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Listening to the Archive: Artistic Uses of Sonic Remnants

À l’écoute de l’archive : usages artistiques des traces sonores

Revue « Filigrane : musique, esthétique, science, société », n° 29

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Published on Monday, March 13, 2023

Summary

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A growing interest in the question of archives, from the point of view of institutions, epistemology and ethics has gradually emerged since the end of the twentieth century. The “documental turn” or “documentary turn” has highlighted the need to reflect on new ways of exploring archives and cultural data (especially relating to artistic use) and on the dynamics of circulation, accumulation and extraction underlying their creation. While the conservation of archives often entails a lessening of their use, their artistic and civic exploitation launches a new phase of their existence, and opens up the way for acquiring new knowledge and rethinking common heritage. The special issue seeks to explore the creative potential of sound archives, often neglected by those institutions responsible for the management, conservation and safekeeping of cultural heritage.

Announcement

Français English

Presentation

A growing interest in the question of archives, from the point of view of institutions (Farge, 1989; Clavert & Muller, 2017), epistemology (Derrida, 1995) and ethics (Zetlyn, 2022) has gradually emerged since the end of the twentieth century. The "documental turn" (Ketelaar, 2006; Mechoulan, 2011; Lemay & Klein, 2012; Leibovici, 2020) or "documentary turn" (Caillet & Pouillaude, 2017) has highlighted the need to reflect on new ways of exploring archives and cultural data (especially relating to artistic use) and on the dynamics of circulation, accumulation and extraction underlying their creation. While the conservation of archives often entails a lessening of their use, their artistic and civic exploitation launches a new phase of their existence (Lemay & Klein, 2012), and opens up the way for acquiring new knowledge and rethinking common heritage. Currently, however, the vast proliferation of cultural data on social networks and other platforms raises questions about the boundaries of what constitutes or doesn’t constitute the archive, about its use and reactivation, and about its rewriting and reinterpretation.

The special issue "Listening to the Archive: Artistic Use of Sonic Remnants" seeks to explore the creative potential of sound archives, often neglected by those institutions responsible for the management, conservation and safekeeping of cultural heritage. Taking the form of recorded sounds (music, words or ambient sound), the existence of sound archives is historically dependent on a technology that emerged in the late nineteenth century, and accessing them depends on being able to listen to them. Whether this listening is individual or collective, it constructs, in its turn, a relationship that is very specific and situated within the world. Taking as its starting point the hypothesis that sound archives are specific kinds of document that sometimes elude the traditional categories, this issue will interrogate their specificity and their artistic re-use.

 What is the rationale behind the creation of sound archives? What is the link between sound archives and collective memory? To what extent do sound archives allow us access to access oral history embedded within communities? How can artists draw on sound archives to create counter-hegemonic historical narratives? What are the aesthetic, legal and political consequences of these re-uses? What are the creative processes at work in the re-use of sound archives? What links are there between re-writings of sound archives and new artistic forms, such as sound documentaries, installations or soundscapes? What listening practices are derived from these artistic productions?

This call is addressed to music scholars, artists, archivists and curators working on and with sound archives.

Suggested themes

  • Epistemological and critical reflection: definition and categorisation of sound archives
  • Sound archives and the creation of new knowledge
  • Sound archives: simulacrum, fiction and auto-narrative
  • Sound archives and inter-artistic creation
  • Political dimensions of sound archives
  • Ethical responsibility and issues in the artistic use of sound archives
  • Institutional approaches to the creation and conservation of sound archives
  • Digital humanities, databases and sound creation
  • Intellectual property, copyright, and political economy of sound archives
  • Creation and manufacture of history: memory, forgetting, and reconfiguration of the real

Schedule

  • Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 May 2023

  • Specifications: abstracts must be no longer than 6000 characters (not including notes and bibliography) and should be accompanied by a short biography of the author.
  • Selection: 1 June 2023
  • Deadline for reception of articles: 1 November 2023
  • Peer-review and feedback to authors: from November 2023 to February 2024
  • Publication: September 2024

Editors

Christine Esclapez and Luis Velasco-Pufleau

Contact and submissions

Journal board

  • Louisa Martin-Chevalier (Université Paris-Sorbonne, laboratoire IReMus)
  • Isabel Pires (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, CESEM)

Editorial board

  • João Dias Fernandes (Université de Lille, CEAC)
  • Christine Esclapez (Université Aix-Marseille, laboratoire PRISM)
  • Louisa Martin-Chevalier (Université Paris-Sorbonne, laboratoire IReMus)
  • Isabel Pires (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, CESEM)
  • Makis Solomos (Université Paris 8, laboratoire Musidanse)
  • Luis Velasco-Pufleau (Université de Berne, Walter Benjamin Kolleg / Institute of Musicology) 

Scientific committee

Roberto Barbanti, José Luis Besada Portas, Elena Biserna, Sylvain Brétéché, Gustavo Celedón, Florent Carron Darras, Jean-Marc Chouvel, Pascale Criton, Nicolas Donin, Pistrick Eckehard, Nicolas Elias, Anis Fariji, Laurent Feneyrou, Grazia Giacco, Jean-Luc Hervé, Martin Laliberté, Philippe Lalitte, Julie Mansion-Vaquié, Anna Papaeti, Carmen Pardo Salgado, Elise Petit, Hyacinthe Ravet, Alejandro Reyna, Matthieu Saladin, Peter Sinclair, Olivier Tourny, Jean-François Trubert, Panos Vlaggopoulos

Editorial secretariat

  • Caroline Boë

Date(s)

  • Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Keywords

  • musique, musicologie, trace sonore, archive sonore, archive, création sonore

Contact(s)

  • Caroline Boë
    courriel : s [dot] filigrane [at] gmail [dot] com

Information source

  • Joao Fernandes
    courriel : joao [dot] diasfernandes [at] univ-lille [dot] fr

License

CC-BY-4.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .

To cite this announcement

Luis Velasco-Pufleau, Christine Esclapez, « Listening to the Archive: Artistic Uses of Sonic Remnants », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, March 13, 2023, https://calenda.org/1058160

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