anomia
Singer, large ensemble, video, electronics [12′]
Commissioned by Orkest De Ereprijs for their full RKST21 formation.
Premiere in Musis, Arnhem, 25 February 2023.
anomia is an audiovisual composition for singer, large ensemble, video and electronics. The concept of the work comes from the language specific disturbance where the main symptom is the inability of retrieving known words. The composition cites text from Alexander Luria’s Man with a Shattered Brain, through post-Covid instances of brain fog, to anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler's term 'colonial aphasia' dealing with a nation state’s inability to find the words to communicate the violence of its own history. The composition takes the form of an audiovisual essay, in music, images and words touching on what it means to have something at the tip of your tongue and are unable to express it.