Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores the complexities and responsibilities that the 'public' entails when anthropologists, as well as performers of cultural repertoires engage in a project of archival restitution in northern Perú, where old and new disputes and inequalities between multiple publics arise.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation explores the complexities and tensions that the 'public' as a category and praxis entails when researchers, as well as performers of cultural repertoires that seek to be recognized by the state as national heritage, engage in an anthropological project of archival restitution by means of collaborative methodologies and digital technologies. Since 2021, the “Shared Soundscapes” project aimed to return an audiovisual ethnographic collection produced in 1990 in the Peruvian Northern Coast -materials that portrayed musical instruments, genres and performers- with communities in Mochumí, a semi-rural town in this region. During this work, the research team developed sessions of elicitation and curatorship, public exhibitions and digital activation of photographs and sound recordings. This presentation first argues that giving access and “making public” should not be considered solely as an outcome but as a methodological instance where archival materials are examined, questioned, remembered or strategically paralleled with local archives. Secondly, we will describe how collaborative methodologies of archival restitution interrogate the positionality, authority and performance of anthropologists when they get involved in public affairs vis-à-vis multiple “publics” in Mochumí, who carry different versions of traditional dances, and therefore might interpret and utilize archival ethnographic materials in divergent ways. We finish this presentation by discussing the responsibility that comes when the return of archival materials activates old and new disputes and inequalities between local publics.