Andrea Zarza Canova is an archivist and curator. She currently works as a curator at the British Library Sound Archive. She co-runs record label Mana, which publishes works at the intersection of contemporary and archival sound by artists such as Pierre Mariétan, Luc Ferrari, Nicolás Jaar and De Leon. Independently, she has curated exhibitions and listening installations which explore sound as a cultural, political and social phenomenon, including the Meltdown Listening Lounge for David Byrne’s Meltdown Festival, Southbank Centre, London;Charivaria at CentroCentro, Madrid, Spain; and All in Day’s Work at Rhubaba Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. She produces and hosts a regular show for NTS Radio, highlighting ethnographic sound recordings from the British Library’s collections.
By disjointing acts of listening from the ear and its particular arrangement of time, Sonic Continuum proposes a shift from representation to expression and asks: can sound restitute failures to listen? How might we listen to time affectively? What auditory imaginaries and possible futures can listening unfold?
In this essay, archivist and curator Andrea Zarza Canova explores the creative strategies used by artists working with archival sound recordings and offers a critique of listening practices in institutional archives.