A Conversation on Discarded Recordings
(2024)
author(s): Heikki Wilenius, Ernst Karel, Jonathan LARCHER
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
What can be considered as a discarded recording in an ethnographic inquiry? Do the instabilities and technical errors show that technology is really part of the encounter of ethnographic situations? Furthermore, is there a limit beyond which a sound that is too degraded can no longer be restored but simply described in writing, the preferred medium of the human sciences in general and anthropology in particular? These three ideas were at the center of an online conversation with Ernst Karel, starting with the film Expedition Content (2020) made with Veronika Kusumaryati from the sound archives of the Harvard-Peabody expedition (1961) in Dutch New Guinea. The many errors and failures that punctuate Rockefeller's recordings – we also listened to some recordings that did not appear in Expedition Content – form a fertile ground for thinking about the tactics and listening that can make examining ethnographic rubbish a heuristic, both for the history of the anthropological discipline and for the history of the place where it was recorded.
