Fleeting Voices. Preserving Acoustic Heritage in the Archives and the Arts
Date: October, 1-3, 2025
Venue: University of Applied Arts Vienna – Expositur Rustenschacherallee, Rustenschacherallee 2–4, A–1020 Vienna
Organizers: Katrin Abromeit & Eva Kapeller-Hallama (SONIME https://sonime.at/, Phonogrammarchiv Wien & Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien), Laura Bohnenblust (Universität Wien)
Registration: https://pretix.eu/fleetingvoices/110/
Fleeting Voices. Preserving Acoustic Heritage in the Archives and the Arts marks the first joint collaboration between the research project SONIME – Sonic Memories. Audio Letters in Times of Migration and Mobility, led by Katrin Abromeit (Phonogrammarchiv Vienna) and Eva Kapeller-Hallama (University of Applied Arts Vienna), and the Chair of Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Vienna (Organization: Laura Bohnenblust).
The experimental conference brings together artistic, scholarly, archival, and conservation perspectives on an equal footing to explore voices as acoustic heritage — their preservation in archives and their significance in the arts. As a transient and fleeting phenomenon, the human voice has increasingly come into focus across disciplines. Especially in a time when authoritarian systems are once again rising to power around the world, the question of how we listen to human voices and engage with their historical dimensions takes on renewed urgency.
Fleeting Voices centers on the voice as a medium and carrier of memory, intimacy, belonging, and identity — particularly within historical and contemporary artistic and archival practices.
Programme
Permanent Installations
Jean-Hugues Chenot & Jean-Etienne Noiré: Bring Your Own Voice Record 2025! INA Saphir station for digitising your private direct cut discs
Rozina Pátkai: Memory Dialogues – interactive sound installation
Natascha Muhic und Christoph Freidhöfer: Cut your own record! Vinylograph Recording Booth
Day 1 – Wednesday, October 1
12:30 Registration and Coffee
13:00 Welcome
Speakers: Clemens Apprich, Noémie Étienne, Kerstin Klenke, Katrin Abromeit, Laura Bohnenblust, Eva Kapeller-Hallama
13:30 MADEYOULOOK: On Reverb and Return: Voice as worldmaking
Chair: Laura Bohnenblust
14:30 Coffee Break
14:45 Panel 1: Politics of Listening
Chair & Discussant: Isabel Frey
Senta Hirscheider: Humble Listening to the Frequencies of Empire
Cristina Sá Valentim: Engaging with sound through alternative modes of listening. A decolonial approach to an Angolan folk song recorded in the 1950s during Portuguese colonial rule
Hippocrates Cheng: A Curated Listening Session — Echoes of Displacement: Revoicing Chinese Diasporic Speech
16:15 Coffee Break
16:30 Panel 2: Present Voices – Absent Histories in Colonial Archives
Chair & Discussant: Noémie Étienne
William Carruthers & Fayrouz Kaddal: Intermittent Presences: Tracing Nubia’s Sounds and Voices
Lina Ounissi: Echoes of Coexistence: Malouf, Memory and the Politics of Voice in Colonial Constantine
17:30 Coffee Break
18:00 Thomas Macho – Fremde Stimmen
Chair: Isabel Kranz
19:00 Bread & Wine
Day 2 – Thursday, October 2
09:00 Coffee & Bread
09:30 Panel 3: Recorded Voices – Preserved Voices
Chair & Discussant: tba
Katrin Abromeit & Johann Hinterstoisser: Material Analysis in the SONIME Project
Carmen Rodriguez Godino: Ernest Berk Sound Archive: Restore, Preserve, Engage
Barbora Benetková: White Bloom – Understanding the Degradation of Brown-Wax Phonograph Cylinders
11:00 Coffee Break
11:15 Conservation Talk: Cellulose Nitrate Lacquers in Direct Cut Discs
Speakers: Friederike Waentig, Elena Gómez-Sánchez, Simon Kunz
12:15 Lunch Break
13:30 Panel 4: Sending Voices
Chair & Discussant: Kristina Pia Hofer
Eva Kapeller-Hallama: Voice Letters in the SONIME Project
Luc Marraffa: Listening to Lieneke’s ‘Aether Letters’: Domesticity and Colonial Silences (listening session)
Ferenc János Szabó: The Idea and Realization of the ‘Voice Message’ in Hungarian Private Recordings
15:00 Coffee Break
15:30 Panel 5: The Voice Between Documentation and Intimacy
Chair & Discussant: Stephan Puille
Lauren Walker: Correspondence Etched in Blue: Audograph Discs of Erle Stanley Gardner
Jean-Baptiste Masson: Tapes as Sonic Log Books: The Case of Paul-Émile Victor During His Polar Expeditions
Heidi Fial: Reflecting the convergence of amateur film and sound recordings
17:00 Coffee Break
17:30 Thomas Levin – Vocamat, Voice Records, Registon: Alexander Lissiansky and the Pre-History of the Voice-O-Graph Automatic Recording Booth
Chair: Eva Kapeller-Hallama
Day 3 – Friday, October 3
09:00 Welcome with Coffee & Bread
09:30 Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir, Claudia Lomoschitz & Crystal Wall – Unearthing Grounds – Digging Deep
10:00 Panel 6: Voices in Artistic Practice
Chair & Discussant: Ricarda Denzer
Julia Lajta-Novak, Claire Palzer, Shefali Banerji & Rachel Bolle-Debessay: Listening to Poetry: Rethinking Sound in Literary Criticism
Laetitia Kozlova: Exhibiting the Sound of the Intimate
11:00 Coffee Break
11:15 Naima Hassan: Notes on a Distributed Person: On Xirsi, and other incantations for Mohamed Nur
12:00 Coffee Break and Snacks
12:30 Round Table Discussion: Fleeting Voices with Gabriele Jutz and Jens Schröter, Chair: tba
14:00 End of Conference
Funding: Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Vienna, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Organising institutions:
Department Media Theory – University of Applied Arts Vienna
Phonogrammarchiv – Austrian Academy of Sciences
Cultural Heritage Studies – University of Vienna (Faculty Center for Transdisciplinary and Cultural Studies)
supported by Support Art and Research – University of Applied Arts Vienna
Scientific Committee:
Nadia Al-Bagdadi, Clemens Apprich, Ricarda Denzer, Noémie Etienne, Elena Gómez Sánchez, Kerstin Klenke, Simon Kunz, Thomas Y. Levin, Thomas Macho, Stephan Puille, Dirk Rupnow, Jens Schröter