Rebuilding Archives: A Mixtape Methodology
Onkar Singh Kular
Lecture
Sa., 12.7.2025
17:00–18:00
Pavilion (Semra Ertan Garden)
In English
Free entry

Photo: Simon Eliasson
Through spoken word, video collages, and vinyl records this performance lecture describes how bass cultures have created spaces, objects, and broadcasting infrastructure through collective and DIY modes of designing. In the UK and beyond, Black music and its genres such as reggae, dub, techno, jungle, and grime have been inscribed into landscapes as a form of spatial, sonic, material, and embodied evidence. As these inscriptions have been largely ignored by the fields of design and architecture, uncovering this history requires alternative methods of researching, archiving, and mediating. These overlooked inscriptions can be found (digging in the crates) in recorded radio, TV, and documentary interviews and clips posted on social media platforms, vinyl records and song lyrics that typically sit outside of design and architecture history writing. Once edited (sampled), compiled, and organized (mix-taped), they begin to rebuild an archive of design experience, knowledge, and community space making. A Mixtape Methodology can therefore be viewed as a practice of archive building and foregrounds the role of diasporic designing, architecture, and broadcasting located within bass cultures.