BIOM01: KISETSU by OR POIESIS

BIOM01:
OR POIESIS - KISETSU

Introducing music composed for geomantic tones, drill-hole stone object(s) and their voids.

Performed: OR poiesis

Recorded & mastered: OR poiesis

Photography: Petra Kapš

Layout & design: Nikos Sotirelis

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KAMIsTONE
Kamnolom
Recorded between 2012 - 2025

"When I first arrived at the Marušići quarry, somewhere on the northernmost slopes of the Mediterranean, I was completely absorbed by its quietness … a veil of amplified silence, a highly unique sonic microclimate, a refined polyphony of space … an endless, liminal echo. My ears traced a subtle threshold, a portal-like fold within themselves, where outer and inner worlds intertwine through fluid, enigmatic modality, without violent abduction or immense pressure of noise.

In the not so distant past, the mining industry had exhausted this place. Yet, unexpectedly and with surprising speed, Earth’s autopoiesis rewilded it, restoring its life-giving substrate.

Abandoned quarry … tearing wound in the landscape,
unexpected amphitheater, an acoustic
refuge, a stone sonic archive.


High summer … afternoon trembles with shimmering heat, wrecked stone blocks lay scattered like fractured bodies. December is close to its end … semi-deep, lethargic cold of moist, suffocated walls pressing through the quarry’s edges ... silence, terrifying in its absoluteness.
June ... broken old stone quarry crane roars in the wind, a storm growing closer … while I listen to its massive elongated metal wires, some ghostly, fragmented radio voices burst through.

Summer again … layers of dry, white, sharply granulated sand, neatly shaped and structured, resembling ancient fleeting architecture, seem completely silent … just until I listen with contact microphones and enormous tiny voices shout through … ANTS … vocalising their intense irritation. And ... so … on … through the decade. Hidden voices slowly reveal themselves.

An acoustic territory built upon intricately arranged tones and finely tuned strata of life … much too subtle to be perceived with our contemporary rigid ears. The tree from the lower platform, where I had been unable to descend all this time, had grown. Finally, with its support, I could somehow find my path down and descend into the lowest plateau of the quarry.

And perhaps, the most painful loss for me … the epicenter of sonic act … my intimate channel of communion with the sacred … axis sonora, the zero point of a time - space vortex, a cylindrical void, meters deep, seven centimeters in diameter, almost entirely lost its resonance. A borehole drilled into living rock at the edge of the middle plateau, my magical coil - an ear to Earth’s core, to unseen spheres of the universe.

Gravitational darkness,
a microspace of sonic hierogamy.
Gaia and Cosmos … whispered union.

My ears kept falling into that narrow hollow. Whenever I came there, I first lowered my microphones into the abyss, and listened. The space kept resonating with all that was there, and me within it. A stone record sonified with breath. Over the years, the borehole grew shallower. Layer by layer, atmospheric dust and wandering winds sealed it, sedimenting strata of the Anthropocene. The tone of Earth and cosmic echo grew distorted, muffled
… an eroding frequency, a vanishing voice.

Fluid nature of this sacred symphony, its diverse emissions and silences, has affected me like a blessed sonic suspension. Although my gaze had to witness the remnants of relentless extraction, the scars of taking what was never ours to claim. Earth (Zemlja) does not belong to us - we belong to her. I walked there to commune with the Elements, and to listen to the seemingly omnipotent nothing we name silence, that gradually revealed itself as a terrestrial symphony.

This space, this silence, taught me how to listen. It taught me to hear the subtle resonance of space and atmosphere, of beings, plants and matter, of feedback loops and acousmatic spectrum, inhabited by unseen voices and sounds, of frequencies and cycles and harmony - the nature of coexistence of life and elements, the sacredness of all things. And it intrigued me with something that seemed impossible: how to hear the inaudible.

To perceive both passing and duration, the fleeting and the eternal. Eons layered within Earth. A shell fossil. A primordial sea.
A butterfly on the tip of a toe.
A transformation where everything appears unchanged, yet is entirely different. Gaia and Cosmos. A pause, a breath.
An interval of sonic nothingness.

In the silence of the space, in its ruthless openness toward the sky, in the endless noise of exhaled dust, and in the raw, elemental physicality of Earth, which is both telos (the finite) and cycle (the infinite), I performed intimate sonic rituals, played with surfaces and textures, found objects, emitting softly spoken words, feelings and moods of my being. The massive stone blocks, in their majestic objecthood, were perfect listeners, practitioners of ancient oracular practice.

And slowly, through countless recorded sounds and voices of the quarry,
I began to compose this sonic and visual / tactile body.

KISETSU is a one hour sound composition, consisting of two complementary parts: Kamnolom and KAMIsTONE, the sonic positive and negative.

Kamnolom unfolds on the surface, in the exposed touch of Earth and Cosmos. KAMIsTONE takes place in the negative of space, in the hole. It travels in reverse, from the last recording of the borehole (July 17, 2023) to the first recording (August 10, 2012). A whole - body resonant listening experience of the space and the stone coil inspired me to create a primitive feedback based stone instrument, with the desire for it to incarnate the resonant experience and tone of Gaia. In KAMIsTONE, I play this instrument as well.

KISETSU is released on tape, on a cassette, to preserve its liveliness, transformation, sonic substance, and materiality.

Petra Kapš (a.k.a OR poiesis) is an artist, composer, and researcher in the fields of bio-, geo- in hydro-acoustics, merging elemental life and the secrets of the Earth with Arte Sonora, experimental music, and visual-performative practices. Her artistic ventures include developing deeply attentive modalities of listening and recording, and creating artworks that engage with the sacredness of all life forms. She works in both Slovenian and international settings. She is a co-founder of BIOM editions, a founding member of the CENSE (Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies) association, and a member of the JATA C bioacoustic group and the radio.earth collective.


Biom Editions 2025 [BIOM01]

Δονήσεις που συμπληρώνουν τη σιωπή.

Magnetic remnants
of field notes, sonic acts & acoustic phenomena.

Curated by Nikos Sotirelis and Petra Kapš.