Sound as Cultural Artefact (CDA)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Nottingham
Department Name: Art History
Abstract
Research question: how can creative practitioners engage with archival sound recordings to create new, critical, imaginative work attuned to phonography's colonial origins that engage audiences with the past?
Sound-based exhibitions have over-focused on contemporary sound art and linear, western-centric uncritical histories of technologies of capture (Campt, 2017). Meanwhile, research on creative engagement with archival recordings has prioritised work created through sampling, remixing and collaging (Lobley, 2020; Foo 2020). We need to reframe such work beyond artists' use of sound as content or form towards embracing imaginative, speculative and subjective narratives that critically grapple with the past's complexity and allow exhibition audiences to experience its continuity and 'sameness' (Agawu, 2012).
I conceptualise the archive between a colonial repository of documents produced to track, catalogue and constrain (Campt, 2017) and a generative resource (Osthoff, 2009), where the past affords possibilities for the creation of future imaginaries (Basu and Modest, 2015). Archival art practices bring meaning making processes to the archive (Carbone, 2016) and reveal how art and the archive are socially,
materially and culturally situated forms of memory (Carbone, 2020).
I would like to contribute to the project by:
a) Defining, through researching artist-archive collaborations, how creative practitioners can help reframe our understanding of phonography's history by going beyond sound as unproblematic inscription to work with its social and material dimensions, making audible the places, people, practices, narratives and source materials entangled in recordings (Roy, 2021).
b) Identifying artists in alignment with the proposition that archival sound recordings "speak beyond their object status" (Hoffmann, 2020) - for me, this excess of meaning invites artistic, rather than, or alongside, academic engagement. c) Mapping potential archive collections that can contribute to the exhibition and inform my research.
d) Shaping the exhibition's themes and building conversations around them with the NC team and artists. Informed by recent work in sound studies, I suggest the following:
- the power of the phonograph to 'bring back the voices of the dead' (Sterne 2003)
- the phonograph's reception in Britain and how it constructed national identity (Western 2016)
- the transnational political and material ecology of shellac disc production with India as key supplier of lac production (Denning 2015; Devine 2019)
Indicative thesis timeline [alongside project timeline]
Year 1: Literature review; online research of recent creative projects engaging historical sound recordings; field work interviews with curators, artists and stakeholders of established programmes for artists to work with archival sound [Musée du quai Branly, Fonoteca Nacional de Mexico, Tobar an Dualchais, British Library]. Outcome: series of thesis case studies and framework/agenda that address unrealised potential to inform exhibition.
Year 2: Develop critical framework, methodology, bibliography; work with team developing critical curatorial approach, contribute to outline exhibition themes; lead round one public listening sessions to initiate experimental work with archival recordings.
Year 3: Round two listening sessions with public and artists (together if possible); co-development of new commissions and live exhibition programme; document artist dialogues around commissions; develop broader programming themes. Exhibition work as directed by team.
Year 4: Writing up
Sound-based exhibitions have over-focused on contemporary sound art and linear, western-centric uncritical histories of technologies of capture (Campt, 2017). Meanwhile, research on creative engagement with archival recordings has prioritised work created through sampling, remixing and collaging (Lobley, 2020; Foo 2020). We need to reframe such work beyond artists' use of sound as content or form towards embracing imaginative, speculative and subjective narratives that critically grapple with the past's complexity and allow exhibition audiences to experience its continuity and 'sameness' (Agawu, 2012).
I conceptualise the archive between a colonial repository of documents produced to track, catalogue and constrain (Campt, 2017) and a generative resource (Osthoff, 2009), where the past affords possibilities for the creation of future imaginaries (Basu and Modest, 2015). Archival art practices bring meaning making processes to the archive (Carbone, 2016) and reveal how art and the archive are socially,
materially and culturally situated forms of memory (Carbone, 2020).
I would like to contribute to the project by:
a) Defining, through researching artist-archive collaborations, how creative practitioners can help reframe our understanding of phonography's history by going beyond sound as unproblematic inscription to work with its social and material dimensions, making audible the places, people, practices, narratives and source materials entangled in recordings (Roy, 2021).
b) Identifying artists in alignment with the proposition that archival sound recordings "speak beyond their object status" (Hoffmann, 2020) - for me, this excess of meaning invites artistic, rather than, or alongside, academic engagement. c) Mapping potential archive collections that can contribute to the exhibition and inform my research.
d) Shaping the exhibition's themes and building conversations around them with the NC team and artists. Informed by recent work in sound studies, I suggest the following:
- the power of the phonograph to 'bring back the voices of the dead' (Sterne 2003)
- the phonograph's reception in Britain and how it constructed national identity (Western 2016)
- the transnational political and material ecology of shellac disc production with India as key supplier of lac production (Denning 2015; Devine 2019)
Indicative thesis timeline [alongside project timeline]
Year 1: Literature review; online research of recent creative projects engaging historical sound recordings; field work interviews with curators, artists and stakeholders of established programmes for artists to work with archival sound [Musée du quai Branly, Fonoteca Nacional de Mexico, Tobar an Dualchais, British Library]. Outcome: series of thesis case studies and framework/agenda that address unrealised potential to inform exhibition.
Year 2: Develop critical framework, methodology, bibliography; work with team developing critical curatorial approach, contribute to outline exhibition themes; lead round one public listening sessions to initiate experimental work with archival recordings.
Year 3: Round two listening sessions with public and artists (together if possible); co-development of new commissions and live exhibition programme; document artist dialogues around commissions; develop broader programming themes. Exhibition work as directed by team.
Year 4: Writing up
