Counter-narrating the Inhumane: Rodolfo Acosta’s True Negatives and the Decolonial Aesthesis of Collective Responsibility
This exposition outlines my research project on Rodolfo Acosta’s True Negatives (2009). This musical work emerges in dialogue with Colombia’s “false positives” scandal, a state-orchestrated fantasy designed to obscure the atrocity, wherein murdered civilians were presented as guerrilla combatants. I argue that Acosta’s music composition functions not as a direct response to this horror but as a counter-narrative that operates through its very compositional structure. By redistributing agency, challenging hierarchical orders, and fostering a community of listening and ethical responsibility, True Negatives creates a collaborative sonic space that promotes collective construction of memory and embodies the antithesis of the impersonal, top-down mechanics of state violence.
From a composer’s perspective, True Negatives is best understood through a decolonial lens of relational temporality. My analysis is framed by theories that question modernity's linear temporality and visual-centric representation, such as Rolando Vázquez’s concept of “relational times” (2020) and his critique of the “modern gaze”, helping to illuminate how True Negatives creates a sonic space where memory is not fixed but collectively and continually renegotiated. Additionally, Ana María Ochoa Gautier’s work on aurality (2014) further provides a lens to understand this shift from a visual-representational regime to an aural-relational one. The materials in the body of this project include the analysis of an interview with Acosta and the analysis of the score.
