Paper short abstract:

The mobility of ethnographic photographs and audio recordings of the collection of H Brüning (1848-1928) between places (the original locations in the Peruvian and museums in Germany) and different interpretative regimes (archival objects and identity arguments) is what animates the present research

Paper long abstract:

Research and ethnographic documentation carried out by the German scholar H. Brüning in the northern coast of Peru centuries gave rise to a photographic and sound collection that is now preserved in the Ethnological Museums of Hamburg and Berlin and in the Phonographic Archive of Berlin. In a previous work I explored the paths of Brüning's photographic collection, from its creation to its digital circulation and appropriation in the framework of regional discourses on Muchik identity in the northern coast of Peru. With the aim of introducing a comparative perspective, this paper intends to explore in a similar way the trajectory of Brüning's sound collection, which is less known, less studied, and less accessible. Consideration will be given to the circumstances of the registers, their value as ethnographic material and the forms of dissemination and circulation that they currently have. I will ask: What are the similarities and differences in the conception, fieldwork and technological resources that organized the project of visual and audio documentation of Brüning?; What were the status of the sonorous and the visual in the anthropological epistemologies of the time and? Which are the policies and technological resources museums have today regarding the dissemination of visual and audio ethnographic materials? What are the photographic and audio documents available, and how are they used to organize narratives of revival and make claims of Muchik identity and cultural authenticity? And, in what way do the material particularities of visual and audio documents play a role in this process?