Julia Solis

Berlin, Germany (August 2025)

Set inside Berlin’s Humboldthain flak tower, Roadside Picnic transforms a WWII ruin into a cosmic “Zone” where memory, desire, and invented lore transform a journey through a rubble field into an otherworldly sensory experience. The installation invites visitors to move through a narrative sound-and-light environment inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and the wider Falling Sideways mythology, using narrative, projections, art installations and climactic soundscapes to transport the audience. Hosted by Berliner Unterwelten e.V., it was presented as part of Long Night of Museums in August 2025. More here fallingsideways.com

Minnesota, United States (March 2025)

Pyramidion unfolds in abandoned sand mines through a story linking Egyptian solar mythology, local mining history, meteoric glass, and signal transmission. Audiences help reconstruct a fictional astronomical experiment by activating frequencies from silicone materials and ritual actions in the mine environment. The event is an especially participatory chapter in the rogue-planet narrative, asking visitors to play an active role in the storyline as they journey deeper into the tunnels and unlock planetary messages. The performances were held in loving cooperation with Thelma’s Merry Gaggle of Mousers. More here fallingsideways.com

Nabeul, Tunisia (September 2024)

This chapter traces the mythic meteorite of the Magna Mater from ancient Anatolia to North Africa. We follow an astronomer’s notes in search of a hidden fragment of the cosmic rock as an instrument to translate messages from stars. The performance uses an abandoned train setting as a resonating chamber and merges ritual narrative with elements of classical history, cosmology, sacrificial traditions and local archaeology, culminating in a musical and spoken dialogue between the two halves of a binary sun. More here fallingsideways.com

Berlin, Germany (2022-2024)

Staged in Berlin’s historic AEG tunnel, this recurring installment expanded into a multi-year live experience with slideshow, sound work, artifacts, and participatory performance stations. As the tunnel follows the shape of a sea goat, it centers on Capricorn mythology and its relation to the project’s storyworld. The format used small-group cycles, enabling over 600 people to experience intimate, high-immersion encounters throughout one night. The summer event recurring from 2022-2024 was graciously hosted by Berliner Unterwelten e.V. More here fallingsideways.com

Wieliczka, Poland (2023)

Presented deep in the world’s deepest salt mine near Krakow, Poland, The Salt Cellar played on the acoustic properties of lithium found in salt brine, presenting clues in the work of Copernicus and a local medieval astronomer to translate the final dialogue between two binary stars. The project featured live performance, choreography, and video, animating salt cellar figurines as transformative presences within the subterranean setting. Developed for the site in dialogue with its material and symbolic history, the work combined theatrical embodiment with the series’ ongoing interest in myth and resonance. Audience groups were kept small to increase the sense of intimacy and immersion in the vast historic cavern. This was hosted by the Wieliczka Salt Mine in conjunction with the Krakow Audio Art Festival 2023. More here fallingsideways.com

Tallinn, Estonia (2022)

This experimental chapter was set in abandoned seaside military tunnels near Tallinn, where auroral radiation and bunker geometry were imagined as part of a planetary transmission system. The piece operated as a test-format performance with a small audience, connecting narrative experimentation, local site history, Estonian cosmological references, and the project’s ongoing astronomer mythos. More here fallingsideways.com

Texas, United States (2022)

Inspired by industrial architecture, this event took place in an abandoned textile mill that the narrative frames as an astronomer’s former office and lab. The team built performances and artifacts around discovered charts, devices, and translation instructions for converting radiowave interference into image and sound. The run consisted of four consecutive, small-capacity shows designed for concentrated immersion. More here fallingsideways.com

Detroit

This aquatic performance on an eastside Detroit canal blended local plane-crash history with Hollow Earth mythology, warring cargo cults, surreal appearances by the Hollow Earth Queen and her league of underwater creatures, and the adoring Order of the Wounded Crust. It was presented with Seafoam Palace as part of the Totems Arts Festival. (Photos: Tod Seelie)

Barcelona

Inside an abandoned Civil War tunnel under central Barcelona, visitors had to unearth clues and piece together an absurd yet haunting folk rhyme to bring a local mythological figure to life. Created in conjunction with a presentation at the Influencers Festival. (Photo: Julia Solis)

Michigan

An abandoned Cineplex where the removal of seats has created a decayed beach atmosphere at the foot of the flooded proscenium – the perfect place for a bingo seance to conjure the ghost of the recently departed actress Annette Funicello, known for her 1960s beach party films, one of which was shown on the decrepit screen. All went according to plan – until the Creature from the Black Lagoon rose from the waters in Cinema 2 just as Annette’s spirit happened to be rappelling from the projector booth. The Creature swooped her up in his wet and scaley arms, running off with her into yet another happy ending seeping with interspecies love. (Photos: Christos Pathiakis, Poster: Bryan Parcival)

Catskills, NY

The Phantom of the Opera has retired to a fancy summer resort in the Catskills featuring a swimming pool, aerobics, beauty and tanning salons, and a comedian in a meat locker performing to canned laughter. Despite these amenities, the phantom is angry about having no nose. Through kidnappings and amputations, it coerces hotel guests to trade body parts for bingo cards where a nose is the grand prize, presented during an emotional rollerskating performance by “Fire in the Wind”. (Photos: Jess Bruder, Julia Solis, Bryan Parcival)

Kansas City

Hosted by Grand Arts, this team-based urban adventure game revolving around the destruction of Kansas City is best described by one of the guests: kansascitysoil.blogspot.com (Photos: Christopher Beauchamp)

New York City

A particular honor thanks to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council: creating a scavenger hunt inside the abandoned City Hall Subway Station for their event series “Access Restricted”. Visitors arrived by special subway train and were prompted to find clues embedded in the historic station architecture to solve a riddle, followed by a grand prize ceremony and talk on the site’s significance. [Photo: Lower Manhattan Cultural Council]