a (work-in-progress) meditation on sonic biometry, migration and the archive. This is a write-up and/or script for a performance-lecture presented a couple of times in 2020. Published as part of the book “Postcolonial Repercussions: On Sound Ontologies and Decolonised Listening”, edited by Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt and Andi Schoon. Transcript Verlag, 2022.
A speech corpus is a collection of voice recordings constrained to a specific language, dialect, accent and/or thematic nature. It is a congealment of a given language at a given time, a given space and a given geopolitical and historical condition. A speech corpus is a product of the material conditions of its genesis, done so by the devices of academia, research, corporate interests and technological development. A speech corpus is not a testimony of or for the identity of a people. A speech corpus is, like any other form of archive, ever ambiguous and incomplete. A speech corpus, for the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, is a database. A speech corpus, for the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, is a tool for deportation.
I call it a weapon.
order the book here.