Paul Mellon Centre
16 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3JA
19 October 2022
Convened by Lucia Farinati and Jennifer Thatcher
This workshop aimed to make visible the decisions involved in the transcription process and the knock-on effects on how the interview is received.
While there is no fixed set of protocols for transcribing artist interviews, critics, historians and curators have adopted certain conventions that we tend to take for granted. However, it is important to acknowledge the extent to which interview transcripts are edited: whether abridged, revised, corrected or redacted. Furthermore, no two individuals will transcribe the same recording in the same way, psychological, social and physiological factors all affecting how something is said and what is heard at a given time.
The politics and ethics of interview transcription have been debated since the 1960s, following the increased availability of recording equipment and subsequent growth in use of interview transcripts as historical sources. Nonetheless, these debates have generally taken place within the specific context of oral history, and thus are marked by a general suspicion of the transcript as a secondary tool. Yet there is an urgency to the question of the status of transcripts as libraries and archives battle to save their audio-visual material, whose physical carriers face continual degradation and obsolescence. Constraints on time and money, as well as copyright concerns, mean that many interview recordings will not be saved and any scripts and transcripts will be the only records.
This workshop was in three parts:
- Part one: introduction to transcription, using case studies from archives and publications. Led by Jennifer Thatcher.
- Part two: practical examples of transcription, exploring a variety of methods and formats, from the ‘traditional’ Q&A model to more experimental approaches to notation that offer new forms of art writing. Led by Lucia Farinati.
- Part three: discussion on the ethics of interview transcription with art historian and interviewer Jean Wainwright.
