[spectre] From the vault: The Women’s Audio Archive

Radio Web MACBA rwm2008 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 14 19:29:04 CET 2021


*Marysia Lewandowska talks about the Women’s Audio Archive, about the
crucial need to generate counter-narratives in totalitarian regimes, about
networking before networks, about the boundaries between the private and
the public, the negotiations generated by the shift from one sphere to
another, the responsibilities of the archive, and the potential to generate
conversation through art.*

Link: http://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/-marysia-lewandowska/capsula

The Women's Audio Archive <http://www.marysialewandowska.com/waa/> is a
collection of recordings of private conversations, seminars, talks,
conferences, and public events that Polish-born, London based artist
Marysia Lewandowska carefully compiled from 1985 to 1990. Over 200 hours of
audio that began as a fictitious archive that provided an interface and a
cover for approaching key female figures in the arts and talking to them at
length. The ideas and concerns of the second wave of feminism run through
these mostly informal recordings, underpinned by Marysia’s intuition and
her desire “to write that history with them, and to find myself in the
present.”

In 2009, Lewandowska was invited by Maria Lind, Director of the Centre for
Curatorial Studies (Bard College, NY) at the time, to digitize the material
and work with the collection in an effort of making it available online and
decided to turn this private collection into an online public archive under
a Creative Commons license. The process includes documenting the
negotiations involved in bringing about this change of status, twenty years
later.

SON(I)A talks to Marysia Lewandowska about the Women’s Audio Archive, about
the crucial need to generate counter-narratives in totalitarian regimes,
about networking before networks, about the boundaries between the private
and the public, the negotiations generated by the shift from one sphere to
another, the responsibilities of the archive, and the potential to generate
conversation through art.

This podcast includes fragments from the Women’s Audio Archive and the
voices of (in order of appearance): Marysia Lewandowska, Nourbese Philip,
Nan Goldin, Nancy Spero, Allan Kaprow, Jo Spence, Lynne Tillman, Donald
Judd, Maureen O. Paley, Susan Hiller, Lynne Tillman, Judy Chicago. The
complete recordings are available at Women's Audio Archive
<http://www.marysialewandowska.com/waa/>.

*Timeline*
*03:10* Marysia Lewandowska: A good moment to reflect on the Women's Audio
Archive.
*03:26* M. Nourbese Philip: the loss of the original tongue, in search of a
missing text.
*07:37* Marysia Lewandowska: Setting up a mode of working to be in control
and to understand the culture around.
*09:10* Nan Goldin and Marysia Lewandowska: The desire for conversation.
*12:30* Marysia Lewandowska: From public recordings to private conversations
*14:10* Judy Chicago: The way women communicate.
*15:07* Marysia Lewandowska: A conversation can't be scripted.
*16:00* Allan Kaprow: Post-68.
*18:35* Marysia Lewandowska: Thinking of self-archiving, keeping a record
of what happens.
*21:36* Jo Spence: A split subjectivity.
*25:10* Marysia Lewandowska: Developing a voice.
*29:15* Lynne Tillman: Chit-chatting about the menu.
*29:45* Marysia Lewandowska: The previous experience in Poland, clubs,
discussions, amateur films and other strategies to survive.
*36:01* Marysia Lewandowska: Making it public and the question of access.
*38:08* Donald Judd: The challenge of making things permanent
*40:09* Marysia Lewandowska: A new structure for an archive and the
negotiation process
*51:19* Maureen O. Paley: Women have led, women have fought
*52:40* Marysia Lewandowska: Important conversations.
*53:40* Susan Hiller and Marysia Lewandowska: Saying the one thing you want
to say.
*56:40* Marysia Lewandowska: The need for the archive to be intact.
*58:52* Susan Hiller: I believe in reciprocity.
*01:01:24* Marysia Lewandowska: Self-instituting by giving it a name.
*01:02:35* Judy Chicago: Being lady-like.
*01:03:13* Marysia Lewandowska: Many of the women were feminists.
*01:04:53* Nancy Spero: My vulnerability through the language of Artaud.
*01:08:49* Marysia Lewandowska: A network before email, before digitization
and before the internet.
*01:11:25* Judy Chicago: Discrimination.
*01:12:44* Marysia Lewandowska: Bad recordings.
*01:13:13* Judy Chicago
*01:14:35* Marysia Lewandowska: How the Museum gets distributed, artworks
starting a conversation.
*01:16:57* An unsuspected archival finding to end this conversation.

*Enjoy!*
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