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WAYWARD VOICES IN INTERWAR MODERN ART:
GRAMMATOLOGY VERSUS GEO-PHILOSOPHIES

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Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
Lecture performance



TheMuseumsLab
September 9, 2024



Sound Panel
Curated by Naima Hassan

Listening Act II.Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
Wayward Voices in Interwar Modern Art:
Grammatology versus Geo-Philosophies

MohamedAli Ltaief’s lecture performance negotiates and re-contextualizes the genealogy of early music records in Tunisia / North Africa and in the diaspora. It situates transnational identities and engages with fragmented biographies of interwar artists, music producers, and dancers who performed in the first decade of the twentieth century. Ltaief expands the connections with the Arab and African Diaspora, specically focusing on singular histories such as the “Baidaphon" music label (founded in Berlin-Mitte 1912); the Tunisian artists they recorded, the involvement of performing and sound artists in the anti-colonial and anti-fascist era in North Africa and in exile. Ltaief’s lecture intertwines with scattered counter-archives that can be read in sound catalogues such as the independent music labels: "Oum-El-Hassen" Tunis 30s, "Rssaissi" Tunis 30s, "Fiesta" Paris 40s, "Maksoud" NYC 10—30s, and "Wardatone" Detroit, USA 50s.

SOUND PANEL
10:30 Opening introduction
Presentations by Anette Homann, Mohamed-Ali Ltaief and Elsa M’bala
13:30 one hour discussion and Q&A moderated by Nnenna Onuoha

TheMuseumsLab Module 2
SOUND PROGRAMME

Sound programme On Sonic Restitutions and the Public Affects of Phonographic Archives is organised for The_Museums_Lab on Monday 9th, September 2024. Drawing from Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening (2020) the programme hosts three listening acts, a panel moderated by Nnenna Onuoha, and evening performance by Elsa M’bala at the Museum für Naturkunde. Organised as a sonic gathering—the panel at Spielfeld Hall addresses the under-examined status of sound in restitution discourse. Recognising the neglected status of sound archives, panellists Anette Homann, Mohamed-Ali Ltaief and Elsa M’bala introduce their critical engagements with colonial sound and early music recordings through research and performative offerings.

The panel begins with an offering by Annette Homann, on the Wolof acoustic traces left by Abdoulaye Niang—recorded during the Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission (1915-1918). The significant German sound collection was established under the supervision of German musicologist Carl Stumpf with a mission to compile a collection of global language recordings that would constitute ‘a new kind of ethnology'.2 This 'Weltarchiv' formed by a group of philologists, linguists, musicologists, and anthropologists recorded the voices of colonial subjects held in internment camps across Germany, resulting in the production of 1,650 shellac records. Contained within these recordings, are echoes of African prisoners held in these camps, their refusals, mued laughers and quiet refrains. Held today at the Humboldt Forum’s Lautarchiv, these shellac records constitute an archival register of African, Asian and European languages recorded under the auspices of German imperial knowledge production.

MohamedAli Ltaief’s lecture performance contends with, and recontextualizes the genealogy of early music records in Tunisia/North Africa and in the diaspora, departing with recordings from the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv. Closing the panel, Elsa M'bala will oer a gesture towards sonic resocialization featuring the oldest recordings made in Cameroon. The programme will conclude with an evening fellow exchange and sound performance hosted by Elsa at TheMuseumsLab’s 2024 Public Event. Here, she presents Time to listen, a listening session of selected postcolonial African music cassettes from the Ass Niang Collection.