Paper short abstract:

This multimedia paper examines the centripetal and centrifugal forces reverberating through the corpus of a Zambian radio archive (recordings collected in 1986-1990) and the remixed and relocated "radio program" based on these materials, and installed as a multi-modal ethnographic exhibit.

Paper long abstract:

The body of "the archive" is never fixed or bounded; it is permanently in process with an agency and materiality that pull towards centralized coherence and de-centered diversity simultaneously. This multimedia paper examines the centripetal and centrifugal forces in archive-making and archive-aspiring as they reverberate through the corpus of material collected in Zambia (1986-1990) and the remixed and relocated "radio program" based on these materials, and installed as a multi-modal ethnographic exhibit. The ethnographic installation "Kabusha Radio Remix," repurposes Bemba language recordings from the archived audio recordings from one of Radio Zambia's most popular programs, Kabusha Takolelwe Bowa (a Bemba proverb meaning "The Person Who Inquires First, Is Not Poisoned by a Mushroom"). Through a reengineered 60-minute Kabusha "radio program," a collaborative work that included Zambian stakeholders, that mimics the program's original talk radio format and that activates the archived voice of the late host David Yumba, we argue that experimental ethnographic installations can be used to foreground complex relations between fieldwork, archives, re/dislocation, and aspiration, through non-linear forms of argumentation and engagement.