Oortreders

Oortreders is a composition based on recordings made during the 2013 Sonic Mmabolela residency in Limpopo, South Africa. Sonic Mmabolela is a project curated and directed by Francisco López. A group of 16 sound artists and composers gathered in the Mmabolela reserve for two weeks to make field recordings, present their work and engage in some splendid discussions.

'Oortreders' is the Afrikaans word for 'trespassers', however in my own mother tongue, 'oor' means 'ear'. So Oortreders is somewhere in between ‘trespassing the ears’ and ‘ears trespassing’.

Oortreders was released on the Various artists: Sonic Mmabolela 2013 compilation on the Free Music Archive, together with 11 other tracks contributed by the artists participating in the 2013 residency. You can find the complete Sonic Mmabolela 2013 compilation here.  Please check it out.

Oortreders   is also shown as an installation. In an indistinct corner of the exhibition space, preferable outside, 4 speakers are hung in a quadraphonic setup. Through those speakers, one hears Oortreders  , set a volume that blends perfectly with the surrounding ambiance. The speakers look like they are part of a standard public address system. Only a small tag somewhere in the corner allerts the audience to the presence of an installation. The blending of the sounds of the composition, and the surrounding ambiance invites to imagine a different sound of the city, and question the sonic surroundings we have come so accustomed to. As such, it researches the sonority of our surroundings, and our relationship to it. How we experience it, and how it shapes our impression of the space we move through.

Oortreders installed at Fondation CAB, Brussels (BE).