Archiving & Preserving Music
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| Free of charge |
| Doors open: 19:00 |
| English |
| Accessible for wheelchairs |
| Ground Floor, Schlüter Courtyard |
Archiving music through documentation, digitization, research and exchange preserves cultural heritage for future generations. With Ostinato Records and the Syrian Cassette Archive, we will look at this practice from a different angle at “Airing Out”. Examples of archival work outside of Western cultural institutions and away from a European frame of reference will be presented and made tangible. After all, records/cassettes/recordings are also a form of cultural memory and legacy. In the cooperation between producers and musicians, questions of ownership and copyrights also play a decisive role, as these contribute significantly to the preservation of the cultural heritage of the respective region. What needs to be done to reconceptualize the contemporary meaning of cultural heritage will be discussed.
In addition, Mariam Bachich, who works as a project manager for the Syrian Collection at the Ethnological Museum Berlin (SMB), will offer her expertise to provide insight into a participatory online research project entitled Can Heritage Objects Represent a Homeland? that uses similar methods to the Syrian Cassette Archive.
https://syriancassettearchives.org/
https://www.instagram.com/syriancassettearchives/
https://www.instagram.com/msoundtrack/
Moderation
Janto Djassi is a Hamburg based German- Sengelese Producer, engineer and Photographer. He joined up with Vik Sohonie from Ostinato in 2016, accompanying him on the research trip to Djibouti. Soon after being introduced to Groupe RTD, and being blown away, they had a new mission: to record the bands first album ever. Janto & Ostinato believe that by recording, digitizing, and leaving behind the technical equipment that they are able to support the country and artists own stories by leaving the original recordings and rights in the hands of the artists or help the countries modernise their archives by helping them begin digitizing them and preserving for future generations.
Mark Gergis, a London-based Iraqi-American artist, producer, and audio-visual archivist. With a special focus on folk, pop, and hybrid pop-folk genres, highlighting unique artists and traditions from Syria, Iraq, and Southeast Asia since the early 2000s. With his current project, Syrian Cassette Archives, Mark aims to restore, preserve, catalogue and share his collection of Syrian media, from what can be called Syria’s cassette era (1970s-2010) which ended with the onset of the devastating Syrian crisis in 2011. Mark introduced the music of Syrian singer Omar Souleyman and his group to western stages in 2007, and worked closely with legendary Turkish musician Erkin Koray on major reissues of his early work. Mark’s post-production, archival and audio mastering work continues for record labels such as Ostinato Records, Akuphone, Discrepant and 2182 Recordings, among others.
Yamen Mekdad is a sound enthusiast brought up in Damascus and based in London where he works as music researcher, collector, DJ and radio host. His interests in field recording, archiving, radio and grassroots organising have led him to found Sawt of the Earth and Makkam, two London-based collectives. He is a frequent contributor to a number of radio stations, including Root Radio and Balamii Radio, and was a producer of DanDana podcasts on SOAS Radio. Yamen is currently co-producer/curator of the Syrian Cassette Archives, a web based platform that preserves the Syrian cassette era as well as curating and producing SACF’s (Syrian Arts and Culture Festival) music programme.
Mariam Bachich has a BA in Civil Engineering which she completed in Syria and an M.A. in World Heritage Studies which she completed in Cottbus- Germany.
She has worked for more than twelve years in the Directorate of Antiquities and Municipal Museums in Syria. The main place is Homs, but she has worked everywhere Syria in different projects as well. Since 2013, she lives in Berlin and has worked in different projects such as Syrian Heritage Archive, and Multaka with Islamic Art Museum. She has also led some projects in Syria – mainly with women and children. Since the end of 2017, she has been working the participatory Syria research project (Can Heritage Objects Represent a Home?) in Ethnological Museum-Berlin. She was the curator of the exhibition of the project (From… To… Zarkashat Turathis – Connected through Collections) in the same museum in 2021. Now she is continuing the research project with new Syria artists group, and preparing a catalogue of the exhibition as well as putting the exhibition online.
