Salt Cellar
Wieliczka, Poland
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September 2-3, 2023
We had a blast. The universe burst; time caught its breath and slowed. It exhaled elements like helium and lithium that stretched their fingers into space. These formed the bones and muscles of our stars. Lithium wandered the digestive tracts of suns.
As the only metal created by the Big Bang and still formed by exploding stars, silver-gray lithium floats on water and calms manic minds. Here on Earth, lithium lingers in large salt deposits and is sometimes used to modulate acoustic waves. This metal can’t make things speak, but it can let us hear things that are already there.
In the world’s deepest salt mine, in Wieliczka, Poland, we handed a piece of lithium to each audience member to help hear the final dialogue between the binary stars whose special planet had gone rogue. 41 stories below ground, we soaked in the teachings of Copernicus and the Krakow astronomer Maciej Miechowita, exchanging sister/daughter/sister pinpricks with billions-year-old subterranean rock and listening to the messages of two suns saying goodbye.
This special performance was organized by Marek Choloniewski for the Audio Arts Festival 2023 (much gratitude!) and, incredibly, hosted by the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It featured two salt cellar figurines come to life (Dorothy Melander-Dayton, Mii Gunn, with choreography by Tracy Gilman), videos by Eric Singer and Bryan Parcival, lighting by Kim Couchot, talking planets by Tom Kirsch, ritual conveyances from Eleanor Lovinsky, Alessandro Toffoli, Persephone Hopper and Leah Marino, and the design conjurations of Dorothy Trojanowski.
Exquisite corpse segments, in order of appearance:
Aziza Knight | Mii Gunn | Christopher Beauchamp | Shel Kimen | Joe Ford | Lily Cruz* | Christos Pathiakis | Leah Marino & Julia Solis (with John Law)* | Richmond Arquette* | Reshounn “Sun” Foster*
*Segments written by Julia Solis, otherwise by performers