Presentation on affective archiving and collective collecting at Edinburgh conference

The last two days have been spent in Edinburgh at the conference "On Collecting: Music, Materiality and Ownership" held at the National Museum of Scotland. 

Popmuseum - a museum and archive of popular music in the Czech Republic

My travels for this research have already taken in a host of countries - Australia, Austria, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, UK and USA. My latest destination is the Czech Republic where today I made a visit to Prague's Popmuseum, located in District 2. 

Radios galore and more at the Sound Preservation Association of Tasmania

This week I found myself in Hobart where I made a visit to the Sound Preservation Association of Tasmania on that city's eastern shore.

The Ramones Museum in Berlin

After my successful trip to Germany last year visiting the Lippmann + Rau Musikarchiv in Eisenach and the Klaus Kuhnke Archiv fur Populare Musik in Bremen, it is great to be able to return to this hot house of popular music preservation; this time to Berlin to see the Ramones Museum. This is only the second artist-dedicated museum I have visited for this research, the other one being KD's Elvis Presley Museum in New Zealand, and the two examples of this kind of heritage enterprise are very different.

Talking DIY sustainability with Jez Collins at the Poplife conference

It has been an enjoyable two days at "Poplife: the value of popular music in the twenty first century", a conference hosted by the University of Northampton.

Preserving the music history of the Ocean State - the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame

I'm writing this during a layover at Washington Dulles airport, having arrived this morning from Rhode Island en route back to Australia following a successful two weeks of fieldwork. I was in Rhode Island to visit the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. Located in Pawtucket, the Hall captures "the Ocean State's rich musical history".

Radical Archives conference at NYU

I'm in New York City to attend the 'Radical Archives' conference presented by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, curated by Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh, and held on 11-12 April in the NYU Cantor Film Centre. As the first "archival" conference I have attended I was interested to see how its concerns intersected with my own approach to thinking about the DIY practices and processes of the institutions that are the focus of my research, particularly because the conference was focused on activist archives. 

Project in the news

Turns out the story of my visit to the Heart of Texas Country Music Museum made the front page of this weeks Brady Standard-Herald. 

The Sarasota Music Archive: a DIY institution housed in a County Library System

I had arrived in Sarasota, Florida, with nothing lined up for my fieldwork. I'd been emailing the Sarasota Music Archive to try and set up some interviews but hadn't received any replies. Yesterday morning, then, it was a case of trying my luck by turning up on the Archive's doorstep and hoping for the best...

Preserving traditional country music in the heart of Texas

There is no time for jet lag on this fieldwork trip to the United States of America. I flew into Dallas Fort Worth on Wednesday and then onto San Angelo Airfield before finally arriving late evening into Brady, Texas (by a stretch limo, no less) - Brady being the home of the Heart of Texas Country Music Museum, a museum dedicated to "preserving and promoting traditional country music".