Fleeting Voices. Preserving Acoustic Heritage in the Archives and the Arts (Experimental Conference SONIME & Heritage Studies Vienna).

Speaking, singing and using one’s voice for communication is one of the oldest cultural techniques. And hearing is one of the earliest human senses, which we actively pursue and exercise already as a foetus. Since the invention of storing and reproducing voices on sound carriers, the ephemeral level of the acoustic has taken on a materiality outside the human body. This has made it possible to keep the voice for individual and cultural memories. These techniques of saving and remembering are connected to the desire to hold on to the voice as a coveted object and to preserve it for the future.Simultaneously, they reveal the paradox of the material fixation of the ephemeral.

Fleeting Voices brings together artistic practice, materials science, media theory, art- and cultural history. We discuss the specifics of acoustic heritage, the agency of various sound carriers in archives and artworks. We focus on politics of listening, voices in colonial archives, and voices as ephemeral but highly material objects and still underestimated subjects of heritage science or art
history.

PROGRAMME

Day 1 – Wednesday, October 1

12:30 Registration and Coffee

13:00 Welcome: Clemens Apprich, Noémie Étienne, Kerstin Klenke, Katrin Abromeit, Laura Bohnenblust, Eva Kapeller-Hallama

13:30 MADEYOULOOK: On Reverb and Return: Voice as worldmaking, Chair: Laura Bohnenblust

14:30 Coffee Break

14:45 Panel 1: Politics of Listening, Chair & Discussant: Isabel Frey;
Senta Hirscheider: Humble Listening to the Frequencies of Empire,
Cristina Sá Valentim: Engaging with sound through alternative modes of listening. A decolonial approach to an Angolan folk song recorded in the 1950s during Portuguese colonial rule,
Hippocrates Cheng: A Curated Listening Session — Echoes of Displacement: Revoicing Chinese Diasporic Speech

16:15 Coffee Break

16:30 Thomas Levin: Vocamat, Voice Records, Registon: Alexander Lissiansky and the Pre-History of the Voice-O-Graph Automatic Recording Booth, Chair: Eva Kapeller-Hallama

17:30 Coffee Break

18:00 Panel 2: Present Voices – Absent Histories in Colonial Archives, Chair & Discussant: Noémie Étienne;
William Carruthers & Fayrouz Kaddal: Intermittent Presences: Tracing Nubia’s Sounds and Voices,
Lina Ounissi: Echoes of Coexistence: Malouf, Memory and the Politics of Voice in Colonial Constantine

19:00 Bread & Wine

Day 2 – Thursday, October 2

09:00 Coffee & Bread

09:30 Panel 3: Recorded Voices – Preserved Voices, Chair & Discussant: Carolin Bohlmann;
Katrin Abromeit & Johann Hinterstoisser: Stable, Compromised, Unstable -- Diversity of Audio Carriers and their Conditions in the SONIME Project,
Carmen Rodriguez Godino: Ernest Berk Sound Archive: Restore, Preserve, Engage,
Barbora Benetková: White Bloom – Understanding the Degradation of Brown-Wax Phonograph Cylinders

11:00 Coffee Break

11:15 Conservation Talk: Cellulose Nitrate Lacquers in Direct Cut Discs,
Speakers: Friederike Waentig, Elena Gómez-Sánchez, Simon Kunz and Katrin Abromeit, Chair: Martina Griesser-Stermscheg

12:15 Lunch Break

13:45 Panel 4: Sending Voices, Chair & Discussant: Kristina Pia Hofer;
Eva Kapeller-Hallama: “This is my tape!!! You hear!” Listening to Audio Letters in the SONIME Project,
Luc Marraffa: Listening to Lieneke’s ‘Aether Letters’: Domesticity and Colonial Silences (listening session),
Ferenc János Szabó: The Idea and Realization of the ‘Voice Message’ in Hungarian Private Recordings on Gramophone Records

15:15 Coffee Break

15:45 Panel 5: The Voice Between Documentation and Intimacy, Chair & Discussant: Stephan Puille;
Lauren Walker: Correspondence Etched in Blue: Audograph Discs of Erle Stanley Gardner,
Jean-Baptiste Masson: Tapes as Sonic Log Books: The Case of Paul-Émile Victor During His Polar Expeditions,
Heidi Fial: Reflecting the convergence of amateur film and sound recordings

17:15 Coffee Break

17:45 Thomas Macho: Fremde Stimmen, Chair: Isabel Kranz

Day 3 – Friday, October 3

09:00 Welcome with Coffee & Bread

09:30 Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir, Claudia Lomoschitz & Crystal Wall, Unearthing Grounds – Digging Deep

10:00 Panel 6: Voices in Artistic Practice, Chair & Discussant: Ricarda Denzer;
Julia Lajta-Novak, Claire Palzer, Shefali Banerji & Rachel Bolle-Debessay: Listening to Poetry: Rethinking Sound in Literary Criticism,
Laetitia Kozlova: Exhibiting the Sound of the Intimate

11:00 Coffee Break

11:15 Naima Hassan: Notes on a Distributed Person: On Xirsi, and other incantations for Mohamed Nur

12:00 Coffee Break and Snacks

12:30 Round Table Discussion: Fleeting Voices with Gabriele Jutz, Rodrigo Chocano, Julia Sawitzki and Jens Schröter, Chair: Laura Bohnenblust

14:00 End of Conference

Organized by:
Katrin Abromeit (Phonogrammarchiv), Laura Bohnenblust (University of Vienna), Eva Hallama (University of Applied Arts Vienna)

Institutions:
Department Media Theory – University of Applied Arts Vienna
Phonogrammarchiv – Austrian Academy of Sciences
Cultural Heritage Studies – University of Vienna (Faculty Center for Transdisciplinary and Cultural Studies)

Scientific Committee:
Clemens Apprich (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Noémie Etienne (University of Vienna), Ricarda Denzer (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Elena Gómez Sánchez (Deutsches Bergbaumuseum Bochum), 
Kerstin Klenke (Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences), Thomas Y. Levin (Princeton University), Thomas Macho (IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies Vienna), Gerhild Perl (University of Trier), Dirk Rupnow (University of Innsbruck), Jens Schröter (University of Bonn)

For further information and registration, please visit the websites:
https://sonime.at/fleeting-voices/
https://www.heritagestudiesvienna.com/news-events/conference-fleeting-voices-preserving-acoustic-heritage-in-the-archives-and-the-arts