HYENAZ

Accountability Practices in Sound Design and Field Recording

*a very useful phrase coined by Sadie Lune

• Introduce yourself, your project, your idea, your goals
• Talk openly about the hierarchies which may be already present
• Map the context of the recording (people, place, time, sociopolitical context)
• Make works which are context specific, and don’t arbitrarily mix contexts
• Name contributors and spell their names correctly
• Don’t record undercover
• You have asked others to share–be likewise ready to share back
• Send collaborators their media
• Respect requests about how media is used
• Speak openly about funding and payment
• Develop processes of accountability to collaborators after the initial recording time is over
• Continue to notify collaborators about the journey and life of a project; how and where it is shown
• Make clear distinctions and have open conversations about whether a person is a collaborator, contributor, or employee.
• Come to a consensus about how a person would like to be attributed
• Offer payment or trade for the giving of content (i.e. sound or image)
• Consider other forms of repayment, collaboration, long term support
• Develop a clear and consistent strategy and system for remembering and documenting
• Be mindful of the tools used in the process of the project and the makers of those tools
• Attribute the people who contributed to the tools that you utilize in your work
• Research the sources of the tools that are used
• Research the sources of the props and other materials used in a collaboration
• Have conversations about what a collaboration consists of and what are the expectations
• Keep up with relationships over time: accountability and interconnectivity
• practice “Radical collaborative” and “correlational narratives” (Katherine Mc Kittrick ed.) Sylvia Winter: On Being Human as Praxis
• Release open source works
• Treat collaboration as skill sharing, so that others go away enriched with certain skills
• Treat each person, object and place as “irreplaceable”
• Don’t mix contexts
• Digital media has multiplied possibilities of sound manipulation to the nth degree. Lets say we are creating an audio visual work
• Treate everyone with whom you interact the way youd want to be treated by a stranger.
• Sure—maybe a friend comes into your house and takes a few snapshots and you dont worry about it too much. Its casual and you think youl be in touch forever. This may or may not be true – and is worth actually considering. But that aside, consider a stranger comes into your home and takes puctures of you, takes a reocridng of you talking. Lets say yo uare out front of your house playing with your kids and a stranger asks to take photos and video of you to find out about how you live. What would you like from them? What would you like to know about where that work travels?
• Its easy enough to think — oh I do this all the time – I put photos of myself in the internet and willingly share them as “digital artworks” on a daily basis. But someoone is making a profit on thoes photographs—its just htat hteh somone is not you.
• Imagine an artist comes in, takes images ofyou, makes art out of you, and gains money for their work. Or maybe they dont make money for their work, but rather something much more illusive—fame, cultural capital.
• Its fundamentally flawed idea that some people aught to be the objevt of study while others are not. Often the object of study are those “underrepresented voices” +
• consider whether or not you would allow someone to ,make an object out of you.Woudl you potentially be okay with this ? What would make you okay? If you wouldnt be okay– why not? Why are why arent these things important when approaching others and what fundamnetal assumptions might lie behind those decisions?
• Name contributors
• This may seem obvious and easier than it actually is. In the course of a work day of recording and working in community, its remarkably easy to miss someone from whom you’ve taken a recording, especially when they might play a minor role in your interaction or you havent had much time to talk to someone. Have a system in place ahead of time so that when you’re working with people and things are moving rapidly, you dont take notes on a bunch of tiny pieces of paper that are easily lost, or place names in five different platforms inside of your phone that you later struggle to piece together. Taking two minutes now will save hours later.
• The system should look something like this:
• Date and approximate time – Full name with correct spelling (dont guess!) – place – email – social media – notes (key words to help you remember who this specific person was. No digital contact? Take a phone number and house number.
• Create a simple spreadsheet or note taking app located on your phone so that you can write each persons full name—be sure to get the spelling right and spend the time to get it in the first place. Get email contacts at the same time as their full name. You never know if later a persons voice might become central to a work of art, but if you cant contact them, or dont know their name, it will be impossible to tell them about it later and this will live on as a disembodied aspect of the work. Moreover, you wont be able to get real permission for the work.
• Once working with some people in Italy I had merely jotted down the name “guisseppe” on one sheet of paper in a notebook. I had the dedicated notebook, but inside the notebook I didnt have a clear system for taking contacts. It took me ages to locate him again by sleuthing through friends offriends on facebook. It doesnt have to be that hard.
• Be Clear about what youre doing
• Before you turn on your camera or your sound recorder, have a clear description of your project ready. Dont wait to be introduced. Youre the one doing the recoridng, in a sense, youve arrived armed (some people even feel attacked by the sight of camera and microphones, as some even look like weapons). Introduce yourself and explain your project. Who are you and what are you doing? It is okay to record? Even if youre not recording voices of people—maybe just taking in atmospheres, address your project to others ahead of being asked. State what you are doing and why. Speak about the possibilities of how recordings might be used.
• dont record undercover (big headphones and exposed recorder when recording general atmoshpehere)
• Some research and journalism has to be done undercover in order to expose structures of violence. Thats not what we are addressing here. Here we are addressing collaborative and accountable field recording that resists extractivism. Be visible. Have your equipment out—whether thats big headphones or microphones, dont be undercover or half undercover. Let people know when ouy are beginning to record.
• send people their photos and their recordings, let them use material. Dont Own it or possess it
• respect consent
• If youve recorded someones class-send the teacher the recording so that he or she can pass it to their students and encourage them to do so. If youve made an interview with someone—send them the material right away. Even if you never use the interview, never publish it, and never use even a section of it, give them the chance to hear themselves in interview. It will help to establish you already as a collaborator rather than someone who comes in and leaves.
• Dont make assumptions about what a person desires or needs in return from you. Racist and classist attiftudes can easily enter dynamics, where the person taking the recording makes assumptions about what the person needs or desires. Perhaps you believe that someone doesnt need a copy of their interview or wouldnt want it. Perhaps the person is elderly and you belive that they will enver download their interview. It doesnt matter. Treat everyone with the same respect, regardless of who they are. Chances are, they will figure out a way to access the materials you have given them—if not right away, at some point. Either way, youve fulfilled your end of the bargain. People also change in terms of what their needs are, and dont always undersand in the moment what they might desire down the road. Do your best to remain open to the acceessing of the matieral.
• Who pays us? Whether it is a job—payment for art or funding—also payment for art, from where do our funds come? What are our limits and boundaries? Does it have to do with a performative limit (ie, I dont want my face shown but Ill accept the money) or does it have to do with a strict ethical boundary?
• How do we form and keep relationship with people in our projects and attribute them?
• What is the difference between a collaborator and an employee of an artistic project? How are they attributed differently? How can they be lifted up ?
• Payment – Cash
• If you are making an interview with someone that is set, scehduled and recorded, figure out a way to offer payment. I dont believe this means that you have to pay every single person whose voice might make it into youre recorder, but have a clear system for how you decide what is just incidental and what is clearly planned out.
• Have this set up ahead of time, so that these decisions are not made arbitrarily. As well as the system of amount, whether wage or compensatoin, should be set, not dependent upon a person or their context. I have a 10 euro minimum for 40 minutes, based around the idea that 15euros / hour is a living wage. Sometimes we have the idea that paying someone so little is “insulting,” but I belive that the reality is htat most people can use the money and appreciate a token for their time. It pays for transportationg and maybe a mael. In some contexts, 10 euros is a lot of money.
• Many people will insist not to get paid – insist back – that this is part of the project. Insist until the point htat to insist more would be culturaly inappropriate, and only in this case give up and decide if there is another way that you can offer compensation.
• When traveling outsife of the EU, I didnt make a differentiation about what a living wage would be or should be, I simply offered the same amount converted into the local currency. For my collaborators, it was a decent amount of money. Giving an interview is time and energy and deserves being paid. Especially as my interviews were about labour, it seemed to makes sense to ttak about wage. In some contexts or in some proejcts, its ossible that monetary wage doesnt feel right or make sense. But what are some other ways to repay collaborators?
• Inform Collaborators ahead of time what youre offering
• Tell your collaborators if you are offering compensation, what you are offering, why you are offering. Also tell them about what kinds of other things you will do:
• 1. send them any recordings or photos that are made
• 2. ask them their permission for which sections are used
• 3. tell them about the usage of the work
• 4. inform them about the jounrey of the project – where is it being shown ? When ? Is it still okay?
• Keep Getting Consent
• consetn doesnt just happen on day one. A work of art makes a journey and its ethical to continueously gain consent.
• At first it might seem scary – what if someone sudenly decides to pull out of a porject? What if they want their voice or their image replaced? Consider that if a person who really doesnt want to be represented is the lynchpin of a project– its probably not mean to be. Imagein the hurt feeligns and negative emotions that will surround your artwork if you contine to present a figure who doesnt want ot be respresented. If they are not the lynchpin, it could be painful at first to remove them, but eventually its for the best.
• Consider as well that the life of a project is a real journey that lives on, takes on its own life, and meanwhile the persons involved have aged, changed, grown. So have you. The art you created four years ago may no longer represent you, or may temporarily not fit. It may feel—for years, even, completely unrelevenat to your expreicne. You may not want to touch it. Take it out twenty years later and it might feel great, or it might feel outdated. The important thing is to stay in touch with the living body of your artwork and the living people attached to the artwork. If you are important enough to consider when thinking about the life of a work, the people that you are working with are also important enough to cnsider– where are they? What are they doing?
• Early on in my carreer as an artist, some of the earliest interviews Ive bever done—there was no internet available or smartphones. At the time I releied on this, and the idea of snail mail, to be lazy in my work. But even when folks dont have access to internet
• Wage or Trade is not supplement for ethics
• Just because youve paid someone or offered some kind of compensation doesnt mena that youve bought them out of the other things you can or should offer.
• Other forms of repayment, collaboration, long term support
• Attribution
• Naming
• Giving up power to determine use of the work
• Contextualizing the moment of extraction
• Careful mapping of the process (people, place, sociopolitical context)
• Remembering, documenting
• Keeping collaborators and subjects connected to the life of the project and throughout the life of the project
• Being careful about the tools used in the process of the project
• Using open source materials
• Understanding and knowing the source of the tools used
• Understanding and knowing the source of the clothing and props worn on and off “stage” in the life of an artistic project
• Figuring out how to make collaborations authentic
• Providing copies of recordings that can be used as the person would like, with attribution
• Keeping up with relationships over time: accountability and interconnectivity
• “Radical collaborative” and “correlational narratives” (Katherine Mc Kittrick ed.) Sylvia Winter: On Being Human as Praxis
• Releasing open source works
• Collaboration as skill sharing, so that others go away enriched with certain skills
• Treating each person, object and place as “irreplaceable”
• Don’t mix contexts
• Name contributors
• Don’t record undercover
• Send collaborators their media
• Respect consent
• Explore: Who pays us? Whether it is a job—payment for art or funding—also payment for art, from where do our funds come? What are our limits and boundaries? Does it have to do with a performative limit (ie, I don’t want my face shown but Ill accept the money) or does it have to do with a strict ethical boundary?
• How do we form and keep relationship with people in our projects and attribute them?
• What is the difference between a collaborator and an employee of an artistic project? How are they attributed differently? How can they be lifted up ?
• Payment – Cash
• Other forms of repayment, collaboration, long term support
• Attribution
• Naming
• Giving up power to determine use of the work
• Contextualizing the moment of extraction
• Careful mapping of the process (people, place, sociopolitical context)
• Remembering, documenting
• Keeping collaborators and subjects connected to the life of the project and throughout the life of the project
• Being careful about the tools used in the process of the project
• Using open source materials
• Understanding and knowing the source of the tools used
• Understanding and knowing the source of the clothing and props worn on and off “stage” in the life of an artistic project
• Figuring out how to make collaborations authentic
• Keeping up with relationships over time: accountability and interconnectivity
• “Radical collaborative” and “correlational narratives” (Katherine Mc Kittrick ed.) Sylvia Winter: On Being Human as Praxis
• Releasing open source works
• Collaboration as skill sharing, so that others go away enriched with certain skills
• Treating each person, object and place as “irreplaceable”