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Meet our STARTS4Water residents!

Zero Pollution Adriatic residency is hosted by UR Institute. We are very happy to announce our winners – STEAM duo Robertina Šebjanič and Marjan Žitnik!

Robertina Šebjanič is an internationally awarded artist, whose work revolves around the biological, chemical, political, and cultural realities of aquatic environments and explores humankind’s impact on other species and on the rights of non-human entities, while calling for strategies emphatic towards other species to be adopted. In her analysis of the theoretical framework of the Anthropocene, the artist uses the term ‘aquatocene’ and ‘aquaforming’ to refer to humans’ impact on aquatic environments. Her works received awards and nominations at Prix Ars Electronica, Starts Prize, Falling Walls. Her work was exhibited and performed at venues and festivals such as Ars Electronica Festival (AT), Prix Cube Exhibition (FR), MONOM_CTM (DE), Matadero (ES), (Onassis Cultural Center Athens (GR), Kosmica festival & Laboratorio Art Almeda (MX), Kapelica Gallery (SI), Device_art (CRO), Art Laboratory Berlin (DE), Kiblix Festival (SI), Gallery of Contemporary Art Celje (SI), Museum of Contemporary Art Beograd (SRB), Eye Museum Amsterdam (NL).   

Robertina’s Statement:

“Through residency research with focus on the current situation of the Adriatic Sea I hope, together with Marjan Žitnik and UR Institute team, to develop new future narratives. I hope to give the voice/ visibility to the multispecies ecologies, so that the biodiversity will not be in exponential decline because of the anthropogenic pollution, and that we can reimagine our role within ecosystem of world’s oceans and seas that sustains us.”



Marjan Žitnik, born 28th March 1990 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. In early childhood developed interest in musical art as a piano player winning national and internal awards. Besides art he showed interest in computers and creative digital design. After getting a master’s degree in computer engineering, he founded several successful mobile-app-based startups. Among recent work, he served as the Product Manager for Photomath – a mobile application that utilizes a smartphone’s camera to scan and recognize mathematical equations (several times #1 AppStore educational app Worldwide, with more than 200 million downloads). His biggest passion since he was a child was fishing, a tradition taught by his family, and he never missed the opportunity to get back to the boat. In 2018 he founded Maritimo Fishing company in Dubrovnik with the slogan “Fish like locals do”, which offers customized boat & kayak fishing trips. In 2020 the company founded a non-profit spinoff devoted to preservation of marine ecology – Maritimo Recycling, which cleans the Adriatic Sea from plastic, upcycling it into innovative use.

Marjan’s Statement:
“Honored to have the opportunity to make a change for the Adriatic Sea throughout this project. Looking forward to create innovative prototypes together with Robertina Šebjanič, through which we will explore the liquid waste, sea pollution and seek to develop applicable innovative solutions for this problematic.”

Funding: EUROPEAN COMMISSION Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology

Project is co-financed by the Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs. The views expressed in this page are the sole responsibility of Universal Research and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs