The Record as Artwork

Once sound could be recorded, it could be collected. The Record as Artwork probes the history of sound recording in Africa and its legacies in shaping sonic cultural heritage.

This mix, compiled by invited guest Bhavisha Panchia, embraces the sound archive – a repository of visual and acoustic signals – as a living, mutable entity that is activated and transformed through acts of (re)listening. In an assemblage of audio fragments, liner notes and reflections on albums and tracks, The Record as Artwork is a gathering of sonic retorts from artists, musicians, writers, record labels and collectors.

The mix’s title is a reference to the Germano Celant exhibition of the same name that took place in 1973 at the Royal College of Art, London.

Collecting as Practice

This broadcast is the first of a four-part mini-series within Delfina Foundation’s ongoing monthly radio show on Radio Alhara. This series of broadcasts, featuring invited guests and our own residents, will form part of our autumn 2021 Collecting as Practice season.

Biography

Bhavisha Panchia is a curator and researcher of visual and audio culture, currently based in Johannesburg. Her work engages with artistic and cultural practices under shifting global conditions, focusing on anti/postcolonial discourses, imperial histories, and networks of production and circulation of (digital) media. She is the founder of Nothing to Commit Records, a label and publishing platform committed to expanding knowledge related to the intersection of contemporary art, literature, and music within and across the global South.