Aloardi Exchange Programme
A project by Aloardi, a collective from Peru that is dedicated to local culture and acoustic research

In 2016 and 2017 the harbour of Europe — Rotterdam, the Netherlands — received two waves of Peruvian artists and musicians participating in the Aloardi Exchange Programme. This project celebrated an unusual cultural exchange. Amongst others, six colleagues from Peru were invited and visited Europe and/or the Netherlands for the first time. The programme hosted a cultural calendar of live performances, exhibitions, symposia, screenings, excursions and artist-in-residencies. As highlights of this exchange, Aloardi held two festivals, Peruvian Underground and Peruvian New Music & Arts. The programme was made possible thanks to the support of Idraola, WORM, Mirta Demare Art Gallery, City of Rotterdam and CBK Rotterdam (Centre for Visual Arts Rotterdam).

Collective Aloardi was founded in 1998 in Peru and has welcomed artists from all over the world to work in their artist-in-residency based in Lima since 2004. However, there was no opportunity for mutual exchange, as it is only since 2016 that Peruvians can enter the Schengen Area without a tourist visa. [1] As a spin-off of her working period at Aloardi, Janneke van der Putten initiated the Aloardi Exchange Programme together with Christian Galarreta. This publication was made to give a context to this exchange project, in honour of the 20-year anniversary of Aloardi. The following text evolved from a conversation and correspondence between Natalia Sorzano (CO/NL), Christian Galarreta (PE/NL) and Janneke van der Putten (NL) between 2016 and 2018, and was first published in the publication Aloardi Exchange Programme by Idraola (IDRA 001), Rotterdam in December 2018. Please download the PDF file of the original publication here: Digital_Aloardi_Booklet

Natalia Sorzano: Tell me about Aloardi, how and when did it begin?

Christian Galarreta: I founded Aloardi as an independent initiative to publish my own sounds in cassette format. Thanks to this, I started getting in contact with local people doing similar things. Then Aloardi published the work of other people and explored different formats, such as diskette, CDRs, DVDs, online streaming and vinyl. Today, the members of Aloardi are Gabriel Castillo Agüero, Janneke van der Putten and myself. In addition to volunteers and collaborators, there have been other members in the past including Fabiola Vasquez, Felipe del Águila, Dennis Pastor and Jab Lemur. Every person gives a new impulse and a different work methodology to what Aloardi is as a collective. You can see the influences of those people in the graphic design, the strategies of cultural action, political position and sounds.

NS: Were you also doing live events? I’m trying to picture your audience and the places in Lima where you guys made this happen. It started before the internet took over the majority of distribution, so I’m guessing you had very specific ways of reaching your audience. What was it like at the time?

CG: There were almost no platforms in Peru that focused on the diffusion of critical content related to local culture and acoustic exploration, as an alternative to the official and commercial discourse. Aloardi became a collective that organised experimental events, alternative research, urban and rural interventions, and festivals. Other self-managed initiatives similar to ours, related to electronic experimental sounds, were Laceracion Auditiva in Peru, Bizarre Audio Arts in Ecuador and Genital Records in Mexico. It was different regarding fine arts and media arts, disciplines that usually worked with business lobbies, sponsors and the political or intellectual elite. But even with such support, they too hadn’t much visibility in those times. It is important to mention that in the ’90s Peru was governed by the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori and Vladimiro Montesinos, his evil chief advisor. They made a coup to destroy the parliament and to control the country, and also censured and bought all the mass media structure in order to manipulate the Peruvian public opinion. So the mass media was, again, very untrustworthy.

»In the ’90s this informal market for folk music was much larger than the official market for ‘modern’ global sounds. That’s how Aloardi began: as part of the self-managed producers that took to the streets of Lima.«

NS: In many other South American countries, the state considered culture to be the least important sector. They cut budgets and totally neglected the necessities that allow the cultural sector to exist or even be acknowledged. This is another way of silencing: by indifference. I’m guessing the regime of Fujimori had similar strategies, or perhaps even more active and aggressive techniques. How did you manage to distribute the releases?

CG: In the beginning we distributed our releases at small markets and through the people who had stands in the streets, who were selling underground stuff at the time. It was an informal and sometimes illegal style of distribution, which was very typical in the streets of Lima, and still is today. There were people producing their own music, but not only music influenced by modern world trends: also local, traditional-based sounds coming from the Peruvian coast, the Andes and the Amazon Jungle. In the ’90s this informal market for folk music was much larger than the official market for ‘modern’ global sounds. That’s how Aloardi began: as part of the self-managed producers that took to the streets of Lima. These producers also organised pirate radio stations and launched their own concerts.

NS: In big cities, such as Bogotá or Mexico City, many people go in search of bigger opportunities; the cities become a place where various particular cultures mix and they produce some amazing fusions of sounds. What types of sound-fusion relationships and cultural productions exist in Peru? And how are the artists in rural or small towns related to the artists in cities and larger urban areas, in terms of their music and arts productions?

CG: They are all in dialogue. For example, Chicha music originated in the ’70s, and it’s an appropriation of Cumbia, Surf and Rock by the people of the Andes that immigrated to the cities due to socio-economic issues. Later, in the ’80s, the Andean people were escaping from the violence generated by the internal conflict between the Peruvian State and the guerrillas. They formed peripheral and unofficial neighbourhoods, that South American governments called ‘invasions’. When the Andean people arrived in the big cities, they continued playing in their own style, but they were influenced by urban sounds. They started mixing electric guitar and other new sounds with indigenous music. These hybrid sounds appeared within many different music genres. Often, they created an entire aesthetic, which was eventually taken over by contemporary artists. For instance, Chicha music and its graphic style are today considered to be a Peruvian classic.

NS: How did these new musical expressions relate to social issues in the capital, and how did the emerging initiatives of these communities spread?

CG: Huayno, which is Andean based dance music, was disregarded and discriminated against in Lima throughout the second half of the twentieth century. People’s perceptions of music reflected the prevalent inequality and repression of the social classes. There was a time when places in the city would even prohibit music that came from indigenous roots, regardless of the fact that it was the autochthonous sound from that territory and its peoples. I would like to include a quote by Gabriel Castillo Agüero about this topic: ‘The discrimination of Andean music in Lima shows the friction between some “popular” music, known as folk music, and the “official” one: the music socially accepted by the elites and considered as mainstream. But the popular music reveals a cultural ancestry that persists and manifests itself in the capital through different activities, such as crowded traditional festivities, the great diversity of community radio stations, and the production (and broadcasting) of popular music competitions and contests of Huaynos and Mulizas, among other styles. Likewise, in different districts of the capital, clubs where to be found as meeting places for immigrants from the rural areas and as places for celebrations from different Peruvian regions.’ The parents and grandparents of most of the Aloardi members came from the first generations of immigrants from the Andes and from the Amazon to the capital. So this ‘underground’ cultural shift was already developing for a long time.

»(…) sounds reverberating in the air from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, from street markets to public transport, from outdoor concerts to the mountains and to the sea.«

NS: How did the technological developments of the last decades influence the way popular and experimental music were circulated?

CG: There were people making experimental music in Peru even some decades before the ’90s, and many of the ancient indigenous practices include sound in a radical way, which could be listened to as noise music. But it was in the ’90s that self-produced recorded music grew in the popular neighbourhoods and then influenced other alternative communities, such as the Aloardi community. This self-sufficient way of production was possible because technologies such as the internet, home computers, CDR and free software, became more accessible. It was a revolution. Suddenly you could have a recording studio in your house and communicate with people all over the world using the internet. In addition, through informal public internet rooms and cybercafés, hardware and software became accessible even to people that didn’t have a computer. So these technologies could be used by anyone, they were no longer exclusive to specialists, institutions or rich people. It was a phenomenon you could hear resonating in daily life: sounds reverberating in the air from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, from street markets to public transport, from outdoor concerts to the mountains and to the sea.

NS: Did the collective also expand outside of Lima? Were there connections formed with other neighbouring countries?

CG: Since the beginning I was in touch with people such as Armenia from Ecuador, Cornucopia from Puerto Rico, Seefeel from the UK, Mego from Austria, and others. In 2000 Gabriel joined me in Aloardi. We started collaborating with many more people: from Lima, then from Latin America and from all over the world. By 2001 Felipe del Águila had joined the collective. He and Gabriel gave a local and very experimental graphic touch to our initiative, with a powerful presence on the internet. We made different projects, such as the rhizomatic radio shows Atataw (2005–2008) and Suradio (2006) that emitted sounds around Latin America in collaboration with labels and collectives such as Microbio Records from Venezuela and Radio Fantasmas from Colombia, among others. We contacted people and gave them workshops through the internet on how to stream their music to generate a decentralised network, and then they could broadcast themselves from their homes, recording studios, streets and public events in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, etc. None of us had made radio before, and we were experimenting a lot with the format: we did not compromise to fit the standard radio aesthetics.

»This self-sufficient way of production was possible because technologies such as the internet, home computers, CDR and free software, became more accessible.
It was a revolution.«

NS: How did you finance the organisation? In Peru there was not much funding for what Aloardi was doing, am I right?

CG: We made public events and publications and tried to economically sustain the Aloardi activities. Part of what we earned would go to a collective savings, which we initiated so we could publish and produce the next works. But most of the time it was not enough and we had to add money from our own pockets, money that we got from our regular jobs, which were unfortunately not necessarily related to music or the arts. Anyway, we had a lot of fun. We experimented with the art-covers by using the materials that were available in the street markets. We would spend days looking for papers, printing techniques and methods to publish the work. We worked with people making handicraft productions and also piracy of films, albums, software and hardware, in order to produce our work in affordable ways. We were in touch with free software and copyleft communities who were spreading the free circulation of knowledge that is more open for everyone to use and modify, and we would promote them.

NS: Aloardi seems to integrate graphic design, sound and media-based arts. Do you think in these categories?

CG: In the end of the ’90s our work was coined as sound design. Some years later, sound art became a term in Lima and that’s also how Aloardi became more involved in fine arts and the contemporary art scene in Peru. It was good in some aspects, we were invited to curate and join events where we could explore sound installations and audience participation. We were always collaborating and surrounded by poets, activists, performers and visual artists. Our events were media experiments in themselves. We made public interventions: interacting with architectonic and rural spaces, interacting with the audiences, using both homemade and high-tech media, always questioning the current social situation. A good example of this is Laberinto Sonoro (Casa Museo José Carlos Mariátegui, 2001). It was an audiovisual event that we organised in collaboration with collective Medios Nomades and with the participation of fourteen Peruvian artists whose audio and video signals were mangled in real time by the audience. This generated material that was published as a CD-ROM by Aloardi.

NS: How did you relate to the institutionalisation of the arts and activities you were involved in?

CN: We weren’t looking to professionalise our productions or integrate into a contemporary art world, but we wanted to keep experimenting with public participation. Lima’s cultural scene was internationalising, by bringing people from abroad and supporting Peruvians to show their work elsewhere. That’s when Aloardi created the artist-in-residency as an informal platform. We were interested in expanding the cultural scene to less privileged areas of the city of Lima and to Peruvian rural regions, by inviting artists and musicians to show their work outside of the usual elitism of cultural centres. We worked with different kinds of organisations, for example, collaborating with a neighbourhood association of mothers, but also being open to working with more formal institutions. In the mid-’00s, as a result of all the work we had done, we started to be invited to participate in and curate events for international exhibitions and festivals such as Festival Internacional de Video/Arte/Electrónica (VAE) 8, 9 and 10, ARTWARE 2 and 3, and CONTACTO 2004. We celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Aloardi with a three-month long exhibition entitled En Aloardi todo es chevere: el ruido, la chicha y el cobrador within the framework of the Festival CONTACTO 2008, at the Cultural Centre of Spain in Lima. The series of concerts for that event was called Chicha con Limonada and included more than thirty-three local and international artists. The titles that we used for the events were direct references to popular phrases used in the Peruvian streets, and are difficult to translate because they involve very specific local humour.

NS: How did the public react to the activities of Aloardi? Which audience did you reach?

CN: During our public interventions in urban and rural areas, the inhabitants came to make important remarks about their hard socio-economical condition, their gorgeous cultural context or the fragile ecological situation of their surroundings. But sometimes they just came to say ‘thanks’ for what we were doing in their marginalised habitats. People would also contact us to tell us that they were making sound projects, but hadn’t had the opportunity to present them in public. Other people with backgrounds in fine art education and conservatory also reached us, as well as engineers, poets, activists, and artists interested in what we were doing. We made an effort to keep our spectrum of collaborators and audiences diverse, because we saw the problem of segregation in cultural practices. We made a lot of events that had free entrance and organised them in unconventional places.

»We worked with different kinds of organisations, for example, collaborating with a neighbourhood association of mothers, but also being open to working with more formal institutions. «

JvdP: Aloardi was also supporting events by other civil initiatives, for example facilitating the live streaming of the Cumbre de los Pueblos 2008 (Peoples Summit 2008) in Lima, an ‘international meeting of civil society to better articulate the growing alert for human and environmental rights violation by neoliberal policies of EU-based transnational investments in Latin America and the Caribbean region.’ [2] Aloardi was not just a cultural organisation with its own agenda, but was also supporting the growth of a network. Through its activities, Aloardi embodied and nurtured a collective consciousness.

NS: Throughout the history of Aloardi, you have worked with indigenous and farming communities from Peru. How did these collaborations grow? How did they feel about musicians and artists working with traditional sounds and instruments?

CG: Gabriel’s family is part of a ‘Tunantada’ orchestra — a traditional orchestra from the Andes — so the relationship is direct. My own family, on both sides, is from the Andes too. And I used to listen to traditional music at home in my childhood, which made me curious about music made with those sonorities. The collaborations grew spontaneously, and most of the indigenous communities are very open to the diffusion of their culture.

»During our public interventions in urban and rural areas, the inhabitants came to make important remarks about their hard socio-economical condition, their gorgeous cultural context or the fragile ecological situation of their surroundings.«

JvdP: For example, when Aloardi made the project El Grito de la Yacumama (Scream of the Yacumama) in 2007, you shared the sounds that you had recorded in the jungle with indigenous locals.

CG: We recorded the sounds of animals during the night, and then in the village we shared the recordings and let the inhabitants listen to them with headphones. Some of the locals described each sound, the animals and insects and their names and myths, but clarified that they had never seen some of those animals or insects, they had just heard them. It was an invisible universe, both personal and collective, inspired by sound. It is because of the acousmatic listening experience they have in that geography: you can hear something on a daily basis, but not see the sound source. The jungle is so dense that you don’t see what is generating some sounds. So people start to imagine what is making the sounds, they relate this to a being, a name and a sonic behaviour, and it also becomes part of a story. That is how some myths develop. Listening is a way to develop knowledge.

NS: There is a lot of discussion about the recurrence of cultural appropriation in creative fields such as fashion, theatre, art and music. What is your take on appropriation within the context of South America?

JvdP: We are not taught in the Netherlands about what Peru or its cultures are like. The shallow image I had changed drastically when I went to Peru. The social structures and inequality are visibly clear in the cities, and even more so in the jungle where communities make a living out of ecotourism. I felt strange while being there, as if I were exploiting their land. However, I then met some women textile-makers and I started observing how they dyed and embroidered the textiles. Instead of buying the textiles, which they are normally producing for people like me, I asked them to translate the drawings that I made during my stay in their homes into embroideries. They taught me the stitches and we made the embroideries together. The result was a pair of textiles which I called About Oral Tradition: it was made thanks to the women’s knowledge that has been passed down for centuries, from mother to daughter. By commissioning an artwork and producing it together, our exchange became a conversation that changed my approach and perception of Peru and myself.

NS: You describe Peru’s wide diversity of populations from cities to rural areas and its multiplicity of identities coexisting and relating to one another. What are your thoughts on the Peruvian identity?

CG: I believe that those discourses of nationalism and cultural identity are very dangerous and create more borders and problems. Some people might be able to attach their distinctiveness to a place and could possibly make big business out of it. But I would be lying if I said that I am culturally classified and just represented by one specific native Peruvian identity. Peru as one nation is a fiction; there are many nations, cultures and languages in that country. My ancestors came from Ancash and La Libertad — Huamachuco. But I grew up in Rimac, which is a popular and mixed neighbourhood that belongs to a big monstrous metropolis, called Lima. There, I was surrounded by people from all over the country — and so I got to know parts of the rural cultures as I saw rural people dancing in the street, selling their handicrafts and food, singing in local venues, and visiting our house — as some of them were part of our family and friends. This woke up my interest in our cultures and my curiosity to travel inside the country. Something that I have in common with my ancestors is a love for music, dance, food and dress, and a strong feeling of being deeply connected with the power of the elements and nature: the earth, the water, the wind, the mountains or the sky, but also with other vital experiences, such as the sound of a machine and its acoustic energy. You can find these common connections in other parts of the world, in both rural and urban contexts, sometimes in unconscious ways. In Peru, you can find them in popular expressions, such as the stickers that are decorating public transportation, or the lyrics of some songs. There are also some local people from our country who do not want to be just regarded as natives, enclosed in their communities. They want to have TVs and internet, and learn to speak English as well. In current times there are a lot of identities and beings in what we call a person. Whether those identities come to the surface is a question of the economical, social and political context that they are confronted by.

NS: Aloardi has been interested in creating bridges and cultural exchanges between artists and musicians from Peru and abroad. You have done more extensive work with the Netherlands, how has this been received? What have been some of the outcomes and new relationships you have facilitated?

CG: It was not precisely our interest to make bridges. When we started in Lima, we naturally got connected with people from different backgrounds and countries. We started to receive people, and we received more foreigners, especially from rich countries. But Peruvians couldn’t go abroad easily, because of the politics of immigration. This is still a big problem for some Latin American people, to be able to go outside of their countries and show what they can do. At one moment we wanted to burn this bridge because sometimes we felt bad. Maybe the reason that it is so important to create this bridge now is because of that. But we would like to go farther, to make exchanges with other cultures from countries where people can’t travel as easily. We would like to connect with their knowledge even if it is not in the mainstream, even if that is not in experimental music and arts, but important knowledge for and from mankind.

»It was an invisible universe, both personal and collective, inspired by sound.«

JvdP: The Aloardi Exchange Programme was a gesture to share knowledge, not only in an experiential way, but also through thinking and reflection. For example, Gabriel presented his lecture Peruvian Textile a Vital Manifestation that Overcomes Itself to art students in textile design. And Wilder Gonzales Agreda presented his essay Peruvian Experimental Music and Transgression in a conference before his concert. We did away with some illusions about what could be Peruvian culture. But you need to be immersed in the culture in order to make this happen. Once, a colleague working in the field of sound art asked me, ‘Is there experimental music in Peru?’ Yes, it’s not all about panflutes — as one person I spoke with, while I was flyering for the festival, believed. Even the jury for the Dutch governmental fund for visual arts imagined an exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lima as being ‘too local’. In Holland, we have a saying: ‘What the farmer doesn’t know, he doesn’t eat’. But I don’t want to erase my interests and fascinations and be restricted to Dutch culture exclusively. So we encourage you to educate yourself and not stay with naive illusions about others, especially if there is some power and money involved. Think about the cultural boycott that occurs every time an artist is invited to come here, but can’t get a visa to enter the Schengen Area. There is so much bureaucracy that cultural institutions have to navigate to host an artist from a country that isn’t ‘part of the club’. This obstructs possibilities for mutual cultural exchange. In response to this we produced this project in the Netherlands, and chose for a varied programme, including, for example, folk music and electronic music. As Christian explained, in the Peruvian context, the modern music isn’t cut off from indigenous roots, and the combination is therefore very natural. It was received well among the people and organisations we knew, and we made efforts to reach new audiences. People felt attracted by the visual identity Aloardi presented in the posters. The design of Jonathan Castro, in collaboration with Christian, was very successful. But structural plans for the future haven’t been established, as the money for travel expenses and sufficient support is always a critical necessity.

CG: But more important than making this project as a personal initiative or that people get to know things that happen in Peruvian culture, is that there are changes being made. I don’t see that the structure in the arts really changes. For example, the amount of money available from one of our main sponsors would have been significantly less this year than in the previous year. That’s one of the reasons why we didn’t continue with the project. We didn’t want to accept these conditions. Making a festival doesn’t change a cultural structure that is more interested in supporting headliners, specific aesthetics, or the promotion of just the nice aspects of different cultures. This doesn’t generate conscious audiences. This only feeds the futile tendency to like the music and culture from exotic countries, to consume their spices and go to their restaurants. To consume their shamanic powers and natural medicine. But what about the problems in these countries? The problems with the politics of immigration are just the tip of the iceberg. It is not a free world. Generally there is a filter in cultural programming that doesn’t want to show the hardcore part of exotic cultural expressions. We try to show this hardcore part but sometimes it is not possible. The focus on entertainment eats all the support and does not allow for structural changes in society; to do this we need sustainability and continuation. What I did see were personal changes. Like the pleasure of seeing someone that would have probably never crossed the border of Peru playing here. Seeing the expression of Fabiola Vasquez, the singer of Tica, or of Isabel Huayanay, harpist and singer, and how powerful they were standing on the stage. They spread an energy that stays alive despite their sometimes-hard backgrounds, and it was a revelation for me to see how people that don’t know anything about that background can feel this power of resistance just in their signing.

JvdP: With the exchange programme we wanted to give opportunities to artists that do not have a lot of visibility abroad. There were different kinds of presentations, for example the symposium Worldviews, Music and Arts in Contemporary Peru was a moment where the invited artists shared their backgrounds with the audience. It was a way to open up the programme to the Dutch audience, explaining the context of this project. Our initiative was born out of the necessity to share and give back something to our colleagues in Peru. We were inspired by our friendships and joined forces in order to realise our vision on collectivity. Supporting a peer-to-peer attitude to sharing knowledge in the arts and in life was also the approach to our exhibition Do It With Us, one of the last shows hosted by Mirta Demare, which included collective Aloardi and two artist-initiatives based in Rotterdam: Filmwerkplaats and misprint-it. Consequently, to be more independent from the agenda of external programmers, and to also benefit from the cultural public facilities in the Netherlands, I founded Idraola, creating a non-profit organisation to support the collaborations that are an important aspect of our artistic practices and developments.

CG: Idraola is the inverted name of Aloardi. It is a word that has been hidden for more than twenty years in the heart of Aloardi. The spirit of this word has been present all these years, but was given a voice by Janneke during a meeting with the members of Aloardi. I interpret it from the two words ‘Idra’ as in Hydra, a mythical seven-headed sea monster, and ‘Ola’, which means ‘wave’ in Spanish.

 

The hydra comes to announce the catastrophe.
The olas and the water unite Rotterdam with Lima;
Peru with the Netherlands.
The Dutch landscape is below sea level and is invaded by water and light
although attempts have been made to domesticate it.
The virus always emerges; humanity is on the way to its own abyss.
We came to announce the end of reason.
Idraola is an echo in reverse.
It is the Aloardi reflexion mutating.
It is a force, an impulse, a sound wave mutated by the landscape,
By the bodies and the dreams.
It is the violence of an unpostponable meeting.
It is the mirror.
Its roots are in the water.
It is sound.
This is the situation a sea calling to no(w)here.

 

LIST OF ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

Felipe del Águila was granted an artist-in-residency as part of the Aloardi Exchange Programme 2017 to mark Aloardi’s 19th anniversary. His solo exhibition, Connection-Disconnection concluded this residency. For this project he immersed himself within the context of Rotterdam, in order to understand and ‘hack’ the local dynamic. Felipe’s work often seeks a balance between art and activism. He mainly works with performative interventions in the urban public space, collecting found materials and trash, and using language and text within a social-critical approach. Since the mid-’90s he has been designing independent publications about the alternative circuit, with the publication studio Contenidos Mutantes. In 2001 he joined the Aloardi collective and remained one of its core members until 2009. Currently del Águila runs his communication studio AIRE COMMUNICACIONES.

www.airecomunicaciones.com

Gabriel Castillo Agüero is a visual and sound artist with a background in Art History. He graduated from the Universidad National Mayor de San Marcos (2000–2006). In his artistic work Gabriel Castillo makes drawings, video, and experimental music. Castillo is interested in the popular culture and the craft of constructing electronic circuits as musical instruments. He hacks toy guns and turns them into sound instruments, making glitches and modulations in sound and light. He loves the nature of the analogue and digital error, whether audible or visual, and induces basic code editors, de-contextualising electronics, overcoming their logical functionality, and revealing their natural spirit. He is looking for contextual demonstrations, or synesthetic epiphanies.

www.youtube.com/user/triztel

Frau Diamanda was created in 1999 in Lima by Hector Acuña: transgender visual artist, drag performer, curator, cultural agent, translator, writer, DJ, make-up artist, and actor/actress. Acuña has initiated many projects linked to transgenderness as a political stance, and is determined to confront patriarchal obstacles predominant in the mass media, art systems, and life itself.

www.youtube.com/user/FrauHector

Wilder Frank Gonzales Agreda has been active since 1995 with influential bands like Catarsis, Avalonia and Fractal, who were part of a Peruvian psychedelic post-rock scene known as Crisálida Sónica. Wilder’s discography consists of more than sixty releases. He founded Superspace Records and produces the radio show Perú Metamúsica. In the alternative South American network he is also known as a music journalist and philosopher, publishing articles on his blog Perú Avantgarde and other platforms.

www.superspacerecords.bandcamp.com/album/scala-mega-hertz

Isabel Huayanay is a harpist and singer who was born in Lima. Her vocal timbre represents a traditional vocal style, which is commonly practiced by female Andean singers in Huancavelica, in the Peruvian highlands. Huancavelica is the place of origin of folkloric traditions such as the ‘Tusujs’ or ‘Danzantes de Tijeras’, which translates to ‘scissors dancers’. These are ancient cultural practices of resistance that survived the colonial era. Isabel masters different Andean styles of traditional celebrations like her ancestors and harpist family members before her. Her appearance at the second Aloardi festival was a significant example of how rural Andean cultures are integrated in Peruvian urban societies, and that of Lima in particular.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mxfn5pFdQ0

Yoana Buzova & Matthias Hurtl were Aloardi residents at Paviljoen aan het Water, Charlois, Rotterdam, during the fall of 2017. Their project Cranked Tapes is a bicycle ‘repair’ that records and plays audio cassettes through the movement of the bike crank. It is an exploration of the disobedient potential of a ‘vocal’ bike and is also rooted in the building of communities through repair and modification. Throughout the residency, together with Charlois residents, they constructed an ‘audio bike ride route’, published as a map: a cycling manual, where each location relates to an excerpt from the last book of the Critique of Everyday Life series by Henri Lefebvre — providing anyone directions to explore the sound sites of the neighbourhood. Buzova & Hurtl’s work is an exploration of the interrelation of mechanical, organic, social rhythms and noise in the comprehension of everyday life.

www.oyoana.com/crankedtapes / www.randomaccessmemory.at

Tica, which means ‘flower’ in the Quechua language, emerged in 2003 from the vibrant El Rimac and Comas districts in Lima. Its members Fabiola Vasquez and Christian Galarreta were previously active in influential bands such as DiosMeHaViolado, Evamuss and Lapolarina. With their peculiar mix of dreamy pop and noise, Tica quickly caught the attention of the Peruvian underground. They produced several releases on various Peruvian labels and played many live shows, but had to disband in 2008 when Galarreta relocated to Mexico. The Aloardi festival 2017 has seen the live rebirth of Tica and the launch of a brand new 7-inch vinyl release and a cassette compilation.

www.chrsgalarretaprojects.bandcamp.com/album/lo-que-sea-por-mi-destruccion

CONTRIBUTORS TO THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION

Jonathan Castro is a Peruvian graphic designer, art director and musician currently living and working in Amsterdam. With an interest in digital utopias, symbology and ancient cultures, his projects always move in search of visual expressions based on the concept of ‘design fiction’. From 2013 to 2016 he ran Youth Experimental Studio, an independent graphic design collective in Lima. His work ranges from art direction to posters, animation, books, exhibitions, identities and websites for cultural institutions, businesses and individuals. Jonathan was responsible for the graphic representation and live visuals during the 2017 edition of the Aloardi festival.

www.jonathancastro.pe

Christian Galarreta is a musician, composer and installation artist living between France, the Netherlands and Peru. He researches and highlights the acoustic qualities of bodies and spaces, and transduces imperceptible physical phenomena, such as electromagnetic fields, sub-aquatic sounds, otoacoustic emissions and resonant architectures, to an audible dimension. He also researches the relations between old cultural myths and strange acoustic phenomena. His concerts, installations, performances, lectures, research and workshops have been presented in Latin America, Europe and Asia. Galarreta works under the name of several bands that he initiated and produced, including Sajjra and Tica. He has more than one hundred releases published by discographic labels around the world.

www.sajjra.net

Janneke van der Putten is a visual artist and performer based in Rotterdam. Her practice involves experiences of listening, performances, sound and video, documentations in image/text/textile, workshops, music projects, and creating platforms for cultural exchange. Her voice is her main tool, guiding her through physical and sonic explorations in different landscapes. Engaging with specific sites and local contexts, and through her personal experiences, she investigates (human) responses to her surroundings, and their relation to natural phenomena and transitions, such as the sunrise.

www.jannekevanderputten.nl

Natalia Sorzano is a Colombian visual artist based between Bogotá and Rotterdam. She has a BA in law and a Master of Fine Arts from the Piet Zwart Instituut in Rotterdam. She worked in the field of human rights research and coordinated the Office for LGBTIQ public policies of the Colombian Government from 2010 to 2014. She co-founded and co-directs the facilitative and collaborative artist-run platform by the name of GHOST. Natalia composes and exemplifies conversations and encounters into music, video and installation works. Her practice explores belief practices, mixed identities and relation, channelling multiple voices and modes of story telling to juxtapose mysticism, politics, oral histories and theory.

www.nataliasorzano.com

Collaborators: Mirta Demare Art Gallery; Drukkerij de Boog; Charlois Speciaal; TXT (Textile) Department, Gerrit Rietveld Academie; Het Wilde Weten; galerie Gallery; myvillages, Erasmus+ and APTNV ROMANIA; Pantropical; Paviljoen aan het Water and Residency…at the Waterfront — International Residency Program: State of the City#3 Rotterdam; South Explorer; Studio Klangendum, Concertzender radio; misprint-it; Filmwerkplaats Rotterdam; LOOS; LAATER; Kulter, SOTU, Vondelbunker and OCCII; Yucatan bar; Autistic Campaign; CmptrMthmtcs; Existence label; Barlok; CCL Lille; and Danil Akimov.

Curatorial: Aloardi is one of the first independent platforms in South and Central America diffusing and producing experimental music, audiovisual art, sound related interventions, internet radio broadcasts and alternative acoustic research. Aloardi’s headquarters in Lima serves as a venue for workshops, a residency programme, and a media library.

www.aloardi.org / www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w2r6UBokNc

Other participants: Jonathan Castro, Dengue Dengue Dengue, Priscila Fernandes, Julien Grossmann, Krapoola, DJ Kromosapiens, Pira Lemu, Sonido MartineS, Muozik, Despina Papachristoudi, DJ Sajjra, Edward Clydesdale Thomson and Bettina Wenzel.

Published by: Idraola (IDRA 001). Rotterdam, December 2018. Printrun: 500 copies.

Sponsors: Aloardi, CBK Rotterdam (Centre for Visual Arts Rotterdam), City of Rotterdam

Thanks to: Ruben Castillo Agüero; Mihail Bakalov; Peter van Bergen; Janpier Brands; Yoana Buzova; Luis Sierra del Aguila, Diana Mogrovejo & Wilhelm Schütze (Colmena Estudio); Julie Dassaud; Mirta Demare; Hajo Doorn; Thomas Durand; Omar Lavalle, Jesús Morate, Lucía García de Polavieja & Ada Quintana (EFT); Ellen van Eldik; Wapke Feenstra; Priscila Fernandes; Clemencia Ferreyros; Mariceci Galarreta; Gisella López Ginocchio; Jan Hiddink; Anton Hoeksema; Toine Horvers; Jan Huijben; Piet de Jonge; Herman Keetbaas; Artyom Kocharyan; Joasia van Kooten; Michael Lewis; Caro Linares; Jair Pérez Brañez (Ministerio de Cultura del Perú); Ed van der Putten; Mihaela Radulescu; Joke Robaard; Sascha Roth; Rosa Saldaña; Pauline Schreurs; Lukas Simonis; Patrícia Pinheiro de Sousa; Ieke Trinks; Giuseppe De Bernardi (Tupac – Centro Cultural de Creación Contemporánea); Daniela Maguiña Ugarte; Freddy Alberto Vásquez Gómez; Marco Valdivia; Frédéric Van de Velde; Kamiel Verschuren; and all who supported this project.

THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION WAS MADE WITH THE SUPPORT OF:

Aloardi, Mihail Bakalov (photographer), Jonathan Castro (poster designer), City of Rotterdam, Max van Dongen (photographer), Christian Galarreta (editor and writer), Idraola, Caro Linares (photographer), Janneke van der Putten (editor, producer and writer), Arden Rzewnicki (advisor, editor and proofreader), Constança Saraiva (editorial designer) and Natalia Sorzano (writer).

Please download the PDF file of the original publication here: Digital_Aloardi_Booklet

  1. Jump Up At the time of publication, the Schengen Area is comprised of twenty-six European states and mostly functions as a single jurisdiction for international travel purposes, with a common visa policy.
  2. Jump Up Source: Program flyer Enlazando Alternativas 2008.