Abstract How can the slow disappearance of an ethnic group be articulated? How does the loss of linguistic identity manifest itself, and what political circumstances lead to this?
The project Veliko nas je bilo / We were many – Articulating Disappearance: Slovene Voices from the Archive, critically examines sound recordings of Carinthian Slovenes from the 1960s and 1970s which are stored in the Phonogrammarchiv (Austrian Academy of Sciences – ÖAW) in Vienna. Although these recordings were originally intended for dialectological and linguistic research, this project explores whether their entry into the archive coincided with the group's gradual disappearance in the outside world. The sound recordings tell stories of belonging, temporality, and materiality, and even after digitisation, these sonic memories remain witnesses to the time when they were captured. This project is an invitation to understand language and identity as something ghostly that is inherent in all social relations and can dis-appear or re-appear at any time. The metaphor of the ghost is applied to further investigate the invisible fabrics of social relations in Koroška (Carinthia) and beyond. Through attentive listening, the recordings re-surface as carriers of meaning, and the artistic work derived from them re-connects them with the outside world. Reflecting the recordings in the context of critical archival studies can offer new perspectives on how such research projects served the interests of those in power by extracting materials and resources from elsewhere. This work is an appeal against forgetting and disappearance.
The performance lecture/workshop/listening session collage re-circulates voices from the archive and brings them back to the here and now - into the centre of perception. The sound pieces re-connect the voices with the broader public – telling stories of the past, present, and uncertain futures. In English and Slovene. Dedicated to the liberation of those about to disappear.