Counter-narrating the inhumane: Rodolfo Acosta’s True Negatives as a contestation of Colombia’s state crimes fantasies by Luis Miguel Delgado Grande

This project analyzes Rodolfo Acosta’s musical work “True Negatives” (2009) as a counter-narrative exposing Colombia’s “false positives,” a euphemistic state-crafted fantasy that obscures the military’s murder of civilians presented as combat kills. Informed by an interview with Acosta and a contextual analysis of this “grotesquely inhumane” practice, the project examines how his compositional decisions (controlled improvisation, quasi-melodic gestures, etc.) function as deliberate artistic strategies. By comparing interview insights with score analysis, this project explores Acosta’s work as a counter-fantasy that challenges the state’s deceptive narrative, the horror it concealed, and questions collective memory. Additionally, the project presents how this analysis enriches my own compositional practice, helping me understand my artistic practice as a space for collective memory reflection that challenges dominant historical fantasies.

References

Acosta, Rodolfo. "Experimentation and Improvisation in Bogotá at the End of the Twentieth Century." New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Mignolo, Walter. The Darker Side of Western Modernity : Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations. Durham [N.C: Duke University Press, 2011.

Mignolo, Walter D. "Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom." Theory, culture & society 26, no. 7-8 (2009): 159-81. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275.

Ochoa Gautier, Ana María. Aurality : Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. Sign, Storage, Transmission. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.

Oliveros, Pauline. Deep Listening : A Composer's Sound Practice. New York ;: iUniverse, Inc., 2005.

Vázquez, Rolando. "Temporalidades Relacionales: De La Modernidad a Lo Decolonial."

Vázquez, Rolando. Vistas of Modernity : Decolonial Aesthesis and the End of the Contemporary. Mondriaan Fund ; Essay 014. Amsterdam: Mondriaan Fund, 2020.

Vazquez, Rolando, and Miriam Barrera Contreras. "Aesthesis Decolonial Y Los Tiempos Relacionales Entrevista a Rolando Vázquez." Calle 14 : revista de investigación en el campo del arte 11, no. 18 (2016): 76. https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.c14.2016.1.a06.

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