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ToSolaris_by_Iskra_Velitchkova

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Updated: Feb 16, 2025

Scene VII: Goodbye

In the context of the exhibition at Mexico with Bright Moments, when I began to think about my project, I was inspired by the creative prompt for the event and the concept of afterlife in particular. But I began to have doubts that I cannot adequately deal with the concept of afterlife in Mexican culture; that it would feel like an appropriation. Even disrespectfull somehow by an outsider of that culture.

Instead, I decided to do something that deals with this theme in a more indirect, less culturally specific way. While I was preparing a show in London, I picked up a few books that approach this topic from a science-fiction perspective. One of them was Solaris. Rereading Stanislaw Lem’s novel, I tried to keep the images of Tarkovsky’s movie out of my head so I could really see the story in a new light.

The book is essentially about the choices you make in life and the consequences they carry. It's about Kris Kelvin, a psichologist who travels to the planet Solaris, which he has been studying for years. The planet is almost entirely covered by a large ocean, which is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing entity – a strange, non-human intelligence that confronts you with everything you think, believe and do. After years of no asnwers, a group of scientists decide to radiate it to explore the reasons of that behaviour, which ends up altering its form and character. In order to gather more information, Kris is sent there. There, he will confront himself with his deepest torments and monsters. He meets Hari, his dead wife. And with her presence, his own ocean of regrets and secret dreams emerge without mercy.

ToSolaris: the narrative

Scene I: Solaris landscape

"Human beings set out to encounter other worlds, other civilizations, without having fully gotten to know their own hidden recesses, their blind alleys, well shafts, dark barricaded doors."