Apr 10, 2025 5 min read

Blessed Megalesia, Friends

Quanto Canto, as installed at Tabakalera, Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain

Dear interlocutor,

Know that it is the time of the Megalesia, a seven day long ancient festival surrounding the worship of the goddess Cybele^[1], one of the most important deities in the semi-recent history of euro-asian cultures. A mother goddess, a goddess attended to by castrated (trans?) priests, a goddess represented, in her aniconic form, with a deep black rock—a purported meteorite. It's thus not surprising why I am particularly interested in Cybele and the attending stories and representations of her as she travels from Anatolia into Greece, Rome, and beyond.

The Megalesia would run from 4 to 10 April involving processions of her statue, feasts, games, and general debauchery. While I don't believe it's wise to whole-heartedly transport ancient devotional practices to the present, perhaps it is wise to consider, and celebrate, the beings and the entities of this planet, of this cosmos, that provide us with life. To take a moment, as the seasons continue their transition into either summer or winter, to consider what changes we may need to be making to prepare ourselves for what is to come^[2].

I've vowed to keep this newsletter relatively short—unlike my previous ones—so just a few quick notes from the past couple of months.

See in particular the edited collection Cybele, Attis and Related Cults: Essays in Memory of M.J. Vermaseren (1996), edited by Eugene N. Lane. ↩︎
Hmm, am I potentially referencing here current events? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. ↩︎

Quanto Canto

The year 2025 began with an incredibly packed production period for my newest work, Quanto Canto. Commissioned by MU Hybrid Art Space, Quanto Canto premiered at Tabakalera, in San Sebastián/Donostia as part of the exhibition "Quantum Visions", curated by Monica Bello. The work is fundamentally about quantum noise in quantum computers and the isomorphisms between harmonic oscillators in quantum mechanics and harmonic oscillators in sound synthesis. The 8-channel, 2-voice sound sculpture is 3,5 meters tall, hangs from the ceiling, and is made of sapeli wood, copper, brass, speakers, and custom modular synthesizers. There is a lot to say about this work—how I programmed the quantum computers, the just intonation tuning, the materials choices, the queer and trans sigils—but in order to keep the newsletter short I will just point you to the project page which provides more details.

I'm extremely grateful to MU and its director and curator, Angelique Spaninks, in particular for their support of this work. Let's just say the production process was intense and Angelique helped out in all of the most desperate moments.

As part of this exhibition I was also able to do a workshop called "Quantum Computing for 0€", where participants learned the basics of quantum computers, how to program them, and how to run their code on an actual quantum computer. Additionally, I participated in a discussion with the philosopher and activist Mijo Lizarzaburu entitled "On how matter is noisy: the case of quantum computers (Quantum theory from a feminist point of view)". These two events were made possible through my Stimuleringsfonds Internationalization grant that I received at the end of last year.

I would be delighted to do more of these quantum-related workshops and discussions in the future, so please reach out if you're interested!

Quanto Canto will be on view at Tabakalera until 8 of June. It will then travel to HEK in Basel and MU in Eindhoven later in the year.

Other workshops and exhibitions

Over the past few months, besides producing and installing Quanto Canto, I was happy to do the following as well:

I ran a workshop on "Orienting for Transitioning Times" as part of the closing of my exhibition at Improper Walls in Vienna. This is a workshop about how we orient ourselves to the world in times that are, well, in transition...and considering the words "orienting" and "transitioning" quite broadly. We learn how to relate differently to the sky, primarily through the use of the astrolabe. I'd also be delighted to do this workshop more in the future, so reach out if interested!
I'm part of a group exhibition curated by members of the Polynome collective at Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch in Berlin. Entitled "Cosmopolitics", the show involves works that question the prevailing dogmas of "new space". I'm delighted to be able to show TX-1, DEAR INTERLOCUTOR: TX-1, and fragments from TX-2: MOONSHADOW. The show is up until 1 June.

New tranxxeno lab member

I'm quite excited to announce that Claudia Pederson is joining the tranxxeno lab as a collaborator. Claudia and I have worked together on many projects over the past 15 years and our current research ideas and directions overlap quite nicely. Claudia in fact has a new book that has just been released entitled Mexican Media Art, Ecologies, the Posthuman, and Politics on Routledge that deeply and thoughtfully explores a number of works by allied and kin artists.

With Claudia we hope to expand some of the offerings of the tranxxeno lab over the coming months. I'll write more in upcoming newsletters about these possibilities.

Bits and bobs

A few discoveries from my travels and readings over the past few months:

A David Medalla drawing showing a proposed work entitled Bioluminescent (*astro* Accupuncture*), involving covering his body with the sap of trees, drawing magical patterns, and then powerding the skin with bioluminescent bacteria. Amazing. Seen at Museo Tamayo.

Margaret Mead had an androgyne lover, the anthropologist Ruth Benedict. Just learned this from the book Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science by Benjamin Breen. There's a lot more that's interesting in the book too; it's a necessary corrective to the conventional stories that have been told about the psychedelic sciences.

Saw some incredible carved Basque spoons in the Museo San Telmo in Donostia.

To leave you now

Coming up I'll be working on a new commission that I can't talk about much yet but am quite excited about. Through Quanto Canto I have also gotten interested in woodworking and am teaching myself how to use very old tools...more on this in future newsletters, but for now just some images of wood shavings from my practicing. And with Claudia we'll be developing other activities of the tranxxeno lab...keep posted to my socials for more information. As a reminder I no longer post on Facebook or Instagram; you can find me on Mastodon at @zeitkunst@post.lurk.org and on Bluesky at @zeitkunst.bsky.social.

Until the next time, keep on looking up, watch for how the Moon, Jupiter, and Mars dance across the sky in the evening, and await the return of Venus in the morning.

Adriana