Planetary System
(ic Extraction)

"An otherworldly concert of four (!) stellar parts. Swiss composer and drummer Jessie Cox reflects on migration, planet and cosmos. With Afrofuturism as his inspiration, it should come as no surprise that the Harvard professor has already teamed up with Sun Ra Arkestra. For this new composition, he comes to Ear To The Ground and teams up with guitarists Maarten Stragier and Pierre Bibault. And with ... an unlikely mass of space junk. On the website ASTRIAGraph, you can see in real time all the objects floating through space, and that traffic is part of the ever-changing score that Stragier and Bibault translate into sound with a heavy dose of improvisation. And the plastic, cotton and rubber between their strings? That refers to the mountains of plastic waste and the plundering expeditions of colonists in ‘unexplored spaces’ of the past." https://www.bijloke.be/en/programma/3524//planetary-system-ic-extraction

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In the Composer's Words:

Systems of exploitation and extraction coalesce around a few materials with unusual properties, while also deepening injustices against human lives and more. Partly, this piece is inspired by the incredible possibilities to help our world given by Moriba Jah and the team behind AstriaGraph—a technology to track satellites, debris, and other bodies moving around in outer space near earth. The other side, is the way in which extraction seems to remain stuck in old structures traceable to slavery and colonialism—global systemic issues. From cotton, to rubber, to lithium batteries, extraction is tied up in these kinds of structures. The situation in the Congo has been on my mind for example as a space where colonial extraction of rubber and modern batteries to charge modern technologies are entangled and cost many lives and environmental destruction. But there is another possibility; these possibilities are opened by way of listening to the unheard lives and agents in extraction, slavery, modernity, and so forth. Just like AstriaGraph which as an analytic tool opens the chance to begin more accountable and subsequently responsible engagement with outer space, so too it is possible to hear other stories on planet earth. We can foster more responsible ecological relations, we can build a better world, just like the Afrofuturists proclaimed. From slave gardens, to indigenous methods of planting, to valuing the art of farming as stewards of lives and land, it is possible to re-open new futures beyond crises and dystopia. Utopias lie within our willingness to see what is and to dream of better worlds.

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