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Performing Sonic Archives: Listening to Berea, Sun Ra, and the Little Cities of Black Diamonds

Harnetty, Brian P.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1417170787

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts).
This is a project of performing three sonic archives: the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives in Kentucky, the Sun Ra/El Saturn Collection of the Creative Audio Archives in Chicago, and the Little Cities Archive in southeastern Ohio. Here, I define “performing the archive” (Calzadilla and Marcus 2006; Osthoff 2009; RC Smith 2003) as any interpretive act related to the archive, including (but not limited to) listening, musical and visual appropriation, historiography, and ethnographic fieldwork and analysis. I offer “sonic archives” as a distinct genre that requires new archival approaches––rooted in listening and sound––that do not exclude traditional archives but add to and complement them. As such, listening is my primary method used throughout the dissertation. It is both performative and dialogical, and a direct way to sonically engage with people, place, and archival materials. My interest lies in listening to the archive’s sonic components “across the grain” (Zeitlyn 2012; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991), grounding them in senses of place, and hearing the diversity of the voices they contain. I focus on the smaller stories––flawed, open-ended, fragmented, interstitial––that coalesce to form the body of an archive listened to and performed “from below” (Sekula 1986). Listening is employed in two different methodological contexts, “sonic ethnography” and “archival performance.” Sonic ethnography involves a deep engagement with both the archival materials and the people and places they are connected to. Archival performance allows for an embodied re-imagining and re-contextualization of the archive. Together, these methodologies form the basis of this dissertation’s assertion to not only listen to archives “from below” but also to allow the interpretive act of remixing to be informed by this perspective. Thus, “performing the sonic archive” brings together the analytical and creative work of scholars and artists––including myself––that seek to use, reinterpret, and re-contextualize the archive sonically, thereby highlighting an embodied agency of the archive’s materials through their interaction.
Marina Peterson (Committee Chair)
255 p.
Ecology; Energy; Fine Arts; Music
Sonic Archives; Berea Appalachian Sound Archives; Sun Ra; Little Cities of Black Diamonds; sound studies; archival performance; sonic ethnography; aural history; ecomusicology

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Harnetty, B. P. (2014). Performing Sonic Archives: Listening to Berea, Sun Ra, and the Little Cities of Black Diamonds [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1417170787

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Harnetty, Brian. Performing Sonic Archives: Listening to Berea, Sun Ra, and the Little Cities of Black Diamonds. 2014. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1417170787.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Harnetty, Brian. "Performing Sonic Archives: Listening to Berea, Sun Ra, and the Little Cities of Black Diamonds." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1417170787

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1417170787
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This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.