written: 2020
 
instrumentation: Solo Viola
 
duration: 11'
 
commission: Saša Mirkovic
 
World Premiere: 15.12.2022, SWR, Saša Mirkovic, Viola

"A System of Reality" is an expression repeatedly used by James Baldwin in his "Pin Drop Speech" in 1965 at Cambridge University
during a debate with William F. Buckley.
"The looting starts, the shooting starts" is a phrase originally pronounced by Walter E. Headley, the police chief of Miami, Florida, in response to an outbreak of violent crime during the 1967 Christmas holiday season. Donald J. Trump made use of this quote during the protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
The piece was composed in Paris in the summer of 2020 at the request of violist Saša Mirkovi?, to whom it is dedicated; it reflects in its ruthless intensity the tension of that particular moment, between the outrage at a humanly, socially and politically untenable situation and the frustration caused by the pandemic, which in those months was at one of its most difficult moments, especially for cultural workers.
Andrea Molino, Chicago, November 2022