Magical Misery Tour: The Bus Stop

Magical Misery Tour: The Bus Stop is a one-day event that connects three projects created by the artist Gala Alica (*1999), each one of them exploring different aspects of public and urban spaces. Travelling on Ljubljana´s public bus, the participants will first visit her project Edge I and Edge II, part of the U3 Triennial of Contemporary Art – Against the Stream of Time at the Museum of Modern Art, which addresses the restrictions in public spaces, specifically the inaccessible Windischer Street behind the museum. After this, the bus will travel to the new site-specific work The Bus Stop, created for Galerija Gallery. This work explores the movement of individuals in a public space, particularly on public transport. Finally, the tour will conclude with the visit of Gala Alica's solo exhibition Not All That Persists Prevails at MoTA Lab, which focuses on the urban planning challenges that surround the gallery building itself — a forgotten 1970s modernist pavilion.

This event continues the Magical Misery Tour series organized by Galerija Gallery, guiding visitors through Ljubljana’s art scene. However, Magical Misery Tour: The Bus Stop shifts the focus to the act of transport itself, examining public transport as a shared, yet solitary experience. Rather than highlighting iconic landmarks like "hop on – hop off" tourist buses, the performative event — also through the use of spoken word — underscores the subtle moments of travelling — the temporary bonds that form when individuals gather unintentionally, only to part ways soon again. Today, the time spent waiting is constantly decreasing; public transport offers one of the rare moments in which we are compelled to stand still and (simply) wait. While waiting, we are both alone and collectively engaged, bound together among strangers for a fleeting moment. These transient bonds shift and invisibly dissolve as we reach our destination and disperse.

The Bus Stop reflects on a bus stop as both a sculptural form and a utilitarian structure — a temporary shelter, designed solely for waiting. Though it acts as a refuge (especially in bad weather), it provides little comfort. More than a shelter, it serves as a functional marker, a roadside point indicting where to wait. In less urbanized areas, it becomes an almost alien entity, appearing fragile at the edge of an empty road, a shell for countless imagined narratives it quietly holds. On the Magical Misery Tour, The Bus Stop changes its form for a day, existing solely to disappear again.