Rewire’s Staging Sound programme is a collaborative effort to foster interdisciplinary approaches to sounding and listening within and beyond the arts and academia. Organised by and with students, staff, and alumni from KC, KABK, UvA, and Sandberg Instituut, the programme invites students, autodidacts, and those who want to (un)learn together, to join the walks, performances, conversations, and listening sessions. 

The programme opens with an assembly on the poetics and politics of staging sound – from the role of the body, the voice, gender, different senses, institutions, and interspecies listening – with contributions by artists and researchers Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman, Mattia Papp, Mariëtte Groot, meLê yamomo, Renata Mirón, Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam, and Yuri Tuma. 

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman is a composer, and radio and vocal artist whose work has been described as bold, provocative, and delicate. Fascinated by the narrative power of abstract sound and music, she often adds dramatic and documentary elements to a compositional structure. She has a focus on the human and non-human voice, and uses in her work personally gathered field recordings from East Africa. Lierman teaches the Aurality and Orality course at Non Linear Narrative (KABK).

In his work, artist Mattia Papp combines Renaissance and Baroque aesthetics with contemporary themes to create new myths for the modern world. His work consists of sculptures, paintings, and video installations with theatricality as a core element. Since 2019 he has incorporated food into his practice through performances called Edible Landscapes. Mattia has synesthesia, meaning his sensory experiences are interconnected and influence how he perceives the world. He has been invited to participate in this talk through Rewire Outreach’s Not To Be Senseless program, a collaboration with iii and Journey Through The Senses that provides a platform for neurodivergent artists.

Yuri Tuma’s practice focuses on contemporary narratives related to sonic and queer ecologies through collective creation, active listening, and sound art. In early 2020, he co-founded the Institute for Postnatural Studies (IPS) in Madrid, a collaborative network of artists and researchers engaged with our current ecological moment. Within IPS, he also actively shapes the direction of Cthulhu Books, an editorial platform showcasing the political potential of imagining new stories for the planet.

Renata Mirón is a Mexican artist, designer, and researcher based in The Hague, working across installation, publishing and radio-making. Her practice is a continuous research on the politics of identity, how knowledge is produced and how realities are constructed. Mariëtte Groot is founder of electronic music community RE#SISTER in Rotterdam, curator and organiser for WORM and New Emergences, and owner of Underbelly Soundartmedia (a mobile shop for books and records). Renata Mirón and Mariëtte Groot will talk about Different Voices, an opera in the making by RE#SISTER.

meLê yamomo listens and composes echoes of the past into resonances of the present. His work spans multiple geographies and disciplines, blurring the line between artistic practice and scholarship. He is assistant professor of Artistic Research, Performance, and Sound Studies at the UvA, principal investigator of Re:Sound, and project leader of Decolonizing Southeast Asian Sound Archives and Sonic Entanglements. yamomo invites listening as a way of imagining decolonial futures.

Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam (aka yag0) writes, conducts research, and DJs with the unyielding desire to be covered by a wall of speakers and to let the sound organise, remind, lead, and touch. She is completing the UvA cultural analysis research master’s, conducting research for OpenEmbassy, and is co-editor-in-chief of Soapbox. She hosts the radio show “Light and Shadow” on Operator Radio, dedicated to sonic spectrality and hauntology.