12TH PLANET ORCHESTRA is a moniker for the machinic arrays of tobias c. van Veen, who performs live acoustic electronics to his surreal silent cinema. Suspended in slow time, expect a cut-up improvisational encounter with odd elektroniks by way of bow, circuit, and fingers to his Afrofuturist short film, LOST ALIEN (2018).

Since the ‘90s tobias has exhibited with galleries and festivals worldwide as an award-winning media/sound artist and curator. He is the founding electronic music curator of New Forms Festival (Vancouver) and founder of UpgradeMTL at the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT) in Montreal.  His most recent sound/video installations have been featured by Carnegie Hall, New York Live Arts, and the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM) in the exhibitions Curating the End of the World (2020), Altered-Worlds: Black Utopia and the Age of Acceleration (2021), and Democracy Project (2023).

Tobias hosts the Other Planes: Afro/Futurism Podcast and is director of sound/radio-art label IOSOUND.ca, where he releases as s*. A veteran vinyl turntablist, he spins beats for the bardos as pandemixDJs on Twitch. Tobias holds doctorates in the (post)humanities, and once taught at a beautiful University that went bankrupt thanks to capitalism. He has few hopes for humans, and hopes the 12th planet denizens reclaim the planet soon enough.