Podcast: On Mark Gergis' (Sublime Frequencies) collection

MEMORABILIA. COLLECTING SOUNDS WITH... Mark Gergis. Part I

Produced by Matias Rossi

Link: http://bit.ly/qadsaK

MEMORABILIA. COLLECTING SOUNDS WITH… seeks to break through to unearth and reveal private collections of music and sound memorabilia. It is a historiography of sound collecting that reveals the unseen and passionate work of the amateur collector while reconstructing multiple parallel histories such as the evolution of recording formats, archiving issues, the collecting market and the evolution of musical styles beyond the marketplace.

Over the past twenty years, this North American of Iraqi origins has immersed himself in popular and folk music scenes and subgenres from Syria, Iraq, Sumatra, Cambodia, Thailand and other places, in order to rescue what he calls 'sound anomalies' from oblivion: records, songs, artists and productions that stand out for their singularity in relation to the mass. Gergis does not approach collecting as an indiscriminate accumulation or an attempt to reconstruct the musical history of a particular country or region down to the last detail with an academic’s rigour. His interest lies in the originality and extravagance of musical products gestated on the margins of the mainstream, or in everything that seems to posses these qualities from an outsider’s perspective. Because in his untiring process of research and discovery, Gergis is fully aware that his work lies in a grey area in which the model archivist’s neutrality and objectivity are replaced by aesthetic criteria/prejudices. An unusual process of filtering and assimilation that celebrates the clash of civilisations, even beyond idiomatic, chronological, cultural and sociogeographic barriers.

Related info: http://rwm.macba.cat..._Gergis_eng.pdf

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