Imeon
Noemi Schrader is a rapper, composer and performer from Berlin. As a kid, she would use made-up phonemes to express her emotional world. Now she is using this language to experiment with the limits of meaning-making in rap without the use of common words, but still somehow communicating in a language we all understand. Trained in the Aarhus Conservatory of Music, she started composing for orchestra but is currently embarking in the journey of independent music-making as an experimental rapper. In this doc-art film she shares the Butoh- and Gaga-influenced aspects of her work and more.
Venom & Cows
Caíto Veneno (Ricky Venom) was the nickname of my grandfather, Ricardo Herrero, born during the Spanish Civil War and a lover of photography. His friend, Juan Vacas (aka Juan Cows), wrote his memoirs in 1949 narrating how they first started dating their wives. One of them would turn out to be my grandmother.
As an exam for the Visual Anthropology subject taught by Christian Vium, I transcribed the memoirs and montaged them with old photographs of that time.
The book was then used as a tool for revisitation of familial identity using the technique of photo-elicitation conversation with my mother and sister, inspired by Kuhn’s 2000 paper on cultural memory and photography. The written assignment analysed the results of this conversation and their implications for vernacular archive studies.
Horrors beyond comprehension
How is it to be a girl in the online communities of gore and femcelcore? This project explores the usually ecclipsed feminine presence of such spaces through a collaborative, digital ethnography, inspired by the ‘desktop documentary’ style. The data is exposed through a website imitating a Macbook desktop interface.
This was my exam project for the subject ‘Contemporary Anthropological Themes’, taught by Steffen Köhn in the first semester of the Visual Anthropology Master’s degree at Aarhus University (written assignment available via the website).
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Winter lotus
Short documentary film about the Chua Quang Huong vietnamese Buddhist temple in the suburbs of a Danish city, Aarhus. The film serves as a portrait of the temple’s close-knitted community, guided by the monk Thich Giac Thanh, a refugee from the Vietnam war.
This project was the product of an intensive course in documentary filmmaking I took at the school Dox:world, made in collaboration with Hedvig Juul Poulsen, a student of religious science at Aarhus University.
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Jakob’s dish
Regardless of his charismatic and jokey nature, Jakob carries a baggage over his shoulders, which is now being transformed into a future he never imagined before, thanks to his newly found vocation, being a chef.
During this short film of under 5 minutes he reminisces about how he got to where he is now, while he cooks once again his first-ever designed dish, one including a really daring mix of ingredients, which he created for a contest.
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alijuna.mp3
Alijuna is a field recordings soundscape album made up of pieces of my trip around Colombia in late 2022 - early 2023.
This project was born out of the motivation to show my loved ones at home the sensory environments that I underwent as I travelled around the immensely varied landscapes of this southamerican country and surrounded myself with very different languages, dialects and ways of being. This way my usual one-dimensional travel stories became a first-hand experience for them.
The album includes 12 tracks recorded in locations starting from the streets of Medellín, going through a work environment in Isla Palma, a bus station in San Onofre, music jams in Palomino, bus trips to Santa Marta and conversations between Wayuu women by the beach shore of the desert of La Alta Guajira.
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Presas
Presas is an independently made and distributed fanzine or photobook of a collection of analog pictures, trimmings, collages and journal entries created as I moved out of my home in Spain to Denmark. The before, during and after of the COVID-19 crisis, for a 19-year-old who travels back and forth between two countries.
The photography style could be defined as observational photography, unpriviledged camera style or, more accurately, the 19th-century Spanish costumbrismo. An attempt at depicting reality, people and customs as they appear to me, finding beauty in the mundane, everyday life.
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About me
My name is Ayla, I was born and raised in Madrid (Spain), but now based in Aarhus, Denmark.
Being from a neighborhood in the south-east of Madrid, the lack of future opportunities brought me to study my Bachelor’s in Cognitive Science in Denmark. To take a break from studies, I backpacked solo around Colombia and upon my return I decided to venture into the field of Visual Anthropology, even though my vision of long-term future landscapes resembles less those of an academic campus and more of a Galician farm.
I’m a curious person, always questioning everything around me, for better or worse. Some of the things that give meaning to my life are music, film, my friends and family, exploring the corners of human experience, cross-cultural encounters, pole dance training, having real conversations, cigarettes and honesty.
You are welcome to learn more about me in the following platforms: