XenoAudio Playcasts ::: Curated by Mikemetic for the ICA Xenogenesis Salons

In January and February of 2020, the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU organized a series of private salons with community-based artists, intellectuals, and scholars to decipher some of the subject works that will be featured in the Xenogenesis exhibit which opens at the ICA on February 22nd. Mikemetic was brought in to not only participate in the salons, but to also create thematic playlists for each salon session. His creation of “playcasts” are a unique blend of a curated playlist of music combined with a narrative context piece of 300-400 words that adds additional reference to the connections between the selected tracks and the subject material. Below are the three playcasts that were created for the Xenogenesis salon series, and are a lead in to the February 22nd exhibition opening which will feature the Otolith Group, the UK-based global cultural collective that is curating Xenogenesis.

Salon One: Julius Eastman

Music is a universal medium that is found in some form or another in every human culture around the world. The use of instrumental tools in conjunction with the cadence of the individual and collective voice have been at the foundation of these manifestations of tradition throughout the ages. And while there are many forms of culturally-distinct audio dialects in the contemporary world, colonialism has taken many indigenous, native elements away from musical expressions in the same way that it has killed off cultural identities whole-scale in the name of homogenous oppression. 

When experiencing the canon of creative work that is the legacy of American composer Julius Eastman it is essential to engage with it recognizing and acknowledging the continued expression of personal identity within his works. And while he was not by any means the first classically-trained musician to challenge traditional concepts of tone, rhythm, titling, and arrangement, his works provide an undeniably sharp contrast to many of the Western musical tropes that have dominated the creative musical expressions of the African diaspora through colonialism.

The West of Eastman playcast is a short list of musical works that, either directly or indirectly, engage with the legacy of the artist in contemporary musical styles. Although a surface-level exploration of the playcast title might elicit a left-to-right linear association (which would imply the selected tracks reflect a pre-Eastman aesthetic), it is based more on a traditional Kemetic concept that celebrates the Sun and its pathway from East to West as divine expression. With this in mind, the selected sounds reflect the dawn and emerging light of artists of color that are breaking through traditional colonialist concepts within Westernized music. And while these artists may not be as radical as Eastman in their need to break free of those traditions, they nonetheless reflect a commitment to the need for emancipation of cultural expression from intergenerational oppression that often restricts that expression and cultural connectivity of music born from the creative well of the African diaspora.

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Salon Two: In the Year of the Quiet Sun

Expanding critical and interpretive concepts around the notion of Pan-Africanism and decolonization have been at the heart of many cultural movements throughout the African diaspora. Marcus Garvey’s Blackstar Liner remains one of the most effective initiatives to repatriate displaced Africans in the United States back to Western Africa. And while a growing number of individuals are traveling back to the mother continent to reconnect with their pre-displacement roots, it cannot be overlooked that Africa itself is still mired in European tradition and the long-lasting imprint from the economic and social thumb of colonialist subjugation. 

Kwame Nkrumah’s rise to power as leader of Ghana, a country taking its first steps away from over a century of British occupation and rule, provided the foundations for Pan-Africanist thought as a means for the continent to become self-sufficient. By bringing together the many distinct cultural and economic states throughout the continent, Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba in DRC, Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, and many others forged an ambitious path towards economic solidarity. However, 55 years after the 1964-1965 Years of the Quiet Sun, the continent is still striving for independence and a unity that can give the indigenous peoples, as well as those of the African diaspora, the solid foundation they need to assert a more direct form of self-sufficiency.

The In The Shadows of the Quiet Sun playcast is a collection of tracks that reflects the Pan-African musical aesthetic as it is being presented in 2020. There are selections that dig into the past, as the old is inevitably part of the new, but most are audio reflections of the state of the diaspora in the 21st century. The focus is on the music of the continent as that is the cultural well from which all other creative forces of the diaspora manifest. The art still speaks to revolution, independence, and self-determination in a century that is presenting the same struggles for cultural liberation that have been the realities of the continent for far too long. 

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Salon Three: Octavia Butler

Digging deep into the canon of Black American cultural arts you can see both the triumphs and the fears of a people fighting to define themselves in a hostile foreign environment. Even for the scores of dark-skinned indigenous people that resided on the continent long before European occupation, the colonialist presence brought with it overarching and abhorrently violent applications of the false concept of white supremacy that affected everyone within the footprint of the soon-to-be United States of America. Combined with the inherently paternalistic hierarchies found in most systems of oppression, women of color have carried much of the burden in overcoming the systemic hurdles that have littered our path to collective liberation.

Late 20th century author Octavia E. Butler and others like her have been essential to the expanded visualization of not just the potentialities of people of color, but the complex realities and struggles with the past, present, and future of displaced peoples in a variety of different contexts. As an artist wielding social identity and physical displacement within fictional contexts that expand beyond the human, Butler provides a platform that is not unique in literary form, but refreshingly unique in content. Subtle notes of cyber-feminism steeped with racial awareness, technocracy, and constant themes of survival make Butler’s work an essential part of understanding the application of extracted cultural visions for the future.   

The XenogenetiX playcast is a reflection of many of the themes in the works of Octavia Butler. The tracks “Soulris”, “Atlantic Black”, and “Never Catch Me” speak to elements around the novel Wild Seed, while Parable of the Sower is the muse in selecting “Following the North Star”, “GhettoMusick”, and “Cold War”. With a truly fictional account such as Bloodchild, Butler is at her most expansive within the “xeno” category. “Natural Sci Fi”, “Earth People”, “Lightyears”, and “Stranger Than Fiction” provide conceptual support for the short story in both sonic and ideological arrangement, while providing alternative interpretations to the place of Black people in the expanded Universe. Many of these compositions were written by Black American women that are continuing to expand on and positively contribute to the complex interpretation of being foreign within your own planet of origin and beyond.

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