FIMS Publications
Hearing Conflicts in Museums
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
Hearing Conflicts in Museums employs research-creation to reflect on site visits to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and to grapple with questions about listening in museums, as well as how to understand conflict and polyvocality. In this audio project you hear three researchers: Friederike Landau-Donnelly, Kirsty Robertson, and Sarah E.K. Smith. You also hear an auto generated voice that provides an institutional perspective, reading texts that draw from the museum’s website and policy documents, as well as scholarly articles. Through these multiple voices we aim to foreground our different perspectives, particularly, in light of our focus on multivocality. The project primarily draws on site recordings that reflect the acoustic space of the institution. These are from our research visits to the museum in October 2023 and additional recordings from 2024. We also include open source music from the Free Music Archive and clips from Free Sound. We hope the resulting piece provides one type of listening journey that can be accessible to off-site visitors.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Citation of this paper:
Landau-Donnelly, F., Robertson, K. & Smith, S.E.K. (2024). Hearing Conflicts in Museums (30:11), audio-project.
Notes
This project presents research by a cross-disciplinary international team: Friederike Landau-Donnelly, Kirsty Robertson, and Sarah E.K. Smith, working with media arts specialists Braden Labonté and Angela Shackel. Landau-Donnelly is co-director of the Transcontinental Partnerships program at the Federal Cultural Foundation in Germany; Robertson is Professor and Director of Museum and Curatorial Studies at Western University in Canada; and Smith is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Art, Culture & Global Relations, also at Western. In this project, Landau-Donnelly’s research on political and democratic theories of conflict and agonism blends with Smith’s expertise on exhibitions, museums, and cultural diplomacy, while Robertson brings extensive knowledge of museums, curatorial activism, and cultural sustainability. Accounts & Records is Angela Shackel and Braden Labonté. Together they produce audio plays, walks, sound installations, and podcasts that engage with ideas of parafiction, public memory and archival material. For their research assistance, we thank: Vera Ianieva, Hillary Anderson, Giada Ferrucci, and Julia Schnurawa.
We also acknowledge, with gratitude, funding from the Radboud-Western Collaboration Fund and the Canada Research Chairs program.
SOURCES
Free Music Archive
There's Only One by Kirk Osamayo from Free Music Archive and license type (CC BY 4.0)
Another Autumn in Despair by techtheist from Free Music Archive and license type (CC BY 4.0)
Free Sound
BUSY RESTAURANT LUNCH NYC.wav by chripei -- https://freesound.org/s/165488/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Guibernau Prometheus Signal by guibernau -- https://freesound.org/s/685384/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
An Inspiring Flight Over Canada's Green Forests And Mountain Ranges (Demo Version) by UNIVERSFIELD -- https://freesound.org/s/696296/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Radio_Cairo_voice_noises_02.wav by AlienXXX -- https://freesound.org/s/253409/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
wierd sound.wav by jackwheatley -- https://freesound.org/s/30658/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Radio dial in Italian.wav by kommunic8 -- https://freesound.org/s/387332/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Radio Garble & Static by yfjesse -- https://freesound.org/s/424153/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Wooden banging noise on water - good ship or docks sound by OBXJohn -- https://freesound.org/s/636201/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Bill and Sandy.m4a by _dmm -- https://freesound.org/s/685392/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
R05_0110.wav by WaveAdventurer -- https://freesound.org/s/329810/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
mainview.wav by Lindsayanng -- https://freesound.org/s/71566/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Who - reverb.mp3 by Roses1401 -- https://freesound.org/s/436562/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
The Freesound Blog: Community update December 2018 by stomachache -- https://freesound.org/s/454988/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0
Ambience speaking by theresabrits -- https://freesound.org/s/488427/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
restaurant2.wav by andriala -- https://freesound.org/s/18349/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0
Thankful to friend Gina.mp3 by Roses1401 -- https://freesound.org/s/439743/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
voice_overs_by_braille'n_speak.wav by ondrosik -- https://freesound.org/s/172088/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Crowd Murmuring by DigestContent -- https://freesound.org/s/444900/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
white noise build [93bpm] [1 bar] by deadrobotmusic -- https://freesound.org/s/669958/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
WHITE_NOISE-10s.wav by newagesoup -- https://freesound.org/s/349315/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Additional Readings
The following list of readings represents some of the texts that we engaged with in creating this project.
Alba, A. (2023). Australian Holocaust Museums: From Particular to Universal. Journal of Museum Education, 49(1), 13-25.
Busby, K., Muller, A., and Woolford, A. (2015). The Idea of a Human Rights Museum. University of Manitoba Press.
Canadian Museum for Human Rights. https://humanrights.ca/.
Cento Bull, A., & Reynolds, C. (2021). Uses of Oral History in Museums: A Tool for Agonism and Dissonance or Promoting a Linear Narrative?. Museum and Society, 19(3), 283-300.
Perry, A. (2016). Aqueduct: Colonialism, Resources, and the Histories We Remember. ARP Books.
Robertson, K. (2019). Tear Gas Epiphanies: Protest, Culture, Museums. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Robinson, D. (2020). Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. University of Minnesota Press.
Zavadski, A., & Hilden, I. (2023). The Museum as a Choir: Visitor Reactions to the Multivocality at the Humboldt Forum’s Berlin Global Exhibition. Museum and Society 23(3), 57-77. DOI:https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v21i3.4080