IASA's 55th Annual Conference

This session consists of 3 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ JIASUI LING - The Expeditions and Recontextualization of Chinese Music Wax Cylinders (Short presentation)

➺ Linnea Semmerling - Caring is sharing: An attachment-based approach to the preservation of sound art and cassette culture (Short presentation)

➺ Zane Grosa - Echoes of History: Exploring Sound, Technology, and Sonic Undercurrents (Long presentation)


**Abstracts:**


➺ The Expeditions and Recontextualization of Chinese Music Wax Cylinders
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JIASUI LING (Short presentation)
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As Kunst wrote "Ethnomusicology could never have grown into an independent science the gramophone had not been invented." (Jaap Kunst 1959:12) As the material carrier, the wax cylinder not only records the immaterial sound and culture of the Other, but also carries the memory and history on global interaction beyond time and space of the ethnomusicologists/archivists and regional musical cultures. This paper aims to pursue the implicit multiple narratives of interconnection and communication written by several "expeditions" of archival materials and archivists, emphasizes that history is not only of human which is referred to as "his/her-story", as well as of material which is "its-story".

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries,12 western explorers, missionaries and scholars including Berthold Laufer and Friedrich Weiss came to China and collected numerous precious Chinese music with nearly 1000 wax cylinders which are currently preserved in different overseas’ archives. The voyage of thousands cylinder has brought Chinese voice to western world, it has become the cornerstone of East Asian Studies. Some recordings have been published as teaching materials in ethnomusicology classes in American universities today. 100 years after the recording, some recordings have returned to Chinese's vision through digital technology and repatriation practice, filling the gap of the so-called "dumb Chinese music history". These collections are constantly being interpreted and stimulated in multiple archival narratives through recontextualization.

➺ Caring is sharing: An attachment-based approach to the preservation of sound art and cassette culture
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Linnea Semmerling (Short presentation)
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The presentation will inventory current heritage practices for sound art and cassette culture from the 1970s to the 1990s. It will analyze different approaches to preservation at online platforms and alternative databases (f.ex. Discogs or Tape Mag) as well as at institutional collections and exhibitions (f.ex. Fales Special Collections or ZKM Karlsruhe). Specific attention will be paid to community involvement, i.e. the ways in which producers, distributors, and audiences participate in defining, acquiring, cataloguing, storing, and making accessible the archival materials. The analysis of these heritage practices will be guided by Antoine Hennion’s sociology of attachments, challenging the separation of archivist and archival object. This will result in the proposition of an archival network structure for sharing attachments among the communities of sound art and cassette culture. Conclusions will also be drawn for the archiving practices of other distribution-based arts, including video art.


➺ Echoes of History: Exploring Sound, Technology, and Sonic Undercurrents
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Zane Grosa (Long presentation)
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Our cultural and historical legacy resonates through the world of sound recordings – immortalising artistic performances, oral traditions, and a myriad of environmental and educational content. Technology and its advances has been the key in making this rich heritage accessible to ever-expanding segments of society, enabling the preservation and dissemination of our auditory past.
The National Library of Latvia is focusing on the evolution of sound recording and playback technologies throughout the 20th century with a major exhibition opening at the end of April 2024. From the phonograph and wax cylinders to the era-defining boombox and compact disc, it will explore the journey of dominant sound carriers and their players, reflecting on their profound impact on society and culture. A particular focus of the exhibition is the local history of sound recordings and playback devices, shedding light on their availability, consumption patterns, and socio-cultural significance.
Additionally, my presentation will illuminate the audio cassette market in Latvia during the 1980s – the time when Latvia was still behind the ‘iron curtain’. The exploration of the covert world of audiocassette trading and listening to 'undesirable' Western popular music shows the role of audiocassettes as not only carriers of music but also as artefacts of dissent, resistance and cultural expression.
By contextualizing sound technologies within the broader socio-cultural milieu, this presentation seeks to foster a deeper appreciation for the cultural and historical importance of sound recordings while promoting understanding of the environments in which they were created and distributed.