Making the Pitt Rivers Museum
Making the Pitt Rivers Museum
Podcast Description
Lieutenant-General Pitt-Rivers did not make the museum in Oxford that bears his name, or the objects within it. The real makers of the museum are the people who lived (and live) outside its walls; who made and used the objects on display, and the people whose lives are captured in the photograph collections. Yet these makers have often been silenced within the Museum's displays, labels, catalogues and exhibitions, which have historically focused on collectors, cultures, and curators.
Join the Making the Museum project team for a behind-the-scenes look at how we are trying to redress this balance in the information the museum holds about its collections. You’ll not only hear from researchers and museum professionals but also practitioners, artists, and other modern makers from communities around the world. As we collaborate, you’ll hear about it, giving a real-time insight into the inner workings of the museum.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
Focuses on the interplay between community makers and museum collections, with episodes discussing archival sound in music, collaborative projects such as X and Rawz’s, and the historical silencing of local creators in museum narratives.
Lieutenant-General Pitt-Rivers did not make the museum in Oxford that bears his name, or the objects within it. The real makers of the museum are the people who lived (and live) outside its walls; who made and used the objects on display, and the people whose lives are captured in the photograph collections. Yet these makers have often been silenced within the Museum’s displays, labels, catalogues and exhibitions, which have historically focused on collectors, cultures, and curators.
Join the Making the Museum project team for a behind-the-scenes look at how we are trying to redress this balance in the information the museum holds about its collections. You’ll not only hear from researchers and museum professionals but also practitioners, artists, and other modern makers from communities around the world. As we collaborate, you’ll hear about it, giving a real-time insight into the inner workings of the museum.
Hip hop, rap, and multimedia artists X and Rawz tell us about the music they produced using sounds from the museum archives. The project team talk about how understanding more about makers (rather than takers!) fits into the work of a modern museum. The first two creative fellows on the Making the Museum project – X and Rawz – talk to us about sound quality, music as a form of time travel, and being part of a continuum of sound/music makers as they tell us about their work with the museum’s sound archives. Learn about how the museum space impacted the creative responses they produced and hear their ideas for museums now and in the future.
In a special extra segment for this first episode, we (the Making the Museum project team) discuss how creative fellowships and responses fit within the research work we do at the museum. We also discuss why researching makers is so important, setting the scene for other episodes in this series.
Want to follow along when we’re talking about collections items? This episode features the following items from the Pitt Rivers collection (in order of appearance):
Audio recording of water drumming by Bayaka women and youths (Republic of Congo, 1994) (Accession number 1997.21.2.134, Side B, Track 14)
Balonyona playing geedal (Yandoumbé, Central African Republic, 1992) (Accession number 1997.21.2.52, Side A, Track 3)
Moru sanza music by Timon Beri, recorded by Patti Langton (South Sudan, 1979) (Accession number 2013.1.11, Side A, Track 1)
‘Clay Pot’ Vessel | Collections online | Pitt Rivers Museum (Accession number 1886.1.489)
Want to see more from X and Rawz’s time as fellows? Check out the video from their Gathering Place event – the culmination of their fellowships – on our YouTube channel: The Gathering Place: Africa (Late Night Event, May 2024)
This episode features live versions of the following music/poetry recorded during The Gathering Place late-night event at the Pitt Rivers Museum, May 4th 2024 (in order of appearance):
X- Dear Old Man
Rawz- There’s Fire to Find
X- Ubomi (‘Life’)
Rawz- The First
Rawz (vocals) and Miles Ncube (mbira)- Art Starts A Story
Rawz- ‘Til Sunrise
X- Ingqayi Nawe Hlabula (‘Ingqayi You Also Sip from This Knowledge’)
X- Intsukaphi (‘Where we are From’)
You will hear from (in order of appearance):
Dr. Rebecca (Becky) Martin (she/her) – Research Project Officer, Making the Museum project
Rawz (he/him) – Creative Fellow
Xolile (X) Madinda (he/him) – Creative Fellow
Dr. Beth Hodgett (they/them) – Postdoctoral Researcher, Making the Museum project
Dr. Christopher Morton (he/him) – Principal Investigator, Making the Museum project
Dr. Noel Lobley (he/him) – Visiting Researcher (Assistant Professor, University of Virginia)
Also featuring Miles Ncube (he/him) – Mbira Player
About the artists:
Xolile (X) Madinda is a hip hop artist, arts activist, and founder and CEO of The Black Power Station in Makhanda, South Africa. X’s practice is rooted in the re-imagining and re-archiving of African creative works to educate, liberate and empower the self and communities.
Check out what X is doing with The Black Power Station here: The Black Power Station – Arts Liberation Space
Rawz is a Multidisciplinary Artist from Oxford. His practice centres around words and music, and is rooted in social justice and the exploration and understanding of our interconnected worlds.
Rawz regularly updates his portfolio here: https://linktr.ee/rawz_official
Email: urbanmusicfoundation@hotmail.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/rawz_official
Facebook: www.facebook.com/realrawz
Twitter: www.twitter.com/realrawz
Bandcamp: www.Rawz.bandcamp.com
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