ASL أصل ⴰⵙⵍ

© ℗ 2025 BERGSONIST
With support from The NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and
Theatre by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in association with The New York Foundation for the Arts.

Liner Notes by Rob Goyanes:
The origins of things are almost always blurry. The Arabic word for “origin” is أصل, which transliterates roughly as “ASL.”
In the language of the Amazigh people, who are indigenous to North Africa, it's written as ⴰⵙⵍ. Selwa Abd’s project, taking these words as its title, is an exploration of her own Amazigh origins in Morocco
(Amazigh means “free people”).
Born in 1992 in Casablanca, and living in New York since 2010, Abd’s musical practice hinges on electroacoustic experimentation and
rhythm-based electronic music.
Over the last few years, she’s expanded into multimedia formats, and started digging deeper into post-colonial history and identity. ASL أصل ⴰⵙⵍ is her most personal project yet—pulling material from recent visits to her ancestral village in Errachidia, a region in southeastern Morocco, Abd fuses musical traditions and speculative... more
credits
released November 21, 2025

All tracks written & composed by Bergsonist.
Music & Research by Bergsonist / Selwa Abd
All rights reserved. Bergsonist Publishing 2025.
Mastering by Loric Sih. www.loricsih.com
Artwork & Design by Selwa Abd. selwaabd.net
Insert Photography By Greg Zifcak. www.gzifcak.net
Liner Notes by Rob Goyanes. robgoyanes.com
Vocal on “oeuvres sociales” by Papi RIP
Thank you: Papi, Mami, Papa, Greg,
Roulette Intermedium x NYSCA, NYFA x MOME, Mohamed, Tarda and my ancestors.

Part of the visual archive for this project can be viewed here: instagram.com/asl.bergsonist/
you can also watch the performance of the first
iteration featuring gnawa musician Moe Elgad
of ASL أصل ⴰⵙⵍ at Roulette here:
roulette.org/event/bergsonist-asl/