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genna gardini – the archivist
The past clicks us into focus. There’s a slid-hinge to the edit. In this photo, your father frames you like a fish he wants to remember— slipped and tin, temporarily pliable, propped on his knee. Let’s...
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rosalia chalia – i dreamt that i dwelt in marble halls (1901)
This is Rosalia Chalia (1863-1948) singing “I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls” from the opera The Bohemian Girl, composed by MW Balfe in 1843, recorded on wax cylinder in 1901… … And here’s the...
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on buried treasure (5 june 2012)
To research (English definition): “To search for something.” Rechercher (French definition): “To search for, to look for” and also “to search again, to look for again”. Both “search” and “research” are...
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well, that escalated quickly.
This is what Facebook is really for. Here is a funny conversation that evolved into a collaborative portrait in layers on my wall over a few hours today, a particularly suffocating Monday. I’m keeping...
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electric jive huntley archive goes live!
Psych “Big T” Ntsele on the cover of “Keeping Time”, the recently published book of Ian Bruce Huntley’s photographs that this archive of recordings accompanies. SO VERY EXCITED TO BE ABLE TO SHARE THIS...
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“if i get killed, please don’t bury my soul”
The New York Times recently published an evocative long-form article penned by John Jeremiah Sullivan about the enigmatic Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, woman blues musicians who haunt the archive...
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lumumba’s ghosts: immaterial matters and matters immaterial…
The Archive & Public Culture Research Initiative (where I work) has invited Esther Peeren, author of The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility (Palgrave, 2014), for a week...
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the weaker sex (1933)
Miss May Whitley kicks ass with panache and palpable glee in this British Pathé clip from 1933, entitled The Weaker Sex! (Sayest Thou!) Who said “weaker sex?” The intertitle reads: ‘Slow motion...
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mary reid kelley – you make me iliad
Filmed in 2011 at Mary Reid Kelley’s home and studio in Saratoga Springs, New York, the video artist and painter discusses her video work “You Make Me Iliad” (2010). In researching the lives and...
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izithunguthu
The Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative, where I work, is hosting an interesting conference next month: IZITHUNGUTHU: Southern African Pasts Before the Colonial Era, their Archives and...
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susan buck-morss on work in the age of mechanical reproduction
Angelus Novus (Klee)/Walter Benjamin Susan Buck-Morss, writing in 2001 on Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history, marked by the critique of progress in the name of a revolutionary time which...
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creating a black archive – today at uct
Lefifi Tladi in conversation this afternoon at UCT.Filed under: history, memory, poetry, politics, race, writing Tagged: archive, Lefifi Tladi
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doppelgänger
This is a post from a few years ago. Julia Clark reminded me of it today. A still from here, at 0:27: it is so startling to see yourself somewhere you are not so slippy in my sleep i am this dancing...
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adrienne rich – diving into the wreck
First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having...
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jacques derrida &“the science of ghosts” (1983)
Jacques Derrida appearing as himself in Ken McMullen’s Ghost Dance, interviewed by Pascale Ogier in 1983. He’s talking about #PokémonGo from 3:40 ;).Filed under: film, memory, philosophy, uncanny...
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keeping time at uct, 2 august 2016
This coming Tuesday, find out more about the extraordinary archive of photographs and live recordings made by Ian Bruce Huntley in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 2013 I was involved in putting this...
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if we burn there is ash (7 september 2016)
The Wits Anthropology Department is pleased to reopen its Museum collection with If we burn there is ash An exhibition by Talya Lubinsky with contributing artists Meghan Judge, Tshegofatso Mabaso and...
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saturday, 1 september 1984
Pick an old photograph of you. Go back and look what was happening in the world around the time it was taken. Me, Heather, my dad Ray, and Paul. Waterfall, Natal. First day of spring, 1984. 1 September...
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louis moholo’s 4blokes, live at straight no chaser, cape town (15 january 2016)
It’s weird how the recording industry warps experience. We can sometimes forget that every recording is only one iteration that was captured and set in stone as “The” Definitive Performance, when...
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the hauntology of liz mitchell (a long way from home)
This video is one of the things I treasure most on Youtube – it gives me chills every time. It’s a recording of Liz Mitchell of Boney M performing “Motherless Child” live with the Les Humphries...
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