Residency Ibelisse, Spring 2025
Ritual Soundscapes: Between Andes and Synth
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti is a multidisciplinary artist: a vocalist, performer, composer, and maker working across various media. With Bolivian and Brazilian roots, her work is deeply rooted in the cosmologies and traditions of her heritage. Trained in classical piano for eighteen years and in contemporary dance for ten, she graduated in 2006 with a BA in Performance Arts from the Amsterdam University of the Arts. Since then, she has been weaving music, movement, and ritual into boundary-pushing performances that celebrate and transform. Her Latinx background remains a constant source of inspiration.
During her GRASpunt residency, Ibelisse and her ensemble will explore the sonic landscape of the Andes, drawing inspiration from its microtonal music. Using electronic instruments, percussion, and voice, they’ll build new musical worlds. In Bolivia, Ibelisse discovered that sound is considered a living entity—something not experienced as “music” in the Western sense, but as a transmitter of messages from the environment, like a natural radio signal. Through participation in traditional rituals and trance-inducing ceremonies, she witnessed how sound and the earth are deeply intertwined.
For those living in urban environments, these sonic technologies are largely unfamiliar. This raises an intriguing question: what could such ancient sound worldviews mean for us today? Together with sound artist Jochem van Tol, percussionists Frank Rosaly and Jacob Maskell-Key, and vocalist Julia Werner, Ibelisse dives into this question through an adventurous musical exploration.