Sound Objects of Migrations

Sound Objects of Migrations is an online sound archive, curated by Massimo Ricciardo and Luca Morino, accompanying Ricciardo’s book Encounters in an Archive: Objects of Migration, Photo-Objects of Art History (ed. by Costanza Caraffa and Almut Goldhahn, Viaindustriae publishing, 2023).

Global migration is one of the most pressing matters facing contemporaneity, but also a leitmotif in the work of Massimo Ricciardo. In his most recent project, the artist creates a dialogue between photographic objects from the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and objects of migration: things that are functional to the journey, but also to identity and memory, such as passports and nautical charts, family photographs, diaries, a sample of earth from the homeland. This encounter generates topical questions: Who do these “speaking” objects belong to? Are they part of our cultural heritage? What are the appropriate artistic and curatorial practices when one decides to collect, archive, exhibit, transform them? In the space of the Photothek, the objects of migration, despite their intrinsic fragility, develop by contrast a monumental force: material testimony to the experience of migration, but also a critique of the power of the archive. The dialogues that began around Ricciardo’s installation in Florence found their way into a book project and involve a polyphony of different voices. The website is divided into two sections: “Stories” and “Objects”. The Stories section collects the testimonies of encounters, events, soundscapes and travels archived during the project. The Objects section presents excerpts from the recordings produced for the limited-edition audio-cassette “Similitude”, which accompanies the book: descriptions of the objects and photographs featured in the installation Encounters in an Archive through the systematic reading of the database entries of the Photothek and from the “Objects of Escape—Inventories of Migration” archival notes. Sound Objects of Migrations is thus an archive of voices, sound and verbal documentation, and an open and ongoing virtual space.

The book—published in January 2023—is an open work that, by responding to its title, aims to always generate new encounters between people, contexts and objects. These exchanges shape the book and continue after its publication. A focal point was the encounter with the mediators of the Amir project in Florence, which has been offering museum visits and urban walks led by people with a migration background since 2018. Amir’s mediators, and especially Luda Berhe, Edson Manuel, Pinto Manuel Francisco and Ibrahima Saidy, made an essential contribution to understanding the objects.

Book presentations and discussions to date: Palermo (Goethe-Institut, March 24, 2023) with artists and mediators Lina Issa, Bandiougou Diawara and Ibrahima Deme together with teachers and students of the Accademia di Belle Arti; Florence (April 14, 2023), installation at the Kunsthistorisches Institut commented by the mediators of the Amir project, accompanied by a sound performance by artist and activist Leila Bencharnia as well as a discussion at Villa Romana; Düsseldorf (Heinrich-Heine-Universität, April 25, 2023), round table organized by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Professor for Transcultural Studies, around the disputed notion of object; Cologne (May 20, 2023 in the framework of the Photoszene Festival), new adapted installation with photographic objects from the Rheinisches Bildarchiv; Antwerp (May 25, 2023), event at the Red Star Line Museum.

The book and the event series are sponsored by the Italian Ministero della Cultura within the framework of the Italian Council X—2021 programme.