Contribution short abstract:

This presentation examines if audio production techniques, like montage, sonic modulations, and reverberations, can both initiate and evoke the process of anthropological knowledge production. We will discuss the case of collaborative radio-plays and experiment in practice.

Contribution long abstract:

This presentation examines how audio production techniques can both initiate and evoke the process of ethnographic knowledge production that occurs between researchers and their collaborators. In this understanding, all technological elements, including embodied techniques, are not merely functional tools but socially distingued mediations. On one hand, they represent diverse hearing, body, voice techniques, and cultured tools and their use during the fieldwork enables "experimenting with the other's audiovisual systems" (paraphrasing Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier). On the other hand, technologies as programmed and designed actors are encoded within Western-centric logic that reflects the historical relationships between center and periphery (Greene, Porcello).

To illustrate this, I will present an analysis of radio plays recorded and edited during fieldwork in northern Malawi in collaboration with local performance artists and sound engineers from small recording studios (Wave Diamond Records, Black Kings Records, Crunch Vibez).

Through the presentation of edited fragments from coulisse perspective - that is, from within the digital audio workstation - I will retrace situational ethnographic-artistic practices that resulted in audio recordings. Specifically, I will focus on production choices made in cooperation with local producers, including utilized sonic effects, editing choices, and overdubs.

Subsequently, we will discuss how this modus can become part of the ethnographic encounter. We will discuss the affect of the montage techniques (Suhr, Willerslev), sonic modulations (Meintjes), and reverberation (Kuhn, Wees). Finally, we will collaboratively experiment by mixing varied sound sources - recorded voices and soundscapes with samples from databases - and examine how these effects influence the potential for evoking anthropological knowledge.