South African-Swiss sound archives workshop scheduled for September
Historical audio recordings, voice and speech collections are increasingly receiving attention in cultural and social studies, in history, archival studies and curatorial practices. Questions around the politics, histories and culturally specific practices of hearing are attracting intensified attention in the burgeoning, transdisciplinary field of sound studies and beyond.
At the same time, a not unproblematic search for 'authentic voices' creates audiences and interests that perhaps speak to a certain weariness of the images and texts that convey history. The turn to historical sound and music collections - the 'listening in' to recorded voices assumed to have been 'lost', 'silenced' or 'forgotten' - risks introducing essentialising perspectives, for instance around authenticity and notions of immediacy or a specific dimension of affect within the sphere of the sonic.
Following on from the first workshop, which took place in Basel on 1 July, the September workshop will continue to explore debates around listening, sound archives, and (potential) audiences.
The second of a pair of workshops in cooperation between the BAB in Switzerland and APC, jointly organised by Anette Hoffmann and Dag Henrichsen and generously supported by the Swiss South African Joint Research Project (University of Basel), will take place in the Jon Berndt Thought Space at UCT on 9 September.
Presentations by Henrichsen, Susanne Hubler, Anna Voegeli (BAB) will correspond with presentations by APC researchers, students and associates, as well as invited guests.
A programme will be circulated closer to the date.