AN ORAL HISTORY WORKBOOK FROM EAST OF BORNEO & LOS ANGELES CONTEMPORARY ARCHIVE
We have made this oral history workbook not because we think we have answers, but because we want to ask questions. We feel that oral history is one approach to doing that. What we have made is not invested in being the “correct” or “right” approach. Our investment is in listening, inquiring, and imagining possibilities together. This workbook is yours to adapt, remix, photocopy, and scribble on.
SPEAKING THE MATTER 2023
ISBN: 978-0-9971997-2-7
Digital Download available from www.lacarchive.com And www.eastofborneo.org
This project would not have been possible without the hours spent dreaming at the Southern California Library with Yusef Omowale. We are additionally grateful to Tom Lawson, for continuing to guide East of Borneo in its mission to publish multi-dimensional narratives about art and its evolving history in Los Angeles.
Thank you also to Suzanne Snider and the Oral History Summer School, Shevaun Wright, Keko Jackson, and everyone else who kept us going in the process.
PUBLISHED BY LOS ANGELES CONTEMPORARY ARCHIVE (LACA) AND EAST OF BORNEO.
Adriana Widdoes, Hailey Loman, Saida Largaespada
DESIGN Joy Park
ASSISTANT EDITORS Andrew Freire, Harris Bauer, Vivian Chang PRODUCTION Saida Largaespada
PRINTED IN LOS ANGELES BY MILLER SHERWOOD PRINTING. EDITION OF 300. FIRST PRINTING.
Any omissions or errors in this workbook are inadvertent and will be corrected in subsequent editions.
LOS ANGELES CONTEMPORARY ARCHIVE (LACA)
Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) is a public archive and library dedicated to contemporary art-making. LACA collaborates with artists to build archival collections, which include studio leases, contracts, paystubs, performance apparel, set pieces, police reports, text messages, class syllabi, and materials from formally running art spaces. These collections enable us to learn from each other’s experiences and create new works that privilege the desires and needs of our communities.
LACA moves towards understanding, rupturing, and celebrating a communal art practice and life that is not overdetermined by values that favor wealth creation and sustain historical inequities.
EAST OF BORNEO
East of Borneo is a collective re-examination of contemporary art and its history in and around Los Angeles. Our online magazine publishes new essays and interviews alongside a multimedia archive of images, texts, videos, and audio recordings curated in collaboration with our community. We also publish books, and we re-release material that is out of print or hard to find through our Second Life series.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Frames of Mind
INTRODUCTION MOTIVES WORKSHEETS APPROACHES
PRE-INTERVIEW AGREEMENTS TIPS AND TRICKS OPEN QUESTIONS
INTRO ID
RECORDING CHECKLIST
AFTER CARE
FILE SAVING CONVENTIONS
POST-INTERVIEW
TRANSCRIPTION
WORD LISTS
ARCHIVIST SUMMARY
ANNOTATION
Endnotes
GLOSSARY
APPENDIX
NOTES
Frames of Mind
INTRODUCTION APPROACHES
MOTIVES
Outline Examples
HOLD THE PHONE: AN INTRODUCTION
1. FROM E.M. FORSTER’S 1953 INTERVIEW FOR THE PARIS REVIEW, “THE ART OF FICTION, NO. 1,” BY P. N. FURBANK & F. J. H. HASKELL.
2. USHA WILBERS, “THE AUTHOR RESURRECTED: THE PARIS REVIEW’S ANSWER TO THE AGE OF CRITICISM,”AMERICAN PERIODICALS,” VOL. 18, NO. 2 (2008).
East of Borneo’s Artists at Work collection formed as a way to let artists speak for themselves. Together these artist interviews, conversations, and oral histories take as their inspiration the longstanding series of interviews with writers that has been a feature of the Paris Review since 1953, when the young editors who started the magazine first persuaded E.M. Forster to talk about the way he experienced actually being a novelist; this included questions of his working habits, inspiration, and influences, as well as revealing details about Forster’s “precise, yet nonetheless elusive” manner, his neatly arranged slippers, and his armchairs decked in little shawls.1 During an era of contemporary art and literary criticism widely preoccupied with the role of the critic in setting forth “truth” through objectivism, the Paris Review, and later pioneering cult magazines like Interview, index, and BOMB, sought to re-emphasize the viewpoints of writers and artists themselves, allowing them to create an “often confessional self-portrait” through interpreting their own work in their own voice.2
Perhaps in this way, despite our deepest enthusiasm for our role in the art community as a magazine of critical writing on the visual culture of Los Angeles, East of Borneo’s artist interviews might as well be considered a sort of anti-criticism—a personalized antidote to the narratives grown from institutional and historical convention which seek to validate and explain the work of artists. Relying solely on these narratives means that our collective understanding of who we are as a community of creative practitioners, how we have lived, and what we have made to shape that understanding, is woefully incomplete.
East of Borneo, in its humble lifetime as an online magazine and archive of contemporary art, has published and made accessible over fifty interviews, discussions, and oral histories with artists who have lived and worked in Los Angeles. Our Artists at Work interviews aim to examine the individual ways that these artists approach their creative practice, and the particular kinds of decision-making they confront in their work on a daily basis. These interviews are solicited in the spirit of collaboration and community-building—conversation, not confrontation—which is to say they often share more in common with methods of oral history than journalistic practice (though at the most surface level, each of these recorded modes of storytelling is interested in interpreting truths through real, lived experiences.) Interview contributors are asked to show up informed but without an established narrative agenda, to make room and to wait and to listen.
These interviews are solicited in the spirit of collaboration and community-building—conversation, not confrontation.
Before I came to my role at East of Borneo my experience of interviewing included supporting live conversations between artists and writers in front of an audience at the New York Public Library; transcribing and archiving interviews for StoryCorps’ national recording initiative; enrolling as a student at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies and the Oral History Summer School; and some stints as an amateur journalist. Through all of these former lives I’ve managed to keep with me a single, stubborn memory of an early gig in which I was tasked with transcribing and editing a two-hour panel discussion, hosted by the Whitney Museum, on the art of Jeff Koons... lol. Despite the panelists’ engagement on questions of production, value, affect, taste, and celebrity in relation to Koons’ famously divisive balloon animal sculptures—How does the artist succeed in mobilizing ‘dumbness’ in the work? To what extent does the high level of technical decision-making required in the works’ construction counteract an aesthetic that might otherwise be seen as repulsive? Is this all one big Freudian joke?—the detail that stuck with me through all the thankless effort of transcription, and through the many years that have followed, was one panelist’s firstperson account of encountering Koons’ Hanging Heart sculpture3 for the first time, which he confessed made him feel dead inside (!) He concluded that Koons’ art is “obviously very advanced.” 4 It’s still
3.
4. WATCH “‘THE KOONS EFFECT,’PART 1 (LIVE! FROM THE WHITNEY)” ON YOUTUBE IF YOU DARE.
5. (TO THAT NOTE, IF ANYONE READING THIS HAS A DIRECT LINE TO JEFF, PLEASE FORWARD MY INVITATION FOR AN INTERVIEW, AS I WOULD LIKE SOME ANSWERS.)
unclear to me which of these two admissions delivered more of a punch to my gut.5
6. ALESSANDRO PORTELLI, “THE PECULIARITIES OF ORAL HISTORY,” HISTORY WORKSHOP, NO. 12 (1981).
The point is that we often have less difficulty interpreting truths, in art as well as across cultural, societal, and historical divides, if they come in the shape of a story—not necessarily the kind with a beginning, middle, and end, but rather a narrative of record where the distinction between facts, feelings, and events is often negligible. According to oral historian and literary scholar Alessandro Portelli, these narratives are “where the boundary between what takes place outside the narrator and what happens inside, between what concerns the narrator and what concerns the group, becomes quite thin, and personal ‘truth’ may coincide with collective imagination.” 6 In other words, the floodgates are opened. Suddenly, it’s Friday night and, for a brief three hours, admission to the Whitney is free.
How does the artist succeed in mobilizing ‘dumbness’ in the work? To what extent does the high level of technical decision-making required in the works’ construction counteract an aesthetic that might otherwise be seen as repulsive? Is this all one big Freudian joke?
7. “I AM SITTING IN THE MORNING / AT THE DINER ON THE CORNER / I AM WAITING AT THE COUNTER / FOR THE MAN TO POUR THE COFFEE / AND HE FILLS IT ONLY HALFWAY / AND BEFORE I EVEN ARGUE / HE IS LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW / AT SOMEBODY COMING IN / DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOODOO DOO…”
Examples of artists who have employed oral narratives, interviews, and storytelling in their practice are diverse in their methods, form, and aim. There are classic radio hits like Suzanne Vega’s observational, ‘slice of life’ songwriting in “Tom’s Diner.” 7 There’s the integration of storytelling and rap in the lyricism of Black American hip-hop artists like Slick Rick, Outkast, and MF DOOM. There’s Adele Horn’s essayistic documentary The Tailenders, which premiered on PBS Network’s P.O.V. in 2006, in which Horn considers the relationship between evangelism and global capitalism and the impact of audio recording technology on oral narratives themselves; narrated by Horn, the film follows the Gospel Recording Network in their mission, since 1939, to record Bible stories in every language on Earth, specifically targeting remote indigenous communities where native dialects are dying out. But native translators sometimes recorded their own stories instead. A “truth” uncovered by Horn’s film is that ultimately truth is porous—we have no way to tell when the fiction seeps through.
In the realm of contemporary art, Andrea Fraser’s installation work Projection (2008) is created from the artist’s recorded therapy sessions, which she transcribed and then performed on camera as monologues, switching between the roles of patient and therapist. Projected at life size, Fraser cries and speaks about her desire for recognition and feelings of failure, envy, and shame.8 Still, long before Fraser’s conflicted exploration of art as a site for selfconfession and self-construction, there was Shirley Clarke’s groundbreaking cinema vérité film Portrait of Jason (1967), for which Clarke interviewed aspiring cabaret star Jason Holliday in a room at the Chelsea Hotel for twelve hours straight. The resulting portrait of Holliday, an admittedly deceitful ‘hustler’ who narrates
The point is that we often have less difficulty interpreting truths, in art as well as across cultural, societal, and historical divides, if they come in the shape of a story.
his life story as a gay Black man pre-Stonewall, inspires varying degrees of humor, pathos, skepticism, and loathing and leaves us without an answer to the question of who is using who—the interviewer or the subject?
In part, our interest as artists in crafting oral narratives in and of our work reflects a greater understanding of the elitist nature of conventional history, being largely a history of those deemed valuable enough to remember and discuss in the first place.9 Whereas cultivated, institutional interpretations of artworks are presented in a language and form inaccessible to most, Roland Barthes writes that “narrative… is translatable without fundamental damage” in a way that an artwork or theoretical discourse is not.10 Narrative “is simply there like life itself… international, transhistorical, transcultural.” Some oral historians also like to point out that all history was oral before it was written. Others trace the roots of their narrative practice to such ancient origins as the griot tradition of West Africa, or the Greek historian Herodotus, who conducted first-person interviews in the fifth century BCE to write his account of the Persian Wars.11 Question and answer as a form then is nothing new, and the impulse to narrate our experiences is as natural, as human, as the artist’s impulse to create. So what happens when you let an artist, or any
8. QUOTED FROM ANDRÉ ROTTMAN’S REVIEW OF FRASER’S “PROJECTION,” PUBLISHED IN ARTFORUM’S SEPTEMBER 2008 PRINT ISSUE AND TRANSLATED BY OLIVER E. DRYFUSS.
9. THE FACT THAT FIVE YEARS FOLLOWING HIS RETROSPECTIVE AT THE WHITNEY KOONS’ “RABBIT” SOLD FOR $91.1 MILLION IN 2019 —THE MOST EXPENSIVE WORK EVER SOLD BY A LIVING ARTIST AT THE TIME—SHOULD BE EVIDENCE ENOUGH OF THIS TRUTH.
10. ROLAND BARTHES, “INTRODUCTION TO THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF NARRATIVES,” IMAGE-MUSIC-TEXT (HILL AND WANG, 1977).
11. REBECCA SHARPLESS, “THE HISTORY OF ORAL HISTORY” IN HISTORY OF ORAL HISTORY: FOUNDATIONS AND METHODOLOGY, ED. THOMAS L. CHARLTON, LOIS E. MYERS, AND REBECCA SHARPLESS (ALTAMIRA PRESS, 2007).
12. TONI MORRISON TO ELISSA SCHAPPELL AND CLAUDIA BRODSKY LACOUR, 1993. QUOTED FROM THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS, VOL. 2 (PICADOR, 2007).
13. ELIZABETH TONKIN, NARRATING OUR PASTS: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ORAL HISTORY (CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1992).
being for that matter, interpret the stuff of their lives on their own terms? Can the experience of a life be a fiction? Can an interview be a work of art?
So what happens when you let an artist, or any being for that matter, interpret the stuff of their lives on their own terms? Can the experience of a life be a fiction? Can an interview be a work of art?
Toni Morrison, in her 1993 interview in the Paris Review, said of her novel writing process, “I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don’t have the answers to.” 12 Again and again artists return to their work in order to grapple with a question in pursuit of some slippery truth. In establishing its methodology, ethics, and guidelines, the practice of oral history also returns, again and again, to questions of “reliability,” “validity,” and “truth.” Other inquiries into the positioning of oral histories as “true” point to interview practices not as valid historical records, but as social constructions and individual performances.13 The truth, as much as it exists here, is that I don’t naturally trust artists, or anyone for that matter, who claim to have all the answers to the questions they’re being asked, or that they’re asking of themselves, because how could they? Even as I’m writing this I can’t claim to know what I’m trying to say, or what this book is, though not for lack of trying to translate my experience of interviewing and of art and of narrative into written form. Maybe artists don’t ever tell us what they’re doing, only what they believe they’re doing. Maybe the problem isn’t really the knowing, but the telling. Maybe we don’t ever tell each other who we are, only who we want to be. They say that to “know” another person is to love them. I’m not sure whether it’s ever possible to fully know another person (without the assumption of ego—that is the effort of a lifetime). But as a way of fashioning telling into a container for knowing, our stories are as true to living as life itself.
→ ADRIANA WIDDOES MANAGING EDITOR, EAST OF BORNEO
MOTIVES
We have conversations all the time that are memorable, meaningful, and that we learn from. What makes an oral history different from other memorable conversations and interviews? What motivates you to create an oral history?
Circle the following ideas that resonate with you and add a few of your own
To engage in difficult conversations between people
To learn about another person, understand, and develop empathy
To document and provide further context for an event
To heal or repair something
As intergenerational dialogue
To build new research
To formalize a conversation between a loved one
To preserve knowledge and skills
To address stigma or discover an unconscious feeling among a group or between individuals
As counter-narrative
As persuasive media As a tool for organizing
As social advocacy
{ FILL IN YOUR OWN }
What makes something an oral history to you?
WORKSHEETS
Directions
Read the following oral history excerpts with a group or independently and look for information that helps you respond to the questions.
Consider
When you listen to someone describe something, how do they position themselves in the narrative?
EXCERPT FROM BINGYU JIANG’S ORAL HISTORY
Hailey Loman: Where did you grow up and what was this place like?
Bingyu Jiang: There were multiple houses. We were always gradually moving to different places. My grandfather passed away when I was four. He was a veteran from the Korean War. He was situated in the center of Wuxi, a city in southern Jiangsu province, China. His house housed the whole family. It was built in all these sections. And they rented almost half the house to internal immigrants who come to work in the city. They don’t work for my grandfather but find jobs in the city. There is this whole back section that is rented to them. And they spoke a totally different dialect. And had a different status. They grew corn in the courtyard. I enjoyed playing with the corn. That is my memory of my first house. There was this huge tree. Probably five stories long. But it is completely torn down now. There was a development scheme where they had to expand the road. They had to flatten the whole space. My uncle ended up selling it for a ton of money. He was compensated by the state, so he got several flats. Partially cash and partially compensated with more housing.
The tree was like this [ EXTENDS HANDS FULLY AND IMITATES WIDTH ].
How does Bingyu describe his home?
Are there parts of Bingyu’s story that you find relatable?
Are there parts of the story that you feel like you don’t have the entire picture of?
How might Bingyu weave in and prove facts in his story?
How does Bingyu demonstrate credibility in his story?
Our stories are the weaving together of myth and history. They tell us about the ways we perceive the world. Why are some stories perceived as fact or real, while others are hearsay or feel anecdotal and embellished?
EXCERPT FROM JUDGE
Judge Steven Perren: I have been a judge for 34 years. In ‘82 I was appointed to the bench and then trial court from ‘83 to 1999. From ‘99 to now I have been sitting here. This is exactly where I have been sitting the last 17 years or so.
I went into the service in 1968. Graduated, married, took the bar, then entered the army in the space of four months. I flew off, came back. Started my practice. That’s the big survey…
And the army was hardly arduous duty until I went overseas, and it still wasn’t terribly arduous over there. I was with a unit that was based 18 miles northeast of Saigon. I defended and prosecuted criminal cases in Vietnam in addition to the duties I had with my unit. When I finished the army and moved to Ventura, I rented a place in The Keys when it was only 180 to rent an apartment down there. It was a duplex and I had money. A little bit. My expenses had been pretty minimal in Vietnam. I had the money from my discharge, and I had saved money during the army.
What is Perren’s tone and mood?
What feelings are you experiencing while listening or reading Perren’s life survey?
What is Perren focusing on? What is he not sharing?
How do you think your subjectivity plays a role while perceiving his story?
How does the current social and political world impact how you are perceiving his story?
Our stories tell us not just what we did, but also what we wanted to do, what we believed we were doing, and what we now think what happened.
EXCERPT FROM PATRICIA FERNÁNDEZ’S ORAL HISTORY
Patricia Fernández : My first memory of my grandfather [ PAUSES AND LAUGHS ]. I just spent a lot of time with him, and he would always make me toys out of wood [ LAUGHS ] and actually, I kind of had this thing where I later asked my parents—did you guys abandon me with my grandparents? Because for a while I did not realize that my grandfather was not my dad. Or like, that was not my parent. I feel like I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, just maybe summers. Maybe my parents took off on vacation, I’m not totally sure, but I vaguely had the feeling of being abandoned with them. But I also really loved being with them. But yeah, my grandfather would always be making things out of wood.
What is Fernández’s tone and mood?
What does Fernández remember about her parents and grandfather?
What if Fernández’s parents didn’t go on vacation but were instead waiting in the room next door? What if Fernández’s parents were barely present in Fernández’s life?
Thinking about this, describe something you know only in feeling.
How do you share this knowledge or feeling?
Gossip crosses through and between the home, the body, and the public. Gossip trades knowledge, disruption, trust, and empowerment.
Kelman Duran: Probably. Eh - Dominican Republic people in that area know people and they just have a community trust and it’s like, Oh yeah... EXCERPT
Kelman Duran: That’s another moment I remember clearly. That probably happened when I was, I’m going to say from eight years old to about 14, when my mom used to take me back to the Dominican Republic in the summers. I remember it super clearly. Even today I feel it. I was in my aunt’s house who lives on a long dirt road [ LAUGHS ] where the houses were cement and not tin and wood. I was just playing, and a nurse came by, and she was like, you have this thing in your arm. And I remember her just taking a scalpel and literally like cutting my arm open. But I remember also me as a kid, not thinking anything of it or crying - I just, I didn’t feel anything. I was just like, yeah, do it. But what came out of my arm was really, it was cool I guess as a kid, but it looked like a tree root. And I remember being disgusted and her saying this was growing inside of your arm.
Hailey Loman: I remember asking you who this woman was? Did she ask permission?
What do you think Duran means when he talks about community trust?
What might have happened prior to Duran’s interaction with the nurse?
Name a kind of community trust that you experience.
How might storytelling, gossip, informal conversations keep one another safe?
APPROACHES
There are countless ways of approaching an oral history or oral history project. In this workbook we urge you to identify who your desired audience is and customize your interview structure to meet the specific needs of you and your narrator.
Who is your audience? The answer could be hundreds of different people, the family of the narrator, or just the narrator and the oral historian. There is no “wrong” answer, it is more about being clear and honest about who your audience is going to be.
The audience of your oral history deeply impacts how you determine going about your project. Many oral historians propose in-depth, multi-session meetings as a requirement. However, this approach becomes challenging when the people being interviewed are living under precarious conditions. Many oral historians propose another more spontaneous approach, emphasizing minimal preliminary research and unscripted interviews to allow for a free-flowing exchange instead. This can help narrators step away from any scripts that they may have developed.
Having an understanding of your narrator can help you to customize an approach that is meaningful and clear to everyone. Are there articles already published asking similar questions? Is something that you are about to ask your narrator common knowledge?
TRANSLATION
Translating oral histories into other languages can widen your audience and make for a more nuanced and stronger project. Consider who your listeners and their linguistic preferences might be and allow that to guide the translation process. Consider the languages spoken by the narrator and the languages understood by your intended listener/reader.
To decide an effective approach for the interview, consider the following questions
1. Who are your audiences for your oral history?
2. Who is the person you are interviewing? What are their needs and are there any limitations for them?
Outline References
By reflecting on these questions prior to building an outline or creating guiding notes, we create the conditions for a cohesive and more meaningful interview. The following are two very different examples of outlines for different types of oral history collections. Tongues Untied is a group oral history of museum curators discussing working conditions and wellness in art museums. Leaders in Contemporary Art Nonprofit Organizations explore individual Directors’ early interests in art and their positions shaping the arts through fundraising. The outline for Tongues Untied asks the group to reflect on several large ideas together whereas the Leaders in Contemporary Art outline asks individuals to reflect on a more linear life history in the arts. Reference these two outlines to create your own oral history structure that best fits your needs.
Leaders in Contemporary Art Nonprofit Organizations
Leaders in Contemporary Art Nonprofit Organizations
Series Statement
Leaders in Contemporary Art Nonprofit Organizations includes 27 recorded interviews with Directors in contemporary visual arts spaces based in Los Angeles. Participants of this collection lead organizations that range from art collectives to small-teamed museums, all with non-profit status and budgets between 50k2mm. The interviews will explore visual arts programming in Los Angeles from the 1960s to today. Participants will discuss how organizations confront traditional models of fundraising and how they could better imagine community-based support within the arts. Directors of art nonprofits influence the distribution and development of public art funding. This shapes what art gets viewed in this network.
Subjects Art, Non-profit, Fundraising
Outline Leaders in Contemporary Art Non-Profit Organizations
I. Life before working in art non-profits
A. Cultural atmosphere growing up
B. Education: Arts or other
1. Initial impetus towards pursuing the arts
2. Early perspectives of art institutions (school, museum, galleries)
3. Predominant art trends at this time
4. Early positions/roles in the art field
5. Mentorship, guidance, or influences at this time
C. The process of pursuing an Executive Direction position
1. Early interests/experiences in leadership roles
2. How you pursued this position
3. Founder/Director or hired as a Director
II. Running your organization
A. Initial experiences running your (current) art organization
B. Walk us through the socio-political climate you recall when you took on your position
C. How do these socio-political issues impact your daily operations/running your organization
D. Dominant art perspectives during the time you started running your organization
E. Art perspectives or movements you sense are happening now
F. Acquiring skills over the years
1. Meeting donors
2. Clear understanding of roles
3. Disrupting tasks, delegating
G Learning curves
1. Current perspectives towards art institutions (school, museum, galleries, nonprofits, fiscal sponsorship, collectives, art collaborations)
2. How would you describe your relationship to your organization
3. Does your team internally discuss political topics such as Trumpism, Ferguson, Post-Truth, and Covid-19
4. Does your team publicly discuss/host events related to political topics such as Trumpism, Ferguson, Post-Truth, and Covid-19
5. Can you walk me through your organization's payment structure: payroll, freelance work, stipend labor, internship work (school credit/Getty Marrow), independent contractors and do you work with a bookkeeper?
III. State of the field (external from Los Angeles Art)
A. Defunding Arts and Humanities (Culture Wars to Trump)
B. Perspectives around Los Angeles’s history of white male conceptual art with artists such as Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Mike Kelly, Michael Asher, Paul McCarthy, Chris Burden, Alan Kaprow and Jason Rhoades
C. Los Angeles’s history with Institutional Critique: Michael Asher and CalArts
D. Perspectives on women galleries/directors: Margo Levine, Claire Copley
E. Can you tell us about museums such as MOCA, Hammer, and The Broad opening
F. Perspectives on the art fairs in Los Angeles: Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC), Photo L.A., Frieze coming to Los Angeles
G. Perspectives around the 2008 recession and emergence of DIY volunteer-run art spaces in Los Angeles (Human Resources, Actual Size, Public Fiction, KCHUNG, etc.)
H. Can you talk about waves of seeing art galleries and non-profits open and close, temporary projects, art venues with short lifespans
I. Perspectives around Los Angeles’s public museums (LACMA, MOCA), private collectionsturned-museums (Broad and Marciano) and non-collecting projects such as ICA LA, Underground Museum (Main Museum)
J. Perspectives of Defend Boyle Heights, 356 Mission/PSSST Gallery, and Artists’ Political Action Network (APAN)
K. What is your outlook on large-scale projects such as Pacific Standard Time, Made in LA, and Desert X
L. What were pivotal art endeavors you remember happening in Los Angeles (galleries moving from Bergamot Station, the Chinatown Cornfield project, L.A. Art Book Fairs, etc.)
M. Perspectives on art tuition prices, USC first-year class drop out (2015), CalArts ($51.5K) and how it affects working with emerging artists
N. Issues around staff’s cost of living, rent, and healthcare
O. Issues around public relations, Zoom programming, social media, cancel culture and running an organization
IV. State of the field, strengths, weaknesses (internal to the organization)
A. Disillusionment with how the field operates
B. Disillusionment to fundraising, patronage
C. Successes in the field, successes in your organization
V. Ethical concessions made as director
A. The role of communicating expectations (with artists)
B. The role of communicating expectations (with patrons)
C. Neighboring community: art and gentrification
D. Feelings around leadership control and inadequacies
E. Perspectives around art for art's sake and social justice arts
F. Responding to perceptions, image, and fantasy about your organization
G. Can you talk about your relationships to artists and the roles you play: nurturing role, facilitator role, career building role, conflict resolution, collaborator
H. Grappling with myth and memory of your organization
I. Shaping myth and memory of your organization
VI. Board relationship
A. How you were introduced to the board (was it previously established or did you develop it)
B. How did you develop the board?
C. What is your relationship to the board now?
D. Does the board interact with the artists?
E. Does the board interact with the employees?
F. Does your board reflect a diverse group of people?
G. Changes you want from the board
I. Does your board internally discuss issues such as Trumpism, Post-Truth, climate issues, etc
K. Has your board discussed with you the recent unionizing efforts that have been attempted at Marciano and MOCA?
L. Economic inequality from staff to board members within the arts
M. Current demands from board members to step down: ex: Whitney Museum and Warren Kanders
N. Are your board members active art collectors?
VII. Fundraising
A. Financial concerns
B. Securing patron support
C. Seeking “transformative philanthropy” versus a “savior” donor model
D. Security and safety funds (logistics and feelings)
E. Crowdfunded art versus support from one established donor
F. Goals of the organization aligning with fundraisers
G. Organization’s mission aligning with fundraisers
H. Working with Paddle8, Artsy, and other art auction sites
VIII. Current impulses to change the organization
A. Did you inherit problems with your organization
B. What changes have you seen in art viewership recently
C. What do art audiences want versus what did you feel like they previously were seeking
D. What art communities do you hope to include in your organization
E. How has Covid-19 changed the way you want your organization to reopen or run in the future?
IX. Incentives to stay in the field
A. Underqualified for other fields
B. Investment in the Los Angeles Arts Community
C. Artists, peers, partners, or board
D. Expectations of the self
E. Feelings of obligation
a. Something feels unfinished
b. Anxieties about organization potentially closing
X. Evaluation
A. Can you remember having a change of opinion due to an artwork
B. How has the arts enriched your life
Oral History Center: Tongues Untied
Oral History Center
Tongues Untied
Tongues Untied is an oral history collection with the Museums Moving Forward (“MMF”), a coalition that shares its collective knowledge out loud to disrupt systemic racism and inform transformational strategies in the art museum sector. MMF is an intergenerational group of women-identifying curators working at art museums across the United States.
By defining and examining the structures that impose obstacles to diversity and inclusivity, participants in this oral history collection aim to inform actions that lead museums to foster ethical leadership, prioritize people, and reflect the worlds they want to live in.
This oral history will cover the coalition’s perspectives on the current state of art museums and its commitment to immediate action by engaging with the following:
1. Where are we now?
Due to COVID and various political and social upheavals, most institutions have faced disruptions that have required many of them to reflect on who they have been/are and begin to restructure what and how they do things. How would you characterize the state of art museums in this moment? What are some key things you think need to be reconsidered and addressed? What has this time been like at your home art institution?
MMF has been clear that if art museums are to contribute to the larger democratic project, they must practice and reflect the values of equity and diversity internally.
In what ways do existing internal policies and practices contribute to harm such as discrimination, harassment, and disparities in pay and benefits? How do board and philanthropic dynamics influence the sector?
Particularly in the last few years, across the sector, many art museums have produced programming and exhibits that have featured traditionally marginalized BIPOC artists and work. Can you speak with me about recent institutional efforts towards diversity and inclusion? Does this activity represent meaningful ruptures in the structures that sustain racism and gender discrimination?
MMF initially came together in 2018 with a growing awareness of gender inequity in the sector. Roughly four years later, what have you all learned in the process of coming together to effect change? And with an eye toward intersectionality, how do you think the demographics of the core steering group have impacted the work and direction of MMF?
2. How did we get here?
Now that we have a sense of where we are currently located we can begin to discuss how we got here. Can you walk me through the historical circumstances that brought us to a “crisis” point in the public’s confidence with art museums?
How would you describe the myth and memory of your home art museum?
If art museums play an active role in shaping a democratic society in what ways have museums harmed or benefited a democratic society in the past?
How did art museums end up situated as public institutions functioning in the public sphere while also maintaining qualities of private collections?
Can you walk me through the formation of MMF? In what ways does MMF respond to these historical issues?
3. Where do we want to go? Where is MMF headed and how does it shape its path forward?
Now that we have discussed where we are and the historical legacies that have positioned us here, where do we want to go? What role does MMF plan to take up within the art field?
MMF has defined the need for a third-party advocate or independent supra-institution. This future entity would help transform—and reform—museums by enacting antiracist and antisexist work in every aspect, including staff, program, and workplace culture, and to support the call for greater equity at all levels of boards, leadership, and staff. Can you explain to me how this idea originated? How would a fieldwide standard of ethics and a fieldwide culture of accountability be implemented into the arts sector? How would this third-party entity be supported?
How would the third party’s assessment and suggestions be enforced across the board of many museums? Is MMF looking at existing models of governance as a point of reference or divergence? What impact might it have on museum workers? What impact might it have on art philanthropy?
What are your ideas of a public good within the context of the museum sector?
In Preparation
PRE-INTERVIEW
AGREEMENTS TIPS AND TRICKS
Email Proposal, Permission to Record, Deed of Gift, Consent Form
OPEN QUESTIONS, INTRO ID, RECORDING CHECKLIST
How you prepare for your interview is going to depend on who you are interviewing and who your desired audience is. That being said, the following points suggest some ideas to consider before you start an interview. Not all of these may be relevant to your interview as you determine what you want from your oral history project.
→ Do background research on the potential narrator. Has this person been interviewed countless times before? Will it be the person’s first time doing this type of interview? The potential narrator’s past experience with interviews can help you develop different and compelling questions.
→ Define the scope and purpose of the interview, and create an outline of the topics you want to discuss to keep your conversation focused. Test your recording equipment to make sure it works properly. The goal is to avoid any technical difficulties that may arise during the interview.
→ Find a comfortable environment for the interview that is relatively free from distractions or potential interruptions. Consider where would the narrator feel most comfortable and at ease. Would it be their home, an art studio, or an office?
→ You may prepare a list of questions in advance. Remember to remain flexible and to diverge from these questions if the discussion takes a meaningful turn.
→ Take time to establish a connection and mood with the narrator before beginning the formal interview. This can help establish how the conversation will feel among participants and alleviate tension or nervousness.
→ Discuss with the narrator how this recording will be archived and shared. For example who might listen to this recording and how will it be maintained and made available? Are there any needs and expectations to iron out before starting an interview?
{ DISCLAIMER } The sample documents and contract templates in this workbook are included for general reference and learning purposes. These were created by Shevaun Wright, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) and East of Borneo to meet our specific needs.
Interview Email Correspondence
SUBJECT: ARTISTS AT WORK INTERVIEW PROPOSAL
Dear [ CONTRIBUTOR ],
East of Borneo is interested in commissioning an interview with [ ARTIST ] for our Artists at Work collection. Our Artists at Work interviews seek to examine the artist’s studio practice, their influences and experience, and the ideas and questions approached in their creative investigations. Given your interests and experience [ ELABORATE FURTHER ], we feel you’d be particularly well-suited to interview [ ARTIST ].
A little more about our process: Interviews can be done in person (e.g. studio visit, gallery visit), but a virtual chat over Zoom works as well. We ask that contributors send us an audio recording of their conversation, which we will then have transcribed. This is followed by a thorough and collaborative editing stage to prepare the interview for publication. This process addresses the interview’s overall narrative elements as well as line level syntax and sometimes takes several weeks to a couple months. We also ask that contributors write a brief intro text of approximately 200 words. Our editorial team will assist procuring any accompanying images and permissions.
East of Borneo can offer a contributor rate of [ $$ ] upon publication of the interview. Should you be interested in this opportunity, please send us a short pitch of relevant themes and throughlines you plan to discuss with [ ARTIST ]. We’re happy to provide general feedback or suggest other questions to explore in advance of your conversation, as well as reach out to [ ARTIST ] to make an initial introduction and schedule the interview.
Sincerely,
The Editors
Permission to Record and Use
PERMISSION TO RECORD AND USE
I understand that East of Borneo may make an audio and/or visual recording of my interview, lecture, or performance on [ SPECIFY DATE ].
I understand, acknowledge, and grant permission that East of Borneo may provide access to the recording for promotional, instructional, and informational purposes in furtherance of its non-profit educational and editorial objectives.
I understand, acknowledge, and grant permission that an edited transcript of the recording may be published in whole or in part by East of Borneo. Ownership of the recording and resulting publication is retained by East of Borneo. I have read this form in its entirety and understood it prior to signing it.
NAME (PRINT)
SIGNATURE DATE
DEED OF GIFT TO THE LOS ANGELES CONTEMPORARY ARCHIVE
A deed of gift is a document that legally gifts ownership of property from you to the archive. This instrument assumes the idea of sole ownership which contradicts many of our communal aspirations. We acknowledge the document’s limitations and its harm.
This deed (“DEED”) is made on day of , 20______ between: [ NAME OF DONOR/S ] (“DONOR”), and Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (“LACA”).
DONOR is donating the following material/object(s) ( PROVIDE TITLES/DESCRIPTION AND ATTACH ADDITIONAL PAGES IF NEEDED ) “DONATION”:
Recitals
LACA is a public archive and library dedicated to contemporary artmaking. LACA collaborates with artists to build archival collections that enable persons to learn from each other’s experiences and create new works that privilege the desires and needs of our communities. LACA moves towards understanding and celebrating materials and life that are not faithful to a single dominant truth or authority but instead propose that we all contribute stories that shape each other’s histories
Terms of Agreement
1. DONOR is the sole and absolute legal owner with full right and authority to enter this DEED.
2. DONOR hereby gives, transfers, and assigns to LACA by way of gift, all rights and ownership in, to and associated with the DONATION. This includes all rights of reproduction, distribution, and public communication of the DONATION. Items donated to LACA become part of a community of items; each DONATION affects the content and tenor of the archive. DONOR shares with LACA its aim of making the archive a learning and research space.
3. LACA agrees to reasonably care for the physical as well as the intellectual contents of the materials. LACA assumes no responsibility in case of loss of or damage to DONATION, due to theft, fire, or any other cause whatsoever.
4. DONOR may add other items, to be receipted for and covered by this DEED. DEED may be amended only in writing signed by both DONOR and LACA.
5. LACA may reasonably arrange or rearrange DONATION to make them more accessible to our communities.
6. LACA has the sole discretion to deaccession the DONATION
IN ADDITION TO THE GIFT LISTED ABOVE, I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A FINANCIAL DONATION IN SUPPORT OF THE PROCESSING, PRESERVATION, AND MAINTENANCE OF ARCHIVAL MATERIALS AT THE LOS ANGELES CONTEMPORARY ARCHIVE
PLEASE LIST AMOUNT OF
SIGNATURE OF DONOR DATE
PRINT FULL NAME
SIGNATURE OF LACA REPRESENTATIVE
PRINT FULL NAME
ORAL HISTORY CENTER AND LOS ANGELES CONTEMPORARY ARCHIVE
CONSENT FORM
An oral history consent form is an agreement that acknowledges that the narrator of the oral history has been given information and agreed for their story to be shared with a public. This instrument assumes the idea of sole ownership and that our stories can be owned which contradicts many of our communal aspirations. We acknowledge the document’s limitations and its harm.
My consent (“CONSENT FORM”) is made on day of , 20______.
[ NAME OF NARRATOR/S ] (“NARRATOR”) with [ INTERVIEWER ] from the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (“LACA”) and The Oral History Center (“OHC”).
Recitals
Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (“LACA”) is a public archive and library dedicated to contemporary artmaking.
The Oral History Center (“OHC”) is a group dedicated to conducting oral histories and making them available to the public. OHC works with LACA to add further complexity to its collections.
LACA collaborates with artists to build archival collections that enable persons to learn from each other’s experiences and create new works that privilege the desires and needs of our communities.
LACA and OHC aim to provide a collection that challenges the idea of a single dominant truth and offer instead that we all contribute stories that shape histories.
Terms of Agreement
1. NARRATOR is a co-author of the interview record. As a co-author they shall retain the right to use and/or publish the interview record in part or in full.
2. NARRATOR understands that they will receive a copy of their interview [audio] and may use this record both privately and publicly.
3. NARRATOR and OHC share all rights, titles, and interest in the interview record, including the literary right and the copyright. Items donated to LACA and OHC become part of a community of items; each donation affects the content and tenor of the archive. NARRATOR shares with LACA its aim of making the archive a learning and research space.
4. LACA/OHC agrees to reasonably care for the physical as well as the intellectual contents of the materials. LACA/OHC assumes no responsibility in case of loss of or damage to the oral history, due to theft, fire, or any other cause whatsoever.
5. NARRATOR may add other items to be receipted for and covered by this CONSENT FORM. The CONSENT FORM may be amended only in writing signed by both NARRATOR and LACA/OHC.
6. LACA/OHC may reasonably arrange or rearrange the oral history to make it more accessible to our communities.
7. LACA/OHC has the sole discretion to deaccession the oral history from LACA.
Naming
NARRATOR chooses to use a pseudonym and it is
INTERVIEWER chooses to use a pseudonym and it is
INTERVIEW TIPS AND TRICKS
RESEARCH
PRE-INTERVIEW (OPTIONAL)
You don’t have to be an expert, but you should be informed enough about your subject or the topic of discussion to carry on a comfortable and engaged conversation. Research what has already been said, written, and documented about the artist and their work. If they have an exhibition happening, consider visiting or scheduling a walk-through. Approach the conversation as an opportunity to develop a more detailed portrait of the artist and explore their way of making, rather than as a promotional tool for a particular work or show. Pinpoint where there are holes in what we know about their life and practice. What might other working artists want to know about your interviewee’s habits, hang-ups, and eccentricities? What questions has the artist maybe wanted to answer, but no one has ever asked?
If you find there is very little existing information about the artist—maybe they’ve never been interviewed before—you might choose to arrange a brief preliminary interview. A pre-interview is not an interview, more like a dance around the edges to feel out whether it makes sense to move forward, and in what direction. Pre-interviews can be done over the phone or by email and might consist of a few basic informational questions (i.e. Where do they live? What did they study, if anything? Do they have any forthcoming or current exhibitions?) This will help you build some rapport, get a better sense of one another, and also deepen points of discussion later on.
TIME
PLACE
Interviews for East of Borneo should last about an hour. We encourage you to let the recording run if the conversation is interesting, but keep in mind that transcripts of recorded interviews are typically edited down to 3,000-4,000 words upon publication. Be courteous of your interviewee’s schedule and energy level and try to keep the conversation to 60 minutes when possible. If, in the course of reviewing the audio or transcript, you discover any missing pieces to the discussion, or points that need further clarification, follow up with additional questions via email, or schedule a time to talk further.
Choose somewhere convenient to the artist and where they are most comfortable. Remote interviews tend to be most practical for some, but interviewing the artist in-person and/or in their studio might bring about observations and questions that wouldn’t have come to you otherwise.
Part of your role as the artist-interviewer is to be an active listener. This means being attentive to what your interviewee leaves out in recounting their story, and guiding them to fill in the blanks using their own voice. Silence or pausing in between questions can sometimes help to ensure they’ve said everything they want or need to say. But listening also means being engaged and going with the flow. Perhaps you expected a different answer. Don’t force a particular path if the cues are signaling you elsewhere. Allow room for unanticipated and coincidental lines of questioning.
INQUIRING
EGO DEATH
You might choose to prepare pre-structured questions beforehand, or approach the interview as a free-flowing conversation based on a list of general discussion points. Either way, begin by introducing the reason for the conversation and mention any topics you want to discuss at the outset. Strive for reducing bias (even if this is somewhat inevitable) with openended questions that don’t presume judgment. East of Borneo is a freely available online magazine that aims to make arts scholarship accessible to the public. When framing highly specific questions about particular theory or artistic approaches, incorporate context into your questions when it makes sense, so that readers don’t have to play catch up.
Try to keep questions as focused as possible, avoiding roundabout language and asking only one question at a time. Once the interviewee has finished answering a question, be ready with follow-up questions allowing for greater detail or clarification. When relevant, ask them to describe their concrete experiences and not simply speak about what they think. Questions that begin with phrases like “Tell me about…” or “Can you describe…” are great ways of encouraging more anecdotes and memories.
While openness between the artist and interviewer is always a positive, the interview should focus on the artist being interviewed, not the interviewer. Consider whether inserting yourself or your experiences is necessary to tell the artist’s story. Once the interviewee begins speaking, the general practice is to not interrupt. With exceptionally long-winded or rambling speakers, however, it may be necessary to to jump in.
OPEN QUESTIONS
→ Can you say more about that?
→ What does that mean to you?
→ Can you be more specific?
→ Why do you think it feels that way?
→ Why do you think you felt that way?
→ How did you reach that conclusion?
→ Can you share some examples?
→ Can you share what else happened?
→ What else happened?
→ What do you really mean?
→ Can you clarify that for me?
→ How does that statement apply to…?
→ Can you share more about that thought for me?
→ What are the implications of saying that?
→ What does it mean for you to say that today
→ What are you implying?
→ What was the context or background of that situation?
→ Have your thoughts or feelings about the situation changed over time?
Intro ID’s or opening statements provide contextual information about the oral history recording as well as help identify each speaker for the listener and the person transcribing the interview. These opening statements serve as a tool to ground the conversation in time and location as well as provide any additional background information relevant to the discussion. This introduction sets the tone for the interview so we recommend proceeding with care and confidence.
Suggested information for opening statements:
→ Name
→ Name of the interviewee
→ Topic of conversation
→ Your relationship
→ Date and location of the interview
Example:
“This is Hailey Loman here with Shlomo Lockitch on January 20, 2023, at Shlomo’s house in Los Angeles, CA as part of an oral history project on the local textile industry in Vernon.”
“This is Saida Largaespada. I am speaking with Patricia Fernández today June 13th, 2024. We have been friends since 2019 and are going to have a conversation about her life today.”
Recording CHECKLIST
THINGS TO PRACTICE BEFORE INTERVIEWING
Intro ID or opening statement
Sound check
Set up sitting arrangement
FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH YOUR AUDIO RECORDER
Hold the recorder in your hand and turn it around to look at its particular buttons and inputs
Turn the recorder on and off
Locate and put in new batteries
Locate where you would monitor the battery levels
Locate the headphone jack
Locate where to place external microphones
Test the “gain”. This is the microphone sensitivity
Locate where you will insert and remove your memory card
Test removing your memory card and inserting it into a card reader or your computer
Determine what external storage you will be using to backup your interview
Make sure you have available memory space for the entire interview
Locate the pause button, which will differ from the record button on the recorder
SOUND CHECK
Record a test on your recorder
Playback the audio
Test out what happens when someone whispers, mumbles, drinks water, or shouts. How will you adjust if one narrator is louder or quieter than the other?
Check for peak levels and what the recorder does not pick up
Listen for extraneous noise such as tapping, pen clicking, fingernail biting, AC, other environmental noise
THINGS TO PACK
The recorder
A stand for the recorder
Microphones as needed
Microphone cords as needed
Memory card
Memory card reader if needed
Extra batteries
Headphones
Printed copies of your consent form
A notebook and pen
Your phone fully charged to use as a backup recorder
Water
AfterCare
AUDIO FORMATS AND FILE SAVING CONVENTIONS
POST-INTERVIEW
TRANSCRIPTION
WORD LISTS, Annotations, Archivist SUMMARY
AUDIO Formats AND FILE NAMING Conventions
MP3 vs Waveform
You are going to want your files in both MP3 and Waveform (WAV) formats. We recommend that you record your interviews if possible as a WAV file, not an MP3. The WAV file is a larger uncompressed file and more archivally stable. An MP3 is a compressed file with not as much audio “detail.” This file is smaller and is easier for your narrator and listeners to receive, stream, and download online. WAV files can be compressed (converted from a WAV to MP3) but cannot move in the other direction (MP3 to a WAV).
Overall, the choice of file format will depend on your intended use of your recording and your available storage capacity. Choose a file format that provides a good balance between audio quality and file size while also ensuring the recordings can be easily accessed and kept relatively safe.
Bit Rate
When recording audio, the bit rate can have a significant impact on the quality of the resulting recording. Higher bit rates generally result in higher-quality recordings, with more detail and less distortion. However, higher bit rates also result in larger file sizes, which can be a concern for storage and sharing your recording.
Recommended settings for good audio quality:
Good: 44.1kHz/16 bit
Better: 48kHz/24 bit
Best: 96kHz/24 bit
→ Note that the Bit Rate settings will change the size of your recording file. Be prepared with larger memory cards if you are using the “best” settings.
File Naming Conventions
File naming conventions are useful for a variety of reasons:
CONSISTENCY CONTEXT
Using a consistent naming convention makes it easier to organize and find files. When files are named in a consistent way, it is easier to sort and search through them, which saves time and effort.
A well-considered file name can provide important context for the file, such as the subject matter, date, and creator. This information can help archivists and researchers understand the content of the material and its place within a collection or archive.
PRESERVATION ACCESSIBILITY
A good file naming convention can help ensure that files are preserved properly over time. For example, including the date and file format in the file name can make it easier to identify and migrate files to new storage systems as technology changes.
Clear and consistent file names can help make files more accessible to a wider audience.
When creating a file name, refer back to who you decided your audience is and ask yourself who is going to search for these files?
Consider what would give this person or people maximum information in a short amount of space. Is the oral history going to be searched by people already familiar with the collection title or the name of the archive? Then you might omit the collection title or name of the archive if it is redundant. Will all of the interviews be recorded on the same day? Then you may decide to omit the date to save space.
→ Decide if this will be CamelCase, CAPS, or NO CAPS, and stay consistent.
→ Save your WAV File for archival purposes.
→ Save your MP3 for web, email, and other quick sharing purposes.
→ You can accompany your audio files with an archivist summary. Save this document as a word file if you plan to continue to edit the text and as a PDF for printing.
Photos, Artwork, and Other Ephemera
While doing oral history work we often come into holding materials other than simply the audio recording. The narrator may reference photographs or share photocopies. Narrator and interviewer may trade artwork, show each other newspaper clippings, draw a map, or illustrate something on a napkin or piece of paper. If an interview occurs at a café, the receipt may become included with the audio record. Preliminary correspondence between interviewer and narrator may be included in your oral history project. These items can feel linked to the recording and further contextualize the conversation. Consider how these materials can accompany the oral history recording in creative and meaningful ways.
Digitally scanning the ephemera is one way the materials can easily accompany your audio file. This would require a scanner or camera. Scanning at 600 dots per inch (dpi) in JPEG or TIFF format is recommended if you wish to create reproductions or facsimiles. Workflow will be faster and require less storage space if you create JPEGs/JPGs and select lower dpi. Cameras can be used to document sculptures and other 3D ephemeral objects. Find the right balance of image quality, file size, and digital storage that meet the needs of your project.
Keep in mind how you want people to interact with these materials and that can inform formatting and saving your files.
After you have finished your interview, we recommend:
Making sure your recording is safe
Store your recording file somewhere considered relatively “safe” from loss or damage and somewhere easy to retrieve. It is good to keep two copies of your files in their original format and in different locations.
In archives, there are a range of digital storage practices that are effective, from high-security super-climate-controlled buildings with IT tech teams and servers, to more individual scale methods like placing files on two different devices, e.g., a laptop and a phone, or a cloud-based storage service and your laptop, or a RAID system and a cloud-based storage service. A RAID system (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is data storage that creates multiple backups within one device. Another option is storing multiple copies of your digital files on at least two regular home-use hard drives, and placing them in different locations. You need to turn on your hard drives periodically to prevent corruption of your files. We recommend doing so at least twice a year.
There is no one-size-fits-all storage system. Create your own that balances your needs and the needs of whoever you want listening to your interviews.
Taking care of yourself
Oral history work can be physically and emotionally draining work. The preliminary efforts around setting up as well as being an active and attentive listener can be exhausting. After a recorded conversation it is helpful to not have realistic expectations of yourself for the rest of the day. If possible, rest and be conscious that your mind and body are tired and that this is okay.
Communicating and following up
Get in touch with the person you spoke with and check in with them. Emotions and questions may have arisen since you both spoke.
→ Ask the narrator if they have any questions or concerns after the recording.
→ Express gratitude and extend thanks to the narrator. They took time away from other things to sit down and speak with you. This can be through email, writing a note, or just by describing how much their participation means to you.
→ Keep the narrator updated on the progress of the interview and how it can be accessed in an archive or personal website, including any transcriptions, indexes, or research availability.
→ Offer the narrator copies of the transcript or audio recording, if they desire to have them.
→ Consider inviting the narrator to do any additional interviews. Often we think of things we want to add, clarify points discussed, or have realized some new things arising from the initial discussion. This might not be possible or desired from the narrator but it is something to consider.
A transcript is a map of the oral history, but it is not an oral history.
Debate
Many oral historians are moving away from oral history transcriptions in order to emphasize the primacy of the aural documents. Transcribing is a time-consuming and tiring endeavor that will never fully encompass the mood and tone of your oral history recording. Despite these limitations, transcription can make it easier to search through your oral histories quickly. Written transcripts organize your recordings into specific topics or moments in the interview. This is especially useful for people who might be interested in particular parts of your oral histories or who are unable to listen or want to translate it through some translation tool/application.
Listening to your interview and transcribing it can be a helpful time to reflect on your process: when did I interrupt someone? Why did I mumble in that part? Why did I ask that question in that way? From this process you can also better gauge when it is more helpful to pay someone to transcribe and create distance between you and the record.
Stylesheets
Determine your transcription stylesheet. This is where you determine how the conversation will be described, laid out, noted, and labeled. Typically oral histories are completely unedited. The transcription contains verbal errors, dynamics, and descriptions about incidents that occurred during the interview process.
Examples of stylesheet decisions
Making these decisions in the beginning will streamline the process and allow for multiple people to assist with processing an oral history collection.
SL:,
Saida:,
or
Saida Largaespada:, HL:, Hailey:, or Hailey Loman:
[ PHONE RINGS ]
italics
( CROSS TALK )
NAMING PARAGRAPH BREAKS
trailing off change in direction or thought sounds that are not speech go in brackets italics can be used to denote an impression of another person narrator and interviewer are talking over each other use paragraph breaks to honor the natural rhythms of the conversation and to mark shifts in topics. These breaks create a visual representation of the conversation’s flow, making it easier to read and understand the context in which the narrator is speaking.
Timestamp
Timestamping aligns the transcript text to the audio recording by inserting timestamps (hour, minutes, seconds) on the document itself, at specific intervals. This can help you find topics in the interview quickly while keeping you connected to the audio recording. Typical format is [ HH:MM:SS ]
[ 15:33:01] … And then I said, don’t go down there.
[ 16:33:01] … On December 12th, 2022, we went to the county fair. [ 17:33:01] … We got dinner with Keko Jackson and some friends.
Transcription software or other online services can assist with the daunting process of writing a multi-hour oral history and can help save time. Have in mind that this technology won’t be able to give the same attention to detail and tone as a person when it comes to text precision. Go back over these files and make sure they are exactly as you want them to be.
Care plan
What might a care plan look like for you? Listening carefully and closely can demand a lot of energy especially if the interview explores emotional topics. Set up times you plan to take breaks. Determine what can be relaxing and restorative for you. This could be going outside and taking a walk or calling a friend on the phone.
Create a care plan and try your best to stick to it
WORD LISTS
A word list is a list of subjects (person’s name, street name, company names or words in languages other than the language your interview is conducted in) that are mentioned during an interview. This list is often organized in alphabetical order, rather than the order in which the narrator or interviewee states the information. This will allow people to listen to the recording with more ease and find topics or subjects within the document.
Example of a word list in an interview:
INTERVIEW 1: JANUARY 14, 2022
→ Board of Supervisors (Ventura)
→ Bryan Fisch
→ Community Memorial Hospital
→ Hyland Avenue
→ Macher
→ Meshugenah
→ Paddy’s Bar and Lounge
→ Pierpont Rats
→ Temple Beth Torah
ARCHIVIST Summary
An archivist summary is a description of a collection, record, or oral history that often includes the project’s title, scope, provenance issues, relevant dates. Include notes, feelings, and your perspectives as you shape this summary.
A summary is helpful for the listener to identify which interviews may be of interest when looking over an entire collection or learning a bit more about the narrator. The summary creates another searchable document when it is placed alongside the audio and provides further contextual information about what happened during the interview.
To prepare a summary, we suggest taking notes immediately after your interview.
→ What happened? What didn’t happen?
→ What themes did you observe?
→ Did any problems or issues occur (technical or otherwise)?
→ How did the narrator position themselves in the world or identify themselves in the conversation? Write a brief summary about your narrator.
→ Who does your narrator reference in their story? What role do these people play?
→ What was communicated by the narrator’s voice, mannerisms, expressions, or word choices? Did the narrator change as the interview progressed?
→ Does the narrator say anything about their own credibility or importance?
→ How does the narrator “prove” or “evaluate” their reliability? How do they do this?
Additional questions to debrief
→ Did anything surprise you during the interview?
→ How did your relationship with the interviewer make the conversation easier or more complicated?
→ What are the sensations, events, and information that were part of your experience but was not reflected in the audio recording? (temperature in the room, cell phone alerts)
→ What did you choose not to say in the interview?
→ What feelings did you experience during the interview?
→ Was there anything you regret not mentioning during the interview?
→ What assumptions did you make about gender, race, class, and age?
→ How did this affect the conversation?
Format
The summary can be part of the transcription at the end of the document, or it can exist separately. You can structure your summary with headings and experiment with different ways of formatting or breaking up your description. For example, it is common to include an archivist’s bio in this section. But the bio can be a space to experiment or provide further information about the interviewer and narrator’s dynamics. Think about a bio that is meaningful for future listeners. The archivist summary also reminds the listener that the interview occurred between two people who impacted the conversation.
Reflexivity
Reflexivity is the examination of one’s own beliefs, judgments, and practices. Interviewers may want to share what arose for them and what brought the oral history project into being.
How can the archivist summary become a site where we can express our biases and realizations? Do both participants in the interview generate summaries about their experience? How can we explore what happened in the conversation in experimental ways that live alongside the interview?
Parafiction
The archivist summary can become an authoring site where you experiment and push the ideas of what a summary can do. What choices did you make during this conversation? What happened before and after the interview? Did you spill a glass of water? Were you upset before you started the interview? What didn’t happen but could have happened? Or what do we fantasize or dream could have taken place in the conversation? And how can a researcher and listener to the audio gain insights from reading a parafiction?
Parafiction is one way of overlapping and complicating fact and fiction within a story. It is often a fiction presented as a fact. Artists have long used different terms to imagine something similar. Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name uses the term “biomythography,” to describe the combination of history, biography, and myth. Hubert Fichte’s The Orphanage, blurs autobiography, journalism, critique, and poetry through a third-person alter ego. Saidya Hartman’s Venus in Two Acts, uses the term “critical fabulation” to propose that archives and historical records are filled with countless gaps and omissions, especially as it relates to the lives of enslaved people. In order to readdress history’s omissions, Hartman uses storytelling to imagine what could have happened.
1. ANNOTATIONS BETWEEN THE INTERVIEWER AND NARRATOR ARE ANOTHER SITE TO CLARIFY IDEAS AND SHARE FURTHER STORIES. ANNOTATIONS CAN SERVE MANY DIFFERENT PURPOSES, SUCH AS EXPANDING THE NARRATIVE, EXPRESSING DISAGREEMENT, FACT-CHECKING, CONTEXTUALIZING, AND/OR TRACKING SUBJECTIVITY OR INTERSUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE.
2. ANNOTATIONS HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO TAKE ON MORE EXPERIMENTAL SHAPE AND FORM OR REMAIN SOMETHING SIMPLY USED FOR PROOFREADING AND ARE OMITTED FROM THE FINAL PIECE.
3. AN EXCERPT FROM AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN MILDRED SHACKLEFORD AND ALESSANDRO PORTELLI. PORTELLI USES FOOTNOTES TO EXPAND ON AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN HIMSELF AND SHACKLEFORD. WHAT IF SHACKLEFORD COMMUNICATED BACK A RESPONSE? WOULD WE VALUE THIS EXCHANGE MORE OR THE SAME AS IN THE RECORDED PART OF THE CONVERSATION?
4. LOUIE B. NUNN CENTER FOR ORAL HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY LIBRARIES.
Endnotes
GLOSSARY NOTES
APPENDIX
GLOSSARY
This glossary is a working list that is ever-changing and continually updated to meet our needs. This glossary is written deliberately in reference to the materials provided in this workbook.
ANNOTATION
ARCHIVAL CUSTODIAN
BIOMYTHOGRAPHY
CO-CREATION (IN ORAL HISTORY)
COLLECTIVE MEMORY
CONSENT FORM
CRITICAL FABULATION
FACT (DEFINITION 1)
FACT (DEFINITION 2)
FICTION
GOSSIP
INTERVIEW
NARRATIVE
NARRATOR
Comments or additional notes that are added to the transcript or recording of an interview to provide context, clarification, or interpretation. These annotations can be used to enhance the understanding of the interview and provide additional insights into the interviewee’s experiences and perspectives.
A person or organization that takes care of and is in charge of archives.
The weaving of myth, history, and biography into narrative. Defined by Audre Lorde in her writing Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.
The shared, often legal, ownership of an oral history record between the interviewer and narrator. Co-creation also establishes that both participants played a role to create the finished record.
The memory of a group of people sometimes passed from one generation to the next.
A document with signed and agreed on information. A consent form explains the interview process and the rights of the narrator who is participating. This document establishes ownership over the record and how the record will be made available to others.
The combining of historical and archival research with critical theory and fictional narrative to fill in the blanks left in the historical record. Defined in Saidiya Hartman’s Venus in Two Acts as storytelling and speculative narration to redress history’s omissions, particularly stories in the lives of enslaved people.
Something that is known, considered, or agreed upon to have happened or to exist.
A piece of information presented as having objective reality.
A fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary.
The discussion of social topics. A story or a statement in circulation often known to arise in the context of ambiguity when the meaning of a situation is not readily apparent or determined to be “true.”
To question someone to discover their opinions or experience.
A spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
A person being interviewed during an oral history recording.
ORAL HISTORIAN
ORAL HISTORY (DEFINITION 1)
ORAL HISTORY (DEFINITION 2)
ORAL HISTORY (DEFINITION 3)
ORAL HISTORY (DEFINITION 4)
OUTLINE
PARAFICTION
REFLEXIVITY
SOCIAL CONTRACT
An oral historian is someone who collects stories that address the past, present or future, as recounted by a narrator. People in various fields use oral history techniques, including those in public health, law, history, documentary film, radio, education, social advocacy, development, visual art, writing, sociology, and more.
An interview practice with an emphasis on co-creation, history, and transformation.
An unscripted conversation between people using a particular collaborative approach to listening and speaking, resulting in an audio or video record. This method is open-ended and sometimes occurs in multiple sessions. This is a highly collaborative interview process resulting in a narrative.
The activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Oral history and storytelling have various aims stemming from entertainment, education, preservation, to instilling values.
A method of asking open-ended questions and allowing the narrator to lead the conversation. An oral history usually contains a life interview component, even if it’s a focused interview. Silence is part of the conversation. Oral history interviews are unscripted and the oral historian does not bring prepared questions to the interview. An oral history is more interested in meaning. Why do you think that happened? Oral History asks narrators to interpret what they experienced. Lore, exaggeration, and myths are all relevant. Oral history is interested in sharing cognitive dissonances.
Outlines are drafted prior to the interview. Unlike a script, interviews do not follow an outline precisely but it can be used as preliminary research or as a guide.
Art in which a fiction is presented as fact. Parafictions can serve as thought experiments that challenge the often opaque and internal processes in which we conceive our beliefs.
The examination of one’s own beliefs, judgments, and practices that impact one’s subjectivity. Narrators and interviewers can account for the significance of the intertwined personal, interpersonal, methodological, and contextual factors that bring their record into being.
An implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing individual freedom for state protection. Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and its subjects.
STORY
TESTIMONY
A real or imagined account of people, experiences, and events. A report in a newspaper, magazine, or broadcast.
A solemn declaration usually made orally by a witness under oath in response to interrogation by a lawyer or authorized public official. This is often firsthand authentication of a fact as evidence.
TRANSCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPTION
STYLESHEET
TRANSLATION
Aligns the transcription to the oral history recording by inserting time intervals. This helps listeners quickly locate a topic in the interview while keeping them connected to the aural material. Typical format is [ HH:MM:SS ]
The process of converting spoken or recorded speech into written or typed text. This can be done manually, by listening to the audio and transcribing it word for word, or it can be done using automated speech recognition software. This is a useful tool for making spoken information available to a wider audience.
Provides guidelines and formatting conventions for the transcription. It helps to create consistency and clarity across multiple interviews.
The process of converting written or spoken language from one language to another. This involves interpreting the meaning of the source language text or speech and conveying it to the desired language.
Roland Barthes, The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962-1980 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985).
Kathy Acker & McKenzie Wark, I’m Very Into You: Correspondence 1995-1996 (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2015)
Simon Castets and Karen Marta, eds., SInce 1986 (New York/London: Swiss Institute & Koenig Books, 2019).
María Cotera, “Nuestra Autohistoria: Toward a Chicana Digital Praxis,” American Quarterly, vol. 70 (2018): pp. 483-504.
Travis Diehl, “Artists at Work: Cauleen Smith,” for East of Borneo (September 3, 2019): https://eastofborneo.org/articles/artists-at-work-cauleen-smith
Fiona Duncan, “The Last Grand Magazine,” for Affidavit (December 21, 2021): https://www.affidavit.art/articles/last-grand-magazine
Hubert Fichte, The Orphanage (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1990).
Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019).
Kwame Holmes, “What’s the Tea: Gossip and the Production of Black Gay Social History,” Radical History Review, vol. 122 (2015): pp. 55–69.
Keith B. Kirk, “Oral History in Performance: Weaving Narrative Identity and Reinventing Malcolm X,” Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance, vol. 2, no. 1 (2015).
Thomas Lawson, “Artists at Work: Fiona Connor,” for East of Borneo (July 18, 2017): https://eastofborneo.org/articles/artists-at-work-fiona-connor
Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, A Biomythography (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1982).
Aimé Iglesias Lukin, This Must be The Place: An Oral History of Latin American Artists in New York, 1965-1975 (New York: Americas Society and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, 2022).
Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (New York: Knopf, 1990).
David Matorin, “Artists at Work: Pippa Garner,” for East of Borneo (September 12, 2022): https://eastofborneo.org/articles/artists-at-work-pippa-garner/
Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (London: Harvill, 2000).
Yusef Omowale, “We Already Are,” for Medium (September 3, 2018): https://medium.com/community-archives/we-already-are-52438b863e31
Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans, ed. L.D. Guidice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 21-30.
Silvia Cusicanqui Rivera, “Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization,” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 111 (2012): pp. 95-109.
Britt Rusert, “Disappointment in the Archives of Black Freedom,” Social Text vol. 33, no. 4 (December 2015): pp 19–33.
Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (New York: FSG, 2021).
James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2009).
Jean Stein, Edie: An American Girl (New York: Grove Press, 1994).
Jennifer Thatcher, “The Lives of the Interview: The Development of the Artist Interview in Twentieth Century Britain and the United States” (PhD thesis prepared for the University of Edinburgh, 2021).
News from Home, dir. Chantal Ackerman (1977)
The Up Series, dir. Michael Apted (1964-2019)
In My Language, dir. Amanda Baggs (YouTube, 2007)
Streetwise, dir. Martin Bell, Mary Ellen Mark (1984)
The Devil Next Door, dir. Yossi Bloch, Daniel Sivan (2019)
Portrait of Jason, dir. Shirley Clarke (1967)
The Tailenders, dir. Adele Horn (2005)
Fog of War, dir. Erroll Morris (2003)
The Act of Killing, dir. Joshua Oppenheimer (2012)
F for Fake, dir. Orson Welles (1973)
Mysterious Object at Noon, dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2003)
24 City, dir. Jia Zhengke (2010)
City High. “What Would You Do?” City High. Interscope, 2001.
Ultra-Red / Anna Planeta. “A16” Split Series #14. Fatcat Records, 2002.
Slick Rick. “Children’s Story.” The Great Adventures of Slick Rick. Def Jam, 1988.
Michael Blum, A Tribute to Safiye Behar, mixed-media installation, 2005.
Phil Collins, my heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, October 7, 2017 - January 18, 2018.
Andrea Fraser, Projection, 2008, video installation, 52 min.
Rodney McMillian, Hanging with Clarence, live musical performance, presented in Brown: videos from The Black Show solo exhibition, The Underground Museum, Los Angeles.
Olivia Mole, Lowlifes, 2022, project for Lifes exhibition, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 16 - May 8, 2022.
More Real?: Art in the Age of Truthiness, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, July 8, 2012January 6, 2013; Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, Minneapolis, March 21 - June 9, 2013.
lauren woods, American Monument, Beall Center for Art + Technology, University of California, Irvine, October 5, 2019 - March 16, 2020.
Shevaun Wright, White Privilege Deed of Agreement, 2017.
Johnnie Mae Tillmon Blackston. Watts Oral History Collection. Southern California Library, Los Angeles.
Barbara Carrasco, “Oral History Interview with Barbara Carrasco.” Interview by Jeffrey Rangel, April 13, 1999. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Published on East of Borneo, October 13, 2017.
Corita Kent, “Los Angeles Art Community: Group Portrait - Corita Kent.” Interview by Bernard Galm, 1977. Published on East of Borneo, March 12, 2011.
Suzanne Lacy, “Suzanne Lacy on the Feminist Program at Fresno State and CalArts.” Interview by Moira Roth, March 16, 1990. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Published on East of Borneo, December 15, 2011.
Julius Lester, “Storytelling: A Way to Know Ourselves.” Lecture by Julius Lester, Date Unknown. Greenfield Community College, Greenfield, Massachusetts: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZMfOPlNCp8
Irene Tovar, “Interview of Irene Tovar.” Interview by Virgina Espino, 2011. Chicano Movement Activist Collection, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library, Los Angeles.
Othell Wilson. Interview by Adriana Widdoes, June 27, 2016. Community Library of Voice and Sound, Oral History Summer School, Hudson, New York.
Sylvia Wynter, “Sylvia Wynter: An Oral History.” Interview by Natalie StreetMarine, 2017: Stanford Faculty Oral History Project; Pioneering Women Oral History Project; Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program.
SPEAKING THE MATTER is a skill-building and reference book for artists developing oral histories and interview-based projects.
- 12 Worksheets & 4 Agreements
MOTIVES & PRACTIVES ANNOTATIONS
- Recording Checklist & Glossary of Terms
INTERVIEWING
Experimenting with an ARCHIVIST SUMMARY
READING LIST
This workbook approaches the practice and application of oral narratives as a co-constructed creative endeavor rather than reparative “truth” work. Resisting the idea of the recorded interview as a neutral historical document, this skill-building workbook instead shares perspectives on listening, remembering, gossiping, framing, and questioning, with the aim of telling our stories not as fixed subjects but as artists who are alive and breathing.
Collected together are methods and models for experimentation and collaboration in oral history projects and interview-based works. Included are practical documents created by the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) for working groups or individuals, and approaches to the artist interview by East of Borneo. These documents address artistic outcomes, the design of outlines and interviews, consent, transcription, and the annotation of oral history records. The intent is that artists can refer to these documents to experiment in creating new works and explore the meaning-making processes by which our practice is guided.
