This last 9th and 10th November saw the happy occasion of the opening of a space here in Helsinki for the Bioart Society’s activities here in Helsinki, SOLU Space, an artistic laboratory and platform for art, science and society.
Following wonderful speeches by the board chair, funders and other supporters and a performance by Till Boverman, sound and media artist Ava Grayson and I performed a ritual to invoke the qualities, hopes and aspirations of the ‘SOLU Temple’ and to perform the opening and sealing rites for the mysterious '‘interdimensional portal’ the opening to which is located in the kitchen area.
Images by Ines Montalvao and Marieta Radomska
You can read our invokation here:
SOLU INVOKATION + Portal opening Litany
Welcome!
The Eminent and most high Priestesses welcome you to the Inaugural opening of the Unhallowed grounds of the Temple of SOLU
Greetings Distinguished Initiates one and all to this miraculous occasion at this auspicious juncture
An epoch of contestation and elaborate debate
This
The deeply contested Anthropocene
Misanthropocene
Anthrobscene
Chthulucene
Plantationocene
Capitalocene
Oil-o-cene
Manthropocene
Northropocene
Anthropo-not-seen
Undocene
Hypo-cricene
Androcene
Schnubeleduldid-ocene
Šmanthropocene
Plasticene
Endcene
Psychozoic
Psychozooikon
Connectozoic
Prokaryocene
Smog-o-machine
Oops-a-day-cene
Anthrowhatnotcene
Shu-bee-du-bee-dah-oh-seen
SOLU-o-cene,
Acknowledgement
We would like to acknowledgement the lands we find ourselves within, and all those to whom these are beloved and home, from the mists of forgotten time to the futurities of far seeing beyond, we acknowledge every molecule, every organism, every evolution, mutation, symbiogenic flourishing that claims this place, each tangible, and intangible that moves within the dimensional layers in delicate hauntings and robust manifests.
Invocation
This evening in order to open this illusory temple we will perform together a mighty Invokation, a litany of words, concepts, cherished and maverick utterances that are proffered as seeds of potentials for future fruitions.
Each word I will call out and in response you will announce SOLU!
Please try with me:
We invoke Being lost in the forest without any cash
We invoke gin and tonics
And so we begin:
We Invoke:
That which is definitively ambiguous
The constantly changeable
The charmingly erratic
The abidingly fickle
The astonishing insecure
The wisdom of the irrational
The raucousness of the precarious
The insistence of exemplary risk
The liquid yielding of the Rocky
The appreciative sensorium of that which is sensitive
The marvelous instability of all that is shaky
The miraculous inescapability of the slippery
The neural pervasiveness of that which is ticklish
The illusory craft of what is necessarily tricky
The extensive calmness of irreducible uncertainty
The galvanizing electric lightening of the unpredictable
The unceasing curiosity of the unsettled
The all consuming focus of the demeanor of the unsteady
The eruptive generosity of the unstintingly volatile
The generous knowing of that which is weak,
The charismatic charm of the intensity of the wobbly
The unrelenting negotiation of all that is borderline
The academic application of the capricious
The calm settled motion of the dizzy
The alert and assertive confidence of the dubious
The night dreamtime activity of the fitful
The day time attentiveness to that which is fluctuating
The parabolic micro gravitational reeling of the giddy
The methodical hypothesizing of the inconsistent,
The universal reconciliation with the inconstant
The active generosity of the voluptuous lubricious
The metallic mobility of the toxic mercurial
The pleasure of the mobile
The unrelentingly movable
The steadfastedly mutable
The cheerfully not fixed
The carefully rickety
The candidly shifty
The happily suspect
The expertly teetering
The unapologetically temperamental
The honestly untrustworthy
The enduringly vacillating
The humourously variable
The elegantly wavering
The wafting web of weaving
The non-Euclidian wiggly
The contentedly icy Psychrophilic
The modestly Bold
The eloquence of Connection
The openness to a Cry
The abundant appreciation of the Earth
The extant elucidation of Emotion
The reciprocal understandings of Exchange
The hot fast vector of Love
The unhindered velocity of Movement
The cybernetic serendipity of Networks
The poised skillful means of Politeness
The sky like Space and spaciousness
The irrefutability of Structure
The radical tenderness of that which is Subtle
The knowing smile of Tendency
The non linearity of time
The dis-orientation of the gyroscopic
The comfortable collusion of listening space
The merry sound of attentiveness
The strident mission of what is just
The hospitality of inclusiveness
The humility where domination is not allowed
The myriad possibilities of unprecedented ‘ologies, disciplinary dances and extended fields
We invoke
a place for collaboration and experimentation.
a kitchen,
a lab
a third placed for meeting with friends,
doing crazy stuff
a place to dissect the derangements of our senses with the tender scalpel of our collective minds eye
We invoke Curies Children, glow boys and radon daughters
We invoke the expansive and generative collaboration of Field Notes
We invoke the protean integrity of Making Life
We invoke the agential cut of the intra of actions of hybrid Matters
We invoke irascible Merry CRISPR!
We thank the tremendous initiators of the Bioart Society and keepers of SOLU Temple
We thank the extraordinary hard work and devotion of Magus Erich Burgher and Magicienne Piritta Purto
We thank the expertise of the currently serving Chair Mari Keski Korsu the holder of the Whisking Wisdoms
We thank the baddest ass apparitional intererns
Tyska Samborska
Katarina Meister
Mari Kaakkola
PORTAL transition
I now invite you to witness and participate in the innermost secret mystery of the SOLU Temple, the opening of the interdimensional portal
I invite you to take a position on one of the three points of the indeterminable triangle within which the portal sits.
Proceed to the Portal
We initiate you into the most profound of the Telluric mysteries, the depth of time, the most eldritch and august of realisations of the
multidimensional, inter-geometrical, the Euclidian, Non-Euclidian,
The depths of that which reaches into the infinite below, the pasts the futures the otherwise and elsewhere.
Please remove the lid of iron smelted from unprecedented meteorites, watery lakes, and lightning bolt strikes that ignite and forge the metals of the earth herself.
Here ye, behold the cloistered sanctum of primordial, unconditioned portent and potentiality.
Celebrate the joyful currents of energy into realised form and manifest realised curiosity.
Applaud the movement of dissolution into sanguine emptiness.
I invite you to now one by one to take a pinch of xeno green gold elemental metal, crafted, refined and extracted with extensive love and beneficent gratitude from the metallurgical climes of distant solar planetary configurations with infinite grace and libidinous compassion.
Take a pinch and throw it into the telluric void
The magical portal
With an inner most intention of making the great work of art, science and society for the benefit of everything and everyone everywhere in the multiple dimensionality of exquisite activity.
After the last person has thrown in the xeno green gold elemental metal
Sigil
I now pronounce the portal open!
Please replace the lid and I will perform the magical marking with the SOLU seal
The magical sigil is written in green and it’s sonic correspondent is sounded over the portal lid
End
Written and enacted on the occasion of the opening of the Bioart Society’s
SOLU Space 9th November
Conceived and performed by
Ava Grayson and Kira O’Reilly
SOLU sigil