”I must carry you”: Artistic Intervention in Sound Archives

This essay traces the object on which sounds are recorded, the “sound carrier”, and its various manifestations in artistic practice, intervening in sound archives. The ability of an object to carry sound throughout space and time – a fantasy that became a reality with the invention of the phonograph at the end of the nineteenth century created technological conditions of possibility that gave rise to sound archives and a new practice in the world: the recording of music, voices, silences, and more. The accumulation of sound materials in sound archives during the twentieth century gave rise to a variety of artistic practices revolving around the idea of ​​the archive, from archiving as an artistic act to intervening in and reactivating archival materials as material for artistic production. At the same time, the sound archive, alongside technology, frequently intervenes in the recordings stored in it and the sound carriers that carry them, leaving the mark of time. Thus, the object carries the sound within itself, that is, the “stored time,” a sound or silence from the past, but also the history of its use and storage, which affects the sounds and silences recorded. The essay moves through the appearances of various sound carriers in the archive and the artistic practice that intervenes in it. Beginning with ethnographic recordings from the early twentieth century, through sound works from the mid-twentieth century, and ending with contemporary sound works and documentary films recently released in Israel, it demonstrates how these sound carriers appear in contemporary works of art that seek to reanimate the memory they hold. This includes the qualities of sound, the noises of technology and voices from the past, but also the real that is carried within them.