Archives

Our work draws on two decades of research across sound collections in archives worldwide. The starting point is always a specific recorded voice. From there, we search other archives and places to reassemble the audio-visual and, in some cases, textual traces of the speaker.

The archival sources for the first four posters are:

Sound collections:

• Phonogrammarchiv Wien: Rudolf Pöch Collection. The recordings were published on CD as Rudolf Pöch’s Kalahari Recordings (1908) (ÖAW Verlag, 2003).
• Lautarchiv Berlin: collection of recordings made with prisoners of war in German camps during the First World War, 1915–18.
• Basler Afrika Bibliographien: Ruth und Ernst Dammann Collection, 1954.

Images:

• Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel: Ruth und Ernst Dammann Photographic Collection (BAB Archives)
• Weltmuseum Wien: photographic collection
• University of Vienna, Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie: photographic collection
• Archive of Harvard Law School: Ettinghausen Collection (photographs taken by internees at Ruhleben Camp, Berlin)

Related publications:

• Anette Hoffmann, Listening to Colonial History: Echoes of Coercive Knowledge Production in Historical Sound Recordings from Southern Africa (Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2023).
• Anette Hoffmann, Knowing by Ear: Listening to Voice Recordings with African Prisoners of War in German Camps (1915–1918) (Duke University Press, 2024).
• Renathe Tjikundi-Meroro and Anette Hoffmann, curated by Dag Henrichsen “The Necklace: Acoustic Pasts, Echoed Futures: Auralgraph from Omaruru, 1954”, Doek!, Issue 13: Dala, 5 August 2024.

Each poster provides details of its archival sources and, where possible, contact details for the relevant archives.