"Öleñmen jer qoïnyna kirer deneñ / With a song your body will be embraced by Earth" is an immersive sound and visual work created by Kazakh artist Aïda Adilbek. It is part of the Sound Art Residency programme organised by the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.
Adilbek's work is based on the ritual chants of Kazakhstan like laments and celebration folk songs that accompany birth and death. It invites us to immerse ourselves in a process of transformation and rebirth.
Lives of Kazakh people, like of many others around the world, has always been immersed in an oral culture. Various forms of spoken word, such as bata (poetry-like blessings), du’a (citations from Qur’an), jyr (epic songs and instrumental music) have been used to depict every critical occasion in a person’s life. From birth to death, through celebrations and sorrow, people have found relief in singing and storytelling to capture the Present.
The work’s title references Kazakh philosopher and writer Abai Qunanbayev’s quote: “A song opens the gates of life to you, with a song your body will be embraced by Earth”. The project draws inspiration from Kazakh classical poetry, folk singing, and instrumental music to create a modern take on a personal story of loss and grievance.
Aïda Adilbek is a multidisciplinary artist and curator born in 1994 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In 2016, she graduated from the Jurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Art with a Bachelor of Arts in Art history. The year she applied to the Art history department, it was decided to shut the Russian-language program down in favor of Kazakh-language one. Through these new teaching, Aïda Adilbek became aware of her lack of knowledge about pre-Soviet Kazakh visual art.
After graduating, Aïda Adilbek joined a school of artistic gesture (ШХЖ), in Almaty. There she met many friends and colleagues, with whom she founded the all-female collective MATA in 2020. In the same year, she completes a Master of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In 2021, she was invited to join the DAVRA collective, a research group launched by Uzbek filmmaker and artist Saodat Ismailova, as part of her "Chilltan" project, presented in 2022 at the 15th Documenta in Kassel, Germany. This experience prompted her to deepen her interest in performative, durational and narrational audio-visual media.
For the Sound Art Residencies, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac is collaborating with Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains who will host the artist for two one-week work sessions and provide technical support for its production and postproduction.
Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains, is situated in Tourcoing (16km from Lille) and is one of France’s leading educational institutions in the artistic, audio-visual and digital fields. It emphasizes the crossing of disciplines and encourages the production of full-scale work with professional production means.
Piloted by Alain Fleischer, he artistic direction of the school encourages moving back and forth between the traditional tools and languages of modernity (cinema, photography, video, sound and music creation) and the world of emerging technologies and the digital arts.
At the beginning of 2022, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac will launch the first call for projects of this new program: the Sound Residency.
This program is open exclusively to artists who come from one of the four continents represented in the collections of the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac: Africa, Asia, Oceania and America. There is no age limit to apply.
The piece conceived during the residency must have some connection with the museum’s collections, interests and theme. If it is pertinent, the artist may have access to the museum’s audio and audio-visual archives, or to the collection of musical instruments. The work produced during the residency may be a transdisciplinary piece, and not strictly a work of sound art. However, the main component of the piece must be sound of any type.
The winning project is chosen by an international jury that brings together various personalities from the world of sound and audiovisual creation.
Conscient de l’importance de la connaissance et de la transmission du patrimoine immatériel attaché à ses collections, le musée s’engage dans une démarche de soutien à la création sonore contemporaine et de valorisation du son sur le plateau des collections.
"La Réserve des non-dits" est le premier projet créé dans le cadre des résidences sonores au musée. Tout en délicatesse, Youmna Saba, lauréate de cette résidence 2022, est allée capter le souffle des instruments de musique, au cœur de leur lieu de conservation.
