Brian Harnetty, musicology, Ohio State, presents "How to Perform an Archive: Listening and Sonic Ethnography as Methods to Reinterpret Sonic Archives." Harnetty is a post-doctoral scholar and GAHDT Fellow (Global Arts + Humanities Discovery theme). This lecture is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries.
How do we listen with, embody and reimagine archival materials? How might we bring these materials out of the archive and into the world? And, can we do this ethically, while also fostering a sense of stewardship to the people and places connected to archives?
Over the past two decades, Brian Harnetty has worked as an interdisciplinary artist and composer to create new, critical performances of archives. Moving between music composition, sound art, sonic ethnography and socially engaged art, he has worked with archives across Appalachia and the Midwest, including the Berea Appalachian Sound Archives (Berea, Kentucky), the Sun Ra/El Saturn Collection (Chicago, Illinois), the Little Cities of Black Diamonds Archive (Shawnee, Ohio), and the Thomas Merton Collection (Louisville, Kentucky).
In this talk, Harnetty will discuss a methodology of listening practices related to sonic archives, including close and peripheral listening, mislistening, and social listening with the communities where the recordings were made. These methods are used to foster social change, and understand archives in new ways. They are anchored in both the arts and humanities, and draw from community-based archives, music archives, and recordings focused on a single figure. Harnetty will explore themes from several of his recording, performance and installation projects, including histories of extraction in Appalachia, social and environmental justice, and contemplative practices.
Free and open to the public. Visit the School of Music website for event details, directions and updates.
