Cyanne van den Houten (artwork)
Cyanne van den Houten is an expert in enchanted technology. With the Telemagic collective, they have invented a lot more amazing magical machines including AI-musicians and a mystical oracle. Cyanne’s work shows what can happen if you actually engage with technology instead of only using it instrumentally. In june 2023, Cyanne channeled the chaotic energy of our cult into the first Solarcore zine via a Riso printer and a computer. Since then, they have created a full visual universe for us, including this website.
Jonathan Ho (costumes)
In the Sun Age, we will find new forms of hedonism. We will reprogram our biocomputers, and become desiring machines. To help us with this transformation, we asked Jonathan Ho to design costumes, as he specializes in discovering and cultivating desires. Jon researched sex lives of snails, who turned out to be fluid and lustful beings. By colourfully decorating their shells, Jon created an even more stimulating feast for the senses of the for the snails. He did the same for humans, by designing for example a church-themed dark room which helps visitors reach spiritual levels of ecstasy and personalized fetish wear which gives the wearer access to their own specific pleasures.
Aram de Groot (film)
“All of my work is intimate yet cosmic…” filmmaker Aram de Groot recently handed me the key to his oeuvre and I felt most enlightened. I remember him sitting behind a strange alchemistic installation with a small spinning plateau, mirrors and cameras. While he was filming an antique and ornate golden clock with small figures who perform a show at regular intervals, he almost became a life-size extension of his subject. Vice versa, the clock really came to life in his film. Aram did the same to city statues and Peter Blake paintings, and succeeded in capturing the aura of a Van Gogh. For the Solarcore cult, Aram provides us with what he calls a ‘camera lucida’ a tiny peephole to be able to behold the massiveness of the sun. He bundles its cosmic rays into a miniscule fleck of extreme heat. The energy of a star will also be available for you!
Raymond van Mil is a legendary photographer, well-known for his tireless nightlife photography. He has seen many stars through his lens, has the sunniest temper and he knows how to celebrate good times. Raymond has an eye for the absurd, the magical, the excess. He also has a lesser known but equally strong philosophical interest. This materialised, among other things, in his membership of the Bhagwan movement in the early nineties and a spiritual reverence for perfect coffee.
Jan van Tienen is not just a novice at our cult. He is also the SUPREME HEEMLORD, as the prime mover of his project ‘Heemkunde van de Ziel’. ‘Heemkunde’ is an untranslatable and ancient Dutch practice in which an investigator researches the ‘heem’: local surroundings, the life stories of relatives, maybe even one’s ‘home’. These investigators indulge in their amateur history, -archaeology and -geography because if they don’t do it, no one else will. According to Jan, in the current cosmopolitan world of lovely displacement, ‘heem’ can also mean a very private corner of your soul (‘ziel’), or some weird place on the internet.
Jan recently published his second book ‘De Verworvenheden’, a guide towards becoming someone who longs to be on the island of Hompelvoet and an account of his own journey towards becoming such a person. The book is very deep! And also melancholic, and funny. At the SUN AGE PARTY, he has spoken about the results of one of his other quests. Jan was haunted by the thought that the sleepy suburb Diemen might be the pinnacle human civilisation can reach before collapsing. He went there to find out more about this apocalyptically normal place.