Scenes from the Alien Party (2025)
Series of three Audioplays
by Xenoverse
Cashmere Radio and Cittipunkt
Scenes from the Alien Party is a series of audioplays by Xenoverse. The cycle is based on the trope of the 'party scene' common in sci-fi novels from the US-American New Wave. A party denotes a festive social event, or a political vanguard with an ideological program, that revolutionary time functions as the governing body. A party is more generally a collective of people, as in a hunting party. “To part" as in “to separate” is common in the various meanings of the word. It marks a groups distinction from the larger social world to care for each other, lift each other out of repression (both political and libidinal), and may create a space of identification that can function as a vehicle of utopic transformation. Parties are both spaces of intensity in the present, and have a strong historical and future driven perspective. They hold a polyvalent temporality hosted in the collective.
The series was produced at Cashmere Radio in collaboration with CITTIPUNKT.
Xenoverse – is a Berlin-based science fiction and theory study group. Since 2019 we read, read to each other, listen, discuss and collaborate. Themes we slingshot are radical alterity, alienation, utopia and its discontents, queer temporality, dream work, people’s punk and the alien party.
The first Episode reads from Dhalgren (1975, Samuel R. Delany). A gay bar in the unpoliced city of Bellona, where new encounters are made, mythical figures pass, and moons multiply while the poet writes as he drags his bootless foot.
Running Time: 36:56 min
Language: English
Voices: John MacLean, Robin O'Shea, David Iselin Rickets, Kat Schneider, Maria Tammik, Elbe Trakal, Andres Villareal, Anna Winder
Sound edit and effects: Zach Hart and Elbe Trakal
The second episode reads from Adulthood Rites (1988, Octavia Butler), the second installment in Butler’s Xenogenesis Series. This scene depicts a going away party for the maturing mixed-race teenager Akin, who needs to leave Earth and live on a ship entity to go through metamorphosis.
Running Time: 20:53 min’
Language: English
Voices: Zach Hart, Maria Tammik, Elbe Trakal, David Iselin Rickets, Andres Villareal, and Anna Winder
Sound edit and effects: Zach Hart and Elbe Trakal
The third episode reads from Dune (1965, Frank Herbert). The scene depicts a dinner by the new administrators of spice mining on Arakis, House Atreides. The duke and his family give insight into their paranoia and the possible networks of betrayal at table.
Running Time: 56:31 min’
Language: English
Voices: Alexander Hong, John MacLean, Maria Tammik, Elbe Trakal, David Iselin Rickets, Andres Villareal, Steph Holl-Trieu, Nick Koppenhagen, and Timothy Neate
Sound edit and effects: Zach Hart and Elbe Trakal