Sophia Mitiku is a Korean-Ethiopian singer, producer, and sound artist whose sonic practice flows around the interfaces of music, ancestry, and landscape. During her residency Sophia will be creating an installative performance in the desert we argue over rivers we can’t see, to be performed at Gaudeamus festival. The piece is a conversation about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) and the regions bound by the Nile’s flow yet divided by its control. It explores the Nile not just as a contested resource, but as a terrestrial body holding memory, history, and a power that has outlasted empires.
Islands of Change confronts the polycrisis – planetary collapse, genocide, war, tech-fascism, and growing authoritarianism – that increasingly leaves us at a loss in the face of the challenges it presents. Co-curated by Julian Rieken with Residenties in Utrecht and Gaudeamus, this long-term initiative asks: How do we reclaim our ‘response-ability’? How do we mobilize our (hyper)local ‘islands’ of artistic action to counteract rigid hierarchies, and in so doing, forge vibrant currents of solidarity? Click here for the full programme of Islands of Change.
ATTENTION: This live performance will take place on three occasions throughout the Sunday; the first pass starts at 11:30, the second at 13:30 and the last will begin at 16:00pm. The installation Islands of Change will remain open to the public from 10:00am to 17:00pm.