• 30 Years

01_Anosmia (c) all rights reserved Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman

This April it’s been exactly 30 years since the Rwandan Genocide: a civil war often shortlisted as one of the most brutal in history. The presentation of my tape piece Anosmia at Worm, on April 5th, is my contribution to this year’s worldwide commemoration in the Afro Diaspora.

“I still remember how, on April 7th 1994, an ordinary Thursday morning in Bruges, Belgium, I was walking down the stairs, just on my way out to school, when one of my parents approached me… Too much in total shock themselves to spare me any details. As a 14 year old I instantly wished I had nothing to do with Rwanda at all. Now, so many years later, obviously things have changed. I came to a point where I could no longer avoid that subject in my art. And that’s how I came to make Anosmia: a ca. 45 minute long radiophonic composition in which I reflect on the subject from a poetic and artistic point of view.”

Anosmia is an abstract reflection zooming in on the absurd fact that a tiny part of the body, the nose, played a key role in the Rwandan Genocide.

  • Click here for more info about Anosmia
  • Read here Aurélie’s interview about the making of Anosmia on Navelgazers (London)

When talking or thinking about Rwanda one can not ignore the events of April 1994. That history should never be forgotten, because it is never completely behind us…

Yet Rwanda is so much more: that is why I invite everyone to reflect on the past, ánd look ahead at what exceptional and positive things are happening now in Rwanda and East Africa, and elsewhere in the African diaspora.

The presentation at Worm marks the Rotterdam premiere of Anosmia, and my ultimate favorite bookshop vanGennep will for that occasion curate a suitable book table, a.o. showcasing a rich representation of the careful balance and impressive reconstruction in Rwanda.

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• The Edges of the Voice

iii the reading room - Relay conversationOn December 8th and December 9th I participated in The Edges of The Voice – Reading Room #29 & # 30 in The Hague: reading and discussing texts by Anne Carson & Eduardo Kohn together with Amelia Groom, Sissel Marie Tonn, Floria Reznik. ==> Here an Invitation to read the relay conversation further reflecting on what was discussed back then. (drawing by Sissel Marie Tonn)

• Errant Bodies book OUT NOW!

Grounds for possible music, Errant BodiesGender, voice, language, and identity are four important notions for musical creation, for the shaping of a canon, and for the interactions in the field. All four notions are strongly contextual and carry an inherent sense of paradigm and otherness. Other and self are defined via orientation and history, expressed via voice, and confirmed in language.

In this publication, these four core notions serve as a set of lenses permitting different perspectives on one another. However much the field of the sounding arts might pretend to be tangential to such affections, they provide important grounds for musical creation.

Some twenty artists, including myself, have created a variety of outputs – as different in form, strategies, approach, and language, as they are rooted in a variety of sub-fields within the sounding arts.

GROUNDS FOR POSSIBLE MUSIC is edited by Julia Eckhardt/Q-02 (Brussels), published by Errant Bodies Press (Berlin).