Archival Assembly #3
Resounding Archives: The Politics of Listening to the Moving Image
Picture and sound form a whole, and yet in general the dominance of the image prevails when dealing with the medium of film, and this also applies to debates surrounding film heritage. But what does it mean when only the image or the soundtrack of a film has survived in part or in whole? What do we learn about cinema when we incorporate oral history, Q&As, dubbed versions, gossip, and radio broadcasts about cinema? What happens during “V-jaying,” a live translation and commentary practice in East Africa, or during live dubbing, a typical practice during the 16mm era of Thai cinema?
From September 17 to 22, 2024, the 3rd edition of our festival Archival Assembly considers the potential of transnational archive work from the perspective of the aural. The resulting asynchronicity when the worlds of image and sound are separated creates a new framework for history and the present.
A symposium is again a key element. It has been organized with the Institute for Theater, Film, and Media Studies of Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, represented by Vinzenz Hediger, who conceived it in collaboration with Artistic Director Stefanie Schulte Strathaus: “The title Resounding Archives: The Politics of Listening to the Moving Image is programmatic: Going into the archive means not only viewing images, but also hearing them, listening closely to them, as Godard defines the task of cinema itself (“ausculter,” listening to the world in images and sound). Ten panels will take different geographic, historical, and curatorial perspectives on the question: How do the lingering sounds of the archive change film and media history and artistic practices?”
Part of Arsenal’s future offices will be turned into a one-time-only exhibition space. Around a reading room in which visitors will have access to our dialogue list archive, artworks and archival projects by Saodat Ismailova, Dana Iskakova, Susanne Sachsse, UMAM Documentation & Research, and Eunice Martins and Andre Bertetzki will be presented.
In the series Found Futures, which will take place at SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, participants will present projects, ideas, knowledge, and questions related to precarious archives and archival discoveries.
For the first time, the newly opened migas, a listening bar, is one of the event spaces. Each day of the festival, two-hour audio recordings will be heard.
Archival Assembly #3 is an event organized by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in collaboration with the master’s program Film Culture at Goethe University Frankfurt, silent green, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, migas – a listening bar, Goethe Institut Uzbekistan, and Goethe im Exil, with funding provided by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. (Stefanie Schulte Strathaus)
To gain access to paid festival events, you can either buy individual tickets at the cinemas or purchase a festival pass. The admission to the exhibition, the Symposium, Found Futures and the Listening Sessions in migas, a listening bar is free.
Funded by:
