Dear Måna

In their work for the Solarpunk arts festival of 2023 in Rjukan, the group Kultivator has focused their
interest on the river Måna and her history and possible future together with the multi-species
communities she runs through. From her past of connecting mountain lakes to the sea with a
delicate eco system of migrating life forms, moving sediments, and contributing through millennia to
the planets hydrologic cycle, going into supplying energy to what would become an industrial world
heritage, and soon about to feed Salmon farms and server halls with her harnessed powers, she is
the centrepiece of many entangled stories. What would her own say for the future be? Could we as
artists, scientists or just members of human society, begin to hear that by speculating or imagining?
In the project Dear Måna… , Kultivator initiates a correspondence with the river, a long overdue
letter, that experiments with modes of listening and giving voice, mixing familiar language with
attempts of speaking in river, having her ceaseless current as a companion in the work.
One part of the correspondence takes physical form in wet clay letters in the river bed, that
Kultivator entered on Thursday the 29:th of June. The performance of shaping the letters, lowering
them to the riverbed, and writing them in between Månas polished rocks and gravel took seven
hours. After receiving the letter, she is now doing her reading, the words are dissolving, following her
movement down through Rjukan, passing dams and turbines, perhaps landing as a thin layer on the
calm river floor in her mouth at Tinnsjøen. Only she knows for how long the text will still be readable
from Fabrikksbrua. Hopefully and probably, we will still see traces from them during the Solarpunk
arts festival summer 2023.
The sentence, “Dear Måna, How are we doing (it together in the future?)” is just the start of a letter,
and is to be continued by the visitors of the Solarpunk arts festival during the summer 2023, as
another part of the correspondence. In Rjukan Varelagret, with a view over Måna, a small Office of
experimental river communication is set up. Here anyone who wish can continue the letter to Måna,
using porcelain clay dissolved in her water as ink, writing or drawing on the walls or on rocks from
her riverbed. Messages written on the rocks will be delivered back to Måna after the exhibitions end
in September. The installation will, just as the clay letters at the river floor, be read and transformed
by many to a not yet known form. Maybe, possibly, opening for a small shift in the way we look at
time, control, and our ability to think with entities such as Måna in imagining the future.