Palestinian Sound Archive: My beautiful side of the archive
Sound & Culture Summit
Palestinian Sound Archive founder Mo'min Swaitat presents My beautiful side of the archive: a program to introduce the archive with a short documentary, talk and DJ set.
This program explores archival practice as a decolonial methodology and act of resistance, through sharing archival sounds and images that preserve and document Palestinian heritage, culture, celebration, dance and resistance.
The Palestinian Sound Archive is determined to preserve Palestinian audio history through different mediums: by re-releasing music/sound recordings (in physical and digital formats), through club nights and radio sets, through audio-visual installations, live performances and storytelling sessions which situate the music in their cultural, social and political contexts. Working with the archive made clear that it is not only the sounds that need to be safeguarded, but the extraordinary histories and experiences of the musicians who made them, which form part of the broader Palestinian story. The archive has (so far) uncovered hundreds of stories of Palestinian artists, and the wider music industry, including tales of how they made and distributed their work in the face of displacement, censorship, exile, persecution, arrests, the First and Second Intifadas and other major events.
Photography by Noah Schielen
The Sound & Culture Summit is supported by TIMES (The Independent Movement for Electronic Scenes) and co-financed by the EU.
