Astro Black: Race for Space

An episode in Soda_Jerk's multi-channel digital-video installation cycle entitled "Astro Black". Race for Space gives life to Sun Ra’s claim to have been abducted by aliens who schooled him in the radical potential of music. While working as a piano man in Chicago in 1943, Sun Ra is contacted by Morpheus who offers him a choice of two destinies. Flashing forward to the 1969 moon landing, Neil Armstrong discovers that outer space has already been colonized by Sun Ra and his intergalactic ensemble, The Arkestra. At stake in this episode is the cultural politics implicit in the territorialization of outer space, both as a geography and a virtual field of possibility.