Resocializing recordings: Collaborative archiving and curating of sound as an agent of knowledge transfer

Abstract

The authors discuss their methodologies for creating and relistening to recordings in collaboration with Indigenous People in Peru and Venezuela and contextualize them within the discourse about overcoming power structures that shape divides between the Global North and South, in both urban and rural trajectories, and in Western and Indigenous knowledges. When it comes to giving back or sharing sound recordings, we suggest the term resocialization rather than restitution or repatriation. In Indigenous lifeworlds, sound works much differently than in modern conceptualizations of music as art or entertainment. Indigenous theories of sound complement frameworks of copyright, which are still mainly based on modern views of human creativity. Working in archives and exhibitions, we seek collaboration with Indigenous experts when archiving, publishing, displaying, or playing recordings. We show how Indigenous and European specialists can foster eye-level bilateral knowledge transfer by fruitfully cocurating sound and multimedia installations in exhibition contexts.