alter marine ecosystems and water chemistry, and enact a form of slow violence that lingers long after the conflicts themselves have ended.
With Echoes of the Abyss, Šebjanič investigates the entangled relationships between history, geopolitics, and marine environments, examining how decaying munitions interact with marine organisms and wider ecological systems. Submerged landscapes are understood not only as postwar zones of contamination, but also as spaces of memory and resilience. Across oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes, abandoned unexploded ordnance continues to pose long-term environmental risks as hazardous substances leak into sediments and seawater, destabilizing the fragile balance between human and more-than-human worlds.
Building on research initiated during the artist’s residency aboard a Tara Ocean Foundation research vessel in the Baltic Sea and further developed through the MADE IN Platform in the Adriatic Sea, the project adopts an interdisciplinary approach. Prior to developing the works, Šebjanič organized the symposium Ocean Around Us – Echoes of the Abyss, bringing together ecologists, divers, anthropologies, and cultural practitioners to examine the environmental and ethical impacts of dumped munitions in the hydrosphere.
Through video essays, glass objects, and wool tapestry, *Echoes of the Abyss* invites reflection on slow violence, ecological harm, and shared responsibility long after conflicts have ended, which continue to linger in waters, sediments, and living bodies.

“Beneath the waves, history decays. The past is dissolving into the sea, but its consequences are anything but washed away.”
 — Robertina Šebjanič

Echoes of the Abyss – Toxic Legacies of Oceanic Ecologies
Artist (video, audio, text, installation): Robertina Šebjanič
Advisors: Dr. Nataša Rogelja, Dr. Matthias Brenner, Prof. Dr. Jacek Bełdowski, Dr. Manca
Bajec
Collaborators: 
Ivanka Pasalic (glasswork), Marjeta Zornada,Tanja Minarik (photo, video support, AI),
Rok Kovač (audio mastering), Dmitry Morozov - VTOL, David Drolc and Jakob Grčman (tech support), Neža Mekota (3D rendering)

Special thanks for providing archival AV materials to:
Diving Team of the Lučko Anti-Terrorist Unit, Special Intervention Police Unit Rijeka and Unit Osijek,
The Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), and the REMARCO project

Background voices in video essay:
Contributions from participants of the symposium Ocean Around Us – Echoes of the Abyss:
Toxic Legacies of Oceanic Ecologies, organized by Robertina Šebjanič and Dr. Manca Bajec at Cukrarna, Ljubljana October 25, 2024.

Production:
MADE IN Platform - Oaza and Drugo more (HR), 2024/25
Zavod Projekt Atol (SI), 2024/25
TARA Ocean Foundation (FR) 2023/2024

Robertina Šebjanič (SI) is an artist-researcher working at the intersection of art, ecology, and (geo)politics; exploring the rhythm, voices, and ruptures of the hydrosphere through interdisciplinary practice. Her work has been awarded by Prix Ars Electronica, STARTS Prize, Falling Walls, and Re:Humanism. Residencies/grants: TBA21-OceanArchiv, UCLA PST.art, Emap, STARTS4Water, TARA Ocean Foundation, and MADE IN Platform; her works are included in collections as the New Art Foundation (Reus). Since 2023 she has been Associate Professor at the School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica. She has lectured internationally at Stanford University, Palo Alto University, UCLA Los Angeles, UN Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in Nice, UNAM Mexico City, among others. She has exhibited and performed on more than 100 internationally solo/group exhibitions at festivals, biennials, in galleries and museums.

Echoes of the Abyss is a powerful and deeply researched body of work by Robertina Šebjanič that investigates the ecological and political consequences of underwater military debris and abandoned ordnance. Through sound, marine research, speculative storytelling, and immersive installation, Šebjanič reveals how the residues of war continue to shape aquatic ecosystems long after conflicts disappear from public consciousness.
The work emerges from Šebjanič’s longstanding engagement with the “Aquatocene” and “aquaforming,” concepts she developed to examine humanity’s impact on aquatic environments and the fragile balance between technological systems, marine life, and planetary ecologies. Echoes of the Abyss makes visible forms of “slow violence” that persist in water, sediment, and living organisms.
At a moment marked by escalating military conflicts across the globe, the jury was particularly compelled by the work’s ability to connect scientific inquiry, poetic sensibility, and geopolitical critique. The sea emerges here not as empty space, but as a living witness and repository of war and its unresolved ecological consequences.