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workspace for experimental music and sound art
residency
Aurélie Lierman
01/10/2015 - 31/10/2015

Aurélie Lierman will during her residency at Moks research the speaking voice in an acousmatic context by creating a vocal theater piece, exploring the boundaries between music and meaning.

THEME: Fukushima 3/11 ­ HOME AS A SHELTER

Aurélie Lierman will reflect on the idea of home as a symbol for ‘shelter’ and ‘safety’, and its shifting meanings in times of disaster. Fukushima 3/11, the nuclear disaster of March 2011 in Japan, would be the underlying subject of her research.

Field recordings and human speech are the backbone of Aurélie’s work and she would like to continue inthat direction with her ongoing project HOME AS A SHELTER. Not so long ago she launched an open call for anyone with family or friends in Japan, at the time of the nuclear disaster of Fukushima. She asked all participants to dig into their personal archive of old messages that they have send to their families or friends on the day of 3/11 and the following weeks (letters, postcards, SMS, Facebook, Twitter and other social media). She asked them to read those messages in the original language (mostly Japanese), and to provide her with their English translation.

She on purpose did not oppose any aesthetics, she did not tell them how to read those texts. Any recording device and any sound quality was accepted (lo fi, hi fi, digital, analogue), as long as the voice remained intelligible and easy to be understood. The result is a kaleidoscope of non­professional (Japanese) speaking voices, all recorded under different recording conditions, often far away from the standard professional soundproof studio environment. With this collected sound recordings she would like to make a ‘vocal theatre’ with multiple speakers, where each speaker has its own personal voice and its own narrative logic. Joint­ factor between this multiplicity of voices is the true story of a Rwandan woman, who survived the Rwandan Genocide back in 1994, as a refugee arrives by accident in the then safe Fukushima and builds up a new life. But then with the Fukushima disaster in March 2011 she again undergoes a traumatic event. She survives the 3/11 and ever since uses her resilience and vital strength to help where she can in the new community in Fukushima where she currently lives, as well in her old community in her native country Rwanda.

Aurélie Lierman was born in Rwanda, but due to circumstances, grew up in Belgium from the age of two. Now as an adult she consider Belgium as her home country. With this HOME SHELTER project she would like to go deeper in the idea of home from a slightly different angle, giving the idea of diaspora a slightly different angle by juxtaposing a non western reality (Japan) on another non western reality (Rwanda).

SOUNDS
Sebastian Dingens - WALKS
Pavel Tchikov 29/11/23
Nika Son - Scatter


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