ALL POWER EMANATES FROM THE LAND
Live audiovisual performance
ALL POWER EMANATES FROM THE LAND is a live audiovisual performance expanding on the soundscape made for Jessica Ashman’s exhibition ‘Those That Do Not Smile Will Kill Me’, at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery - which came out of her research within the biology and botany collections. Through doom metal, punk, folk song, field recordings, sound design and animation, it is an alternative universe in which three imagined characters (Afiba, Datura and Juba) are portals for how Indigenous and African-Jamaicans used plants to resist their enslavement: from food sovereignty to spiritual connection and rebellion. Embedded within the soundscape is a song cycle dedicated to some of the plants that would have been central to their lives - offering an imagining otherwise to the trauma and violence of the botanical colonialism within the archives.
Tumi nyina ne asase (All power emanates from the land)
Asase Ye Duru (The land has weight)
Jessica Ashman: voice, electric guitar, percussion, samples, animation
Auclair: voice, drumkit, percussion
Richard Phoenix: drumkit and electric bass
Trailer of our live performance at Supernormal Festival 2025