Archives

What are archives

• The archive has been a huge topic for 20, 30 years, many artistic practises use archives
• A lot of archives look into the history of archives, they started off in western science they try to store and preserve knowledge

Sound archives under suspicion Miguel A. Garcia

Garcia brings up the correct way to collect a sound archive, He believes sounds where there to be collected.

• a)  Collected ‘things’—such as songs—are free of the collector’s influence
• b)  These ‘things’ can be removed from their contexts
• c)  These ‘things’ can be alienated from their creators
• d)  These ‘things’ can be lodged in containers: archives, files, discs, wax cylinders, diaries, shelves, cases, etc
• e)  In spite of all these manipulations, these ‘things’ can keep thequalities they had before the collector’s intervention

Cultural artefacts have a place within a communities, archiving is doing violence towards that culture or place.

Mele Yamomo states that “The ability to archive and to access the archive are positions and hegemony”. He states the problematic actions of the people who archive (people in power, colonialists).

Rhodes University, South Africa Archive

• Founded by a British man Hugh Tracy, he worked for the colonialist company
• 35,000 different recordings of traditional South African music
• It’s one of the largest archives in its history, his intention was lay down a “base”so people know what music was like in South Africa, he wanted to keep the music alive. The downfall of this is that he’s not the only one who wants to keep the music alive
• It seems the documentation of giving back to the people of these lost tribes feel a little inexact

Decolonizing Southeast Asian Sound Archives https://www.decoseas.org/initiatives/outreach

• SoAs is a company that look into anthropology and international culture research
• Video of a researcher giving back archived texts and stories that where recorded on the Phlipines
• A local woman gives her thoughts on why there local chants shouldn’t be put online, they take away from the community and is listened away from the local culture which takes away from its worth “it should not be a cemetery, but a sanctuary of music”

[Re:]Entanglements

Dead Birds (1963)

• It’s a sonic argumented sound for film, its sound recordings are collected from an exhibition to New Guine
• Its approach of narrative over residents of this country is distasteful, we don’t hear anyone included in the film talk, just a British narrator

The problems with archiving lost cultures

• The problem when documenting cultures is the loss of context, when certain knowledge is removed from a setting, it can loose its value and meaning. Ownership can also be an issue when taking from archive, who gets to own and or profit from these collections? In my view we want to celebrate these collections with communities that have lost so much.