UNDERPLANET

What happens when sound is no longer merely heard, but is understood as a material force—as a vehicle for memory, resistance, and planetary change?

With UNDERPLANET, Xenia Benivolski presents a book at the intersection of sound art, philosophy, and decolonial thought. In dense, poetic language, she traces the hidden vibrations of our present and maps out a speculative cartography of the Earth in which colonial history, the ecological crisis, and experimental music intertwine in surprising ways.

Drawing on three materials—glass, metal, and worms—Benivolski develops his own perspective on the relationship between sound and matter. Glass becomes a resonating chamber for feminist critique; metal makes audible the geological conditions underlying digital technologies and the global exploitation of raw materials; while worms and processes of decomposition open up an alternative to the destructive logics of fossil capitalism. Sound appears not merely as an aesthetic phenomenon, but as a medium in which political struggles, ecological processes, and hidden forms of knowledge are inscribed.

The focus is on artists and thinkers such as Annea Lockwood, Suzanne Kite, Raven Chacon, Eddie Ekete, Camille Norment, Maria Chávez, and JJJJJerome Ellis. Their works engage in a dialogue with decolonial and materialist perspectives offered by Donna Haraway, Fred Moten, Édouard Glissant, Sylvia Wynter, and many others. The result is a book that brings together current debates on ecology, colonial history, sound studies, and contemporary art in a way that is as surprising as it is compelling.

UNDERPLANET rethinks music as a political, material, and philosophical practice.

UNDERPLANET will be released on October 16 as part of our new SYNKOPEN series and is now available for pre-order!