The research into the phenomenon of foreign species within the project based on an example of degradation of biodiversity in the area of the thermal oxbow lake Topla near Čatež in the Dolenjska region, where several tropical species of flora and fauna have settled, paraphrases the juxtaposition of ecology as a scientific discipline and Ecology as one of the ideologies of contemporary zeitgeist. Due to the changed mechanisms of natural selection, which are caused by globalisation and which establish new relations within ecosystems, behavioural and genetic transformations in foreign as well as domestic species have become quite common. These transformations result in the changed potential of their ecological niches; as a consequence, from a long-term perspective, these species represent the greatest threat to the humankind of all species.

The installation presents research into the possibilities of genetic or ecological »switch«, on the basis of which the foreign species from the thermal oxbow lake Topla could migrate into the near-by environment. The “barrier” in the artificially established ecosystem separates the living environment of the European crayfish (Astacus astacus) as a representative of the autochthonous species and that of the alochthonous (foreign) species – the Australian red claw crayfish (Cherax quadricarinatus). The environment offers both species the opportunity to confront one another, which has not happened yet in nature.

The so-called “genetic reservoir” is designed as a prototype for a mobile live-in research unit, which metaphorically presents the human as the most invasive species of all.

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