Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses artist Yvonne Buchheim's work on her Song Archive project - an interdisciplinary artwork that interacts with musicology, anthropology and psychology. The project aims to playfully investigate the value of art as a catalyst for social interaction.

Paper long abstract:

This joint paper by the editors of a monograph on Buchheim's Song Archive Project will discuss the ways in which practice-led research that uses art strategies to situate artwork within the public realm, through publicly funded exhibitions and installations, live art events and academic symposia, interacts with it's initial participants - singers located in a particular context - through a playful dialogue with ethnographic concerns. The artist Yvonne Buchheim set up the Song Archive Project in 2003 in response to a song collection from 1773 by Johann G, Herder. His collection and theory suggests that the cultural identity of a people is reflected through their song tradition. The aim of the Song Archive Project is to develop a body of works that re-examines this assumption in the context of contemporary song culture through the lens of a visual arts practice.

In contrast to conventional ethnographic song collections, the research is not restricted to a particular song type or locality, exposing both tacit musical knowledge and various singing abilities across a wide range of contemporary locations. The paper will discuss the way in which the Song Archive Project does not aim to preserve traditional song, but instead explores participatory art strategies in gathering, examining and exhibiting contemporary song culture. It also asks how this ongoing interdisciplinary inquiry addresses issues of memory, location and context at the intersection of a multiplicity of disciplines and practices.