Overtoon – Platform for Sound Practitioners
presents

Instead of “sound art,” say: abrasion, a dirge,
willed from the other side of a leaky room,
undisciplined, celebrative, dangerous, always
emerging.
An 8-part Podcast by Bill Dietz
In conversation with Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Nikita Gale, Jennie C. Jones,
Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman, Jennie C. Jones, Marina Rosenfeld, Lauren Tosswill, &Hong-Kai Wang
https://overtoon.org/podcasts/instead-of-sound-art-say/

Episode 05: Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman
Released on May 9th, 2024

Audio TranscriptAudio Intro[Sounds of a cassette tape mechanism and tape hiss, followed by voices of all eightparticipants in the series uttering variations on the word “sound” and “sound art.”
More cassette tape sounds, followed by the voices of all eight participants
simultaneously saying the word “SOUND” in a loop. More cassette tape sounds,
followed by “male” and “female” computer voices read the complete title of theseries (“Instead of “sound art,” say: abrasion, a dirge, willed from the other side of aleaky room, undisciplined, celebrative, dangerous, always emerging.”) and the
Episode Number. Cassette tape sounds cut out.]

Conversation[Throughout the conversation there is series of unpredictably and frequently
shifting virtual audio backgrounds – atmospheres recorded by Bill Dietz & Bryce
Hackford including children playing outdoors, howling wind, a public bus trip, rain
and thunder, nature sounds with a distant saxophone, a quiet field, electrical buzz,
and an outdoor scene populated by cicadas.]Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: I am curious what you mean with the word, sound art.
Bill Dietz:

Sure. Yeah, and this is really the starting point that I’ve been
going from in all these conversations, which is, of course, thatit means so many things to so many different people now, indifferent contexts.
But I’ve been trying to at least start from a really specific place,which is the term, as it developed in some exhibitions in thelate ‘70s and early ‘80s. At MoMA in the late ‘70s, I think
Barbara London curated a show that was explicitly called"sound art." And then in Berlin, there’s the "Fuer Augen undOhren" show, these kinds of Klangkunst early things in theearly ‘80s as well. As I understand it, I think that’s really where
this very specific term, the specific lineage comes from. And ofcourse it branches out in a lot of different ways. In any case...
Sorry, that’s too much of an answer, but I guess I wanted tosort of start small and what I think now at this moment where
I really want to think about what the term means or how
useful it is or for who it is useful. It’s maybe, for me,interesting to think about how also even at the beginning in
the process of specifying, maybe it also excluded or limited.

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Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: Yeah. So I do understand the historical stuff that you justexplained, but I think maybe I fell into this whole thing from adifferent angle. Yeah, I started off as a radio maker, a journalist
for mainstream media, and I only then became a composer.
No, then became a singer, then became a composer, and thengradually discovered the possibilities with sound art. It’s one ofyour questions you had: I never introduce myself as a soundartist, unless people ask me, "What do you do?" Then I might
say also amongst others, I do sound art, but I prefer to use theword radio art or radio artist. And I don’t think they have to
be different necessarily, but I do believe that with radio art,
there is a potential that it’s more inclusive in several ways.
I mean, when I hear sound art myself, I know it’s about focused
listening or some context that is similar to a museum setting,but with sound art, besides only the focus, I can also imagine
that it’s narrowed down to one sort of sounds that are allowed,
so it becomes immediately a sort of prison.
Whereas I think in the beginning, sound artists wanted to getsome freedom, I assume. Maybe away from the art scene, butmaybe also away from the music scene. So when I hear theword sound art, I also think right away, "Oh, if I say this to aperson, they will think that I’m just dealing with sine waves
and just dealing with bleeps." And I think you could
categorize them two ways, sound art these days. At least withelectro-acoustic music, you have the German and the French
scene. That’s how people usually divide it. And the German
scene would be more derived from all the experiments that
Karlheinz Stockhausen has tried with the bleeps and the sinus
waves and et cetera. And I find it very fascinating, thesynthesizer approach you could say. And then you have theFrench musique concrète thing, and I think I want to combine
both.
And I have the feeling with radio art, using the term radio art, I
can use the more abstract sounds and as well allow concretesounds, have a musical context, have a non-musical context,
have something that looks like a concert, but can also be morea performance or an installation art situation. So for me, it ismore freeing when I use that word. And the other thing is also
the more sociological aspect that comes with using that term,
radio art; you already are aware of an audience or of how you
send something or broadcast something and the context that

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comes with that. So I have the feeling that with sound art,
people are really focused on their art and on themselves andon the scene and on the bubble, on the niche. And with radio
art, I have the feeling that I am obliged to think, but what doesit mean in a larger context within the world? So yeah, I rarely
use it, the word. Rarely.
Bill Dietz:

But I love how in a way you grab onto that early moment ofexpansiveness, of the moment when it was something freeing
and when it wasn’t a strict thing, it was meant to actually open
up space. That’s great. So it’s making the general-ness of it
generative again or something like that.

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: Yeah, I think maybe I started using the word radio art moredeliberately even, after I had a conversation with a classmate
who’s completely into abstract sounds. Anything art had to becompletely abstract because it was for him very stupid to try to
make something that relates to humanity. And I thought,"That’s so insane." You are human and your audience ishuman. So even if you make something abstract and now you
make it even sound like I don’t like abstraction, it is still
human.
I was like, "Come on, guys." So I thought, "No, no, no, I really
don’t want to become so rigid that I can’t allow myself to havea phase of abstract and a phase of more concrete or moretangible or more recognizable sounds or materials," whatever
it is. I mean, I always was embracing my background as a radio
maker, as a documentary maker. But then with thatconversation, I realized I really want to make a statement withthat and show the potential with sound art in its largest way
imaginable, including him, the person that I had aconversation with. And anyone else who is interested in using
sound as a medium.
Bill Dietz:

I mean, this is an even better answer than my question, so I
don’t know, but yeah, if you don’t have this idea that you’re
working in a pure void or in an airless room and that you arepart of the world and that the materials one is working with orusing have implications, and they might touch people incertain ways or they might make people think about very
particular things and things like this, then there’s differentpressures on the forms that take...

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What for you was in the earlier work, maybe limiting or what
was interesting for you to expand on, and what "sound art"
allowed you to emphasize or get closer to in a way that’s more
the core of your work?
Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: Well, one thing, what is a shame with mainstream radio andpublic radio is that you are limited to the time they give during
a show. Then because it’s very broad mass media, they requestthat you are informative or entertaining.
So that is what I thought. I think we can do more, and I think
we don’t realize how much imagination there is within ouraudience. I still love my time I had there, but I realized there’s
so much more I can do with sound, both speech and music
and anything in between. So I kind of quit for the love of it
because I didn’t want to leave at the moment where I was
already too frustrated. And I had a second passion and it wasmusic. And then in the beginning I was still holding onto theidea of, "Oh, maybe I will make beautiful choir music,
chamber music." And gradually realized how I wanted to use
my background as a radio maker.
One particular thing happened during my period there as well.
There was an older colleague who said... I had made adocumentary, and for that documentary, I had used sounds
that were not supposed to be on the radio because it has to be
HiFi, et cetera. But I knew it made sense for that piece. It had
to be there. And he really was angry with me, "How dare you!
You younger people, you’re allowed to do anything!"
Back then I felt embarrassed because I knew how to make a
HiFi documentary, but I knew it made sense in that particular
moment for that particular piece to allow myself to use LoFi
sounds and to use it in a musical way in some way like allow
those textures that come with it than before I knew I was
stretching the rules of what you can do with documentary,stretching the rules of what is reality, what realisms can you
use within this so-called abstract compositional context.
So I found the freedom that I’d never had in public radio. So
in a way, I would say, sometimes I say that I’m a sound artist,
most of the time radio artist, and the work that I create more
and more, I’d like to present it more as cinema, but for yourears, cinema pour l’oreille. Maybe cinema pour l’oreille is also

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kind of reconnecting with the visual art if I think about it now
with movies, with land art, with fine arts. But I also say it’s
never sound in itself. Sound is a medium and it comes fromwhat I want to tell with it. For me, it is about storytelling.
Yeah.
Bill Dietz:

I love this idea, this thing you were saying about the radio andthe underestimation of the audience’s imagination. And forme, that’s actually been... It’s a big part of my own thinking,but also in some of these conversations thinking about places
outside of the formal art world where there is actuallyimmense imagination or immense intelligence in terms ofdealing with sound and music. And yet it’s somehow in part
because of the strict walls of institutions, but also of terms likesound art that don’t get understood that way.

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: Yeah, I actually think the advertisement world is amazing withsound. I love watching and listening to it, and also how theysometimes do it within 20 seconds or under 20 seconds. The
stuff they are advertising about is not what I’m interested in,
but it’s the way they tell this story using sounds only
sometimes. I’m really fascinated by that.
I see sound art in many things, I would say, and also outside
the canon that we know for sure. So I think they will relate to
the two schools that I just talked about, and they’ll forget
about anything that is done outside Europe or outside North
America. And I’m just like, "Wow, how is it possible?" If you
see sound art from a compositional point of view, you could
say that you’re more focused on texture, less on harmony, lesson traditional rhythms, but texture is something that you hearin so many non-Western musical genres. It’s everywhere, I
would say. And it’s not performed or shown in a white cube
because that’s one of the things also where I’m a bit carefulwith saying I’m doing sound art. It’s often these white rooms
that we already know from museums, and it can be great, butthey’re also limiting because they’re actually not ideal.
If you want to do something with big loudspeakers, it’s so wet
and it’s so boom-y, and I’m wondering, why do we do it toourselves? Why don’t we allow ourselves to have more variety
in it? Why does it have to be this white, sterile environment
only in terms of the visual impact of a white cube, but also it
has to be in a quiet environment? There’s no leaking throughPage 6 of 10

from the outside world. So yeah, it’s very serious. It’s such a
serious business altogether. There’s very little life in it
sometimes, and I do understand some pieces request that. I
really, really understand that. But it has become sort of a rulealmost that it has to happen in that particular way. And that isa shame.
Bill Dietz:

I mean, I should know more particular cases with your work,
but do you look for ways to present your work or to shareyour work with more broad audiences?

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: I try my best really. Yeah.
Yeah, really do so. My latest piece, the piece that I’m now
touring with is a piece for six performers, myself included. It’sa binaural setup. I dare to call it a performative installation
because it really checks out space, the position of the audience,
the relation of the audience towards the performance andtowards what’s happening throughout the show. But there’s
definitely also performative element to it. It’s quite ritualistic.
So for some, it feel more like music theater, but I alsodeliberately choose the word performative installations thatpeople don’t think, "Oh, I’m going to a concert. Oh, I’m going
to see some people singing and dancing." It’s really thinking
about movement of bodies and movement of sound throughspace. And I’ve had people who are 18 just starting withschool, with college up until people are 80 and who are justreally moved by the piece.
And I really don’t make any compromise because I am kind of
making an immersive piece where a lot is happening at thesame time. I took my time to weave it together, but it wasalways my big dream that I could reach an audience where it
doesn’t matter whether they are... They have an upbringing in
the let’s say, Eurocentric environment or not, whether they
have... What language do they speak, whether they have anartistic background or... It shouldn’t matter. That’s my idea. It
shouldn’t matter. And somehow with the response that I got
now from the piece "Umva!" that I’m now touring with, it’s
like, "I think I might have managed. This is really, reallygreat." And so I think I don’t take the responsibility with mefrom the radio in terms of should I have a piece that is telling
truth, but maybe telling truth on a deeper level like can I
touch someone and make a difference in whatever way?

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So maybe that’s something that came through or is shining
through in the piece that I just... Yeah, that I’m now touringwith. Maybe that is. But I found it super important to beaware of my audience, not to be scared that I’m doing
something too difficult or too complicated. I’m also notinterested in doing something intellectual or doing somethingthat is just smart. I mean, I’m interested in the intellectual
element of it, but it’s not for the sake of showing off. Look
how smart I am. Look how much research I have put into thisto making this possible. Maybe they will notice, and if they
don’t, that’s fine. But if I can have touched them in so manyother ways as well, that’s the biggest gift for me. Yeah.
Bill Dietz:

Sorry, I don’t know, just a few other thoughts, but one is a linethat I’ve maybe cited too often that I love so much. The artist
Maryanne Amacher writes somewhere on a little note to herself
that she wants to make a kind of work that makes people cryor moves people, not because it’s familiar, but because it
touches them in ways they didn’t even know they could betouched.

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: Exactly. That’s what I want. I’m not trying to make something
beautiful. Beauty might come from it, but that’s not my aim in
itself. I want it like this, that people, the way they arrive in theperformance installation space and the way when they leave it,
they’re a different person. That’s what I aim for.
Yeah, I think one of your questions was also, what do you
think a sound art space should be, or a center?
Bill Dietz:

That’s kind of where I was landing.

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: Yeah, so I am curious about pieces by colleagues who are more
focused on, let’s say, feedback processes with a microphone. I
like it. I can really enjoy listening to it and see how it’s madeand everything. But I have the feeling that... In Dutch, youhave the expression, navelstaarderij – navel-gazing. There is toomuch navel-gazing in arts in the sense that, of course, things
happen from your own experience, but who cares if there’s
another piece about this kind of speaker set up or this kind of
microphone set up. So yeah, I think it’s too flat if it’s just on alevel of technicalities and technologies, and whether it’s HiFi
or LoFi, what do you want? At the end of the day, it’s still,what do you want to say with this?

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So maybe I don’t have a clear sound art suggestion, but let’s
say I have an example from what I experienced some years ago
when I was traveling. I was visiting someone in Los Angeles,
and this person said, "Hey, do you want to come to thisexhibition opening tonight?" And I was like, "Yeah, fine." I
had free time and I joined. And then as we arrived, it wascompletely different for me from any gallery I had been before.
And still there were white walls, but it was the whole thingfrom how you enter in that space. The way you are greeted... I
mean, they have the role of host, but they were also
themselves. And it was just so liberating to see people who arejust having fun. They were singing along with the music. It wasa party, it was celebrative. And I was like, "Oh, this is what a
museum can look like." It can just be something where youcan enjoy and where you can be invited.
And so this was an exhibition for fine arts, and it was createdby some people with Afro-American backgrounds and bythemselves, for themselves. It was so liberating. It doesn’t haveto be this sterile environment where you can hardly cough orsneeze or greet anyone where you come to a sort of funeralsituation. So finding something like that, and at the same time,
still allowing people to go into this trance-like, focusedenvironment as well.
And I think these days people try to have more people withdifferent backgrounds in venues because people are still
convinced that it has to happen within the walls of that venue.
And I remember traveling in Eastern Africa and inCongo...and...because your question was also, what is soundart? Can it happen outside of sound art environments? And
the streets there are just pure sound art, just traveling andhaving this buzz of noises from everywhere and allowing thatto happen in real life. There’s some trance element to it as well
if you have this loud, noisy streets where there’s a lot of stuff
happening. I’m not saying that you have to copy that rightaway, it’s a different part of the world where you live, but it’s
not so divided in, this is now art, this is life. And it’s one of thethings that inspired me as well, to deal with texture andvolume and dealing where do we experience sound and to deal
with the geography of sound and experiencing environmental
sounds. So we are really focused on one particular way of
being able to experience sound and sound arts. And there are abillion options.

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Bill Dietz:

I think with this... What I’m always struck by, or I realize more
and more is just how incredibly strict and closed the formalsound art or Eurocentric sound perspective is. In a certain
sense, that formal space is the small exception. It’s the weird
thing that tries to exclude everything else. It’s actually thissmall thing where there’s so much around it.

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: Yep. And I grew up with classical music in Belgium. I’m
adopted, and I grew up in a family from Bruges, and I loveclassical music. And then traveling to Eastern Africa andtraveling to Congo, I realized there’s only one way I dare tolisten like this refined harmonic, well-tempered sounds. And
then you get this explosion of possibilities like multiple
rainbows with colors I didn’t know existed. And so I was like,"Oh, wow." And first I was frustrated, why can’t they do it theway I know? And then I realized, "Oh wait." There’s just awhole of the world that we don’t allow. And it’s so small. If
you come back to what you knew originally. So this so-calledfreeing new sound art thing, it is just new in the US and inWestern Europe in a certain timeframe, and that’s it.
Bill Dietz:

Yep, yep.

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman: And maybe it has been there, this kind of variety of sound,centuries ago. I don’t know, I can’t say that. But...the so-called
innovative, hmm, we have to double-check that. Yeah.

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