SOLU Bioart Society, Lapland 2023

The North Escaping Residency, Kilpisjärvi Biological station - Soft and Messy Transtemporal Group, led by Erich Berger

In the last entry of my journal we're just about to leave for Saarajarvi. We get back just in time for dinner. I throw a big rock. We go to Worm World.

I am a future being on an arctic precipice, keeping my body warm in layers and layers of sheep wool knitted into different patterns. Pineapple waffle knit. Holds the air like this like that under a gore-tex outer shell, kept from wind and rain. This is my membrane. At 900 metres in blistering wind, looking at worms worming their way across the tropical sea floor 550 million years ago.

The Pre-Cambrian. I went back to my room to fetch Otherlands.

What are we here to find? On top of this frozen post-glacier almost-mountain, searching for wormsign. Traces in the sand of our ancestors, made by the most simplified caricature of a being. A slithering tube, an in and an out. Before appendage. A wiggling mouth-ass worming its way across the mud in total darkness, fear and pain. Or is this just my projection—maybe they were happy wiggling worms. I'm picturing Helen Keller before the teacher arrives. Hold the brain and the limbs. And the spine.

Maybe it was bright, free and spacious, with lots of room to wiggle and feel great while wiggling. And then sprouting all these limbs out of my worm body by sheer will power. Willing my way into new niches, my adapting membranes following my will. Willing myself to have reach, to poke a tentative tendril through into this much lighter place where I can't hold my tendril up for long—it suddenly feels so heavy. This cosmos made of non-water. Where I am not held in connection to the ocean brain where we all exchange cells, membranes, mutations and grow together liquidly. We try new inclusions, build new structures: antennae, eye spots, tentacles, ears, sonars, bones, suction cups, spines, muscles, veins, pores, gills, fins, arms, legs, noses, teeth, hair, feathers, beaks, proboscis.

Reaching for fear and food. Somewhere to hide from the Others. Somewhere to make my own. I'm the only one who's figured it out, I think. But I can't see. Or hear. Everyone else is still down there in the soup. The planetary ocean brain Solaris, attempting to communicate via your strongest sense-impressions. Its communications, from its own view, are innocent, curious and playful; but within the limited capacity of the simian brain, its own nightmares are overwhelming as they've been pushed down to the primal fear centres, rather than seen in the bright light of day as Life Teachings.

We go through the feminist checklist. 'Owning your intention and impact' sticks to me powerfully. We open up and empathise, some voices more confident than others, some needing room to use their voice, some seen as more confident than they actually are. I become more aware of how I use my voice and body in this group, in any group. That there is much space to leave here and that to leave this space for others is infinitely better. That a combination of awareness and self-regulation is the foundation. That in a group scenario, the ability to bring out the best in others is the greatest strength. We are attuned. I can't remember what we were attuning to this time—the clock and the fire take over. Our heart rates lower together, stressed horses nose to tail, comfortable but watchful, listening to the fire of the clocks around us.