Afro Elektro Band Feat. Alvar Gullichsen Turned The Biohacker Summit Into A Ritual For A Different Future

At Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki, Music, Psychedelic Art And Cosmic Myth Were Woven Into A Call For Cooperation

On Friday, 3 June 2022, at Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki in Finland, Afro Elektro Band feat. Alvar Gullichsen delivered a performance that felt less like a concert than a proposition. Under the title Afro Elektro Band Feat. Alvar Gullichsen: Starship Babies & Welcome Our Future, the ensemble fused ambient afrobeat textures, improvisation and visionary imagery into an invocation of planetary change.

The performance drew directly from Gullichsen’s long-running artistic fascination with transcultural visual patterns, shamanistic traditions and mystical geometries that, in his view, connect human cultures across time. At the summit, that visual and philosophical world was translated into sound, movement and spoken manifesto.

A Performance That Asked The Audience To Surrender

The set opened with Starship Babies, a piece introduced as having been composed by Anthropria on trumpet. From there, the performance quickly moved beyond the conventions of musical presentation and into something more immersive, more bodily.

“Let your body flow with the music,” the speaker urged.

It was not a casual line. It was the governing principle of the set. Again and again, the audience was invited to abandon stiffness, to loosen the border between listening and participation, to treat rhythm as a means of transformation.

“We are going to hack your body, your mind, your ego, your soul, and your heart,” came another declaration, delivered with the strange confidence of a mantra and the theatrical charge of performance art.

In the context of the Biohacker Summit, a gathering usually associated with optimisation, physiology and human enhancement, the language landed with particular force. Here, hacking did not mean data, devices or metrics. It meant rhythm as intervention. Sound as disruption. Improvisation as a route into altered awareness.

Alvar Gullichsen’s Vision Moved From Canvas To Stage

Gullichsen was no mere guest artist attached to a musical act. His presence defined the atmosphere of the event. Known for paintings steeped in geometric symbolism and transcendental inquiry, he brought to the performance the same sensibility that has shaped his visual work: the belief that patterns can act as vessels of knowledge and that art can illuminate hidden continuities between civilisations, spiritual practices and states of consciousness.

At Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki, that worldview was amplified by Afro Elektro, the band formed specially for the occasion. Featuring trumpeter Antero Priha and guitarist Julius Heikkilä, the ensemble performed against the backdrop of Gullichsen’s psychedelic art, creating a layered environment in which image and sound appeared to pulse toward the same destination.

Improvisation Became A Method Of Discovery

One of the most compelling ideas embedded in the set was its treatment of unfinished material. The band introduced a final track described as likely to appear on a forthcoming record, explaining that studio-made compositions had been brought into the live arena for exploration through improvisation.

That choice mattered. It suggested a creative process built not on perfection, but on openness. The music was not presented as fixed and authoritative. It was tested in public, stretched in real time, made porous to risk and spontaneity.

The title of that culminating piece, Welcome Our Future, carried the evening’s central thesis. The future was not imagined as something to brace against, but something to receive.

The Nazca Plateau, The Stars And A Shared Language

Then the performance took a turn into cosmic allegory. A spoken passage described Earth as a planet observed “since time immemorial” from outer space, with extraterrestrial beings waiting for a “clear, bold message” from humanity, “a sign of welcome, not of fear.”

The imagery that followed was striking. On the Nazca plateau in Peru, the speaker said, shamans had once laid out messages of welcome for alien observers. Whether taken literally, symbolically or as visionary theatre, the story worked as the performance’s moral core.

“We must speak a common language: the language of symbolism and the language of the stars.”

It was a deeply Gullichsen-like proposition. Symbolism here was not ornamental. It was civilisational. It was the bridge between cultures, species, epochs and possible futures. The stars were not only celestial bodies, but a grammar of connection.

A Rejection Of Competition And A Plea For Cooperation

What emerged from the cosmic narrative was, finally, a very earthly politics. The speaker’s message became explicit: humanity could not continue under the exhausted logic of rivalry.

“Competition is old world,” the audience was told. “The new world is a world of cooperation, understanding, respect and sharing.”

For a performance grounded in psychedelia, shamanic imagery and extraterrestrial welcome, the conclusion was remarkably direct. The real paradigm shift on offer was ethical. The future would depend not on conquest, but collaboration. Not on fear, but hospitality. Not on solitary advancement, but mutual survival.

“It is only by working together that planet Earth can be there.”

In another setting, the line might have sounded naive. Here, inside a performance that had steadily dissolved the boundaries between concert, ritual and speculative philosophy, it felt instead like the evening’s simplest and most urgent truth.

Welcoming The Future Through Sound

By the time Welcome Our Future echoed through the room, the title no longer felt rhetorical. It had become an instruction.

Afro Elektro Band feat. Alvar Gullichsen offered more than music at Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki. They staged a manifesto in rhythm and symbol, one in which the body was invited to loosen, the imagination was pushed beyond the terrestrial, and the audience was asked to consider whether the next great human upgrade might not be technological at all.

It might be the ancient, difficult art of learning to live together.

Frequently asked questions

What was this performance?

Less a concert than a proposition. Under the title Starship Babies & Welcome Our Future, the ensemble fused ambient afrobeat textures, improvisation and visual work into a set that moved beyond the conventions of musical presentation into something more immersive and bodily.

What did Alvar Gullichsen bring to it?

More than a guest slot. Known for paintings steeped in geometric symbolism and transcendental inquiry, Gullichsen brought the same sensibility that shapes his visual work: the belief that patterns can act as vessels of knowledge and that art can carry an argument.

How did improvisation function in the set?

As a method of discovery rather than a flourish. The band introduced a final track described as likely to appear on a forthcoming record, treating unfinished material as something to be worked out in front of the audience instead of withheld until it was polished.

About the event

This recap is part of the Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki series, recorded in Helsinki on 3 and 4 June 2022. Read the summary of the whole event or join the next edition, HOLOLIFE Summit 2026 Amsterdam, on 14 and 15 November 2026.