Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: Kropka Na Ogonie & Soroka Fruwa

(Submitted by ISCM – FLEMISH SECTION)

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman was born in Rwanda but grew up in Belgium from the age of two. She’s an independent radio producer, vocalist and composer trying new directions by fusing radio art, vocal art and composition. Her main focus is her personal field recordings: a large collection of unique sounds and soundscapes from rural and urban contemporary East‐Africa. Sound‐bit by sound‐bit she’s transforming and sculpting them into something she would call “Afrique Concrète”. Lierman’s work has been broadcasted, exhibited and performed throughout Europe, Israel, Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania, Australia, Canada and USA.

In November 2020 Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman was awarded an Arts&Media Fellowship at DAAD in Berlin. In April 2019 Lierman got (as part of improv trio Organo) nominated for the pre-selection of the Matthijs Vermeulenprijs 2019. October 2018 she won the CTM Radiolab 2019 in Berlin for ‘Sogokuru’, a performative installation dedicated to Kanyoni Ladislas, her Rwandan supercentenarian grandfather. In January 2016 Lierman was awarded the Sally and Don Lucas Fellowship at Montalvo Arts in California. In May 2014 she won the First Prize at Monophonic 2014 (Brussels) for Anosmia, a radio composition reflecting on the Rwandan Genocide. In June 2013 she won the 1st prize at Sonic Art (Rome) for her radio composition KARIAKOO ( a sonic portrait of a lively neighborhood in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania). In October that same year, Lierman also won the 3rd prize at Grand Prix Nova (Bucharest) for her radio composition ‘iota mikro’ (based on field recordings from her birthplace, the Karisimbi vulcano, in Rwanda).

Lierman released two albums with the British cult-group Nurse With Wound, collaborated with visual artist Vincent Meessen at Kunsthalle Basel and Bozar. She toured the USA premiering her solo sets for voice and tape. And has recently performed the leading role in What Happened | Plays a Gertrude-Stein-inspired chamber opera by Samuel Vriezen and Adam Frank.

Lierman is currently gearing up for the magical year 2021. In which a.o., a new collaborative work with Silbersee in Amsterdam will get to see the light. New solo work commissioned by SAVVY Contemporary will get its premiere atMaerzMusik and Berliner Festspiele in Berlin. And her new choir piece for the next World Choir Games (in Antwerp and Ghent) will get performed by Koor & Stem, MoSaIC and (a yet-to-be-selected) visiting guest-choir from Africa.

Kropka Na Ogonie & Soroka Fruwa (2016) is a miniature music theatrical performance in two acts for solo percussionist. KROPKA NA OGONIE – Polish for Dot On The Tail – is about the visual beauty of written language and how from writing gestures and the art of engraving you can create a sonic and a visual composition. Graffiti and calligraphy form an important source of inspiration, as well as the shape of the Polish alphabet and its diacritics (a.o. kropka and ogonie ). SOROKA FRUWA – Polish for Magpie Is Flying – is about body language and non verbal communication with the human child and birds as archetypes.

( Good headphones or speakers may give you a nicer listening experience.)