On Monday, 22 June 2026, 4.15 pm to 6.30 pm, Dr. Valerij Zolotukhin (Ruhr University Bochum) will give a guest lecture entitled “Listening to Early Audio Recordings Today: A Memory Studies Perspective on the First Soviet Collection of Writers’ Voices”. The lecture will take place in the Philosophikum (Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster), Room 201.

The talk explores the listening experience of early literary sound recordings, with a particular focus on authenticity as its key component. It examines recordings from the first Soviet collection of writers’ voices, made between 1920 and 1930 in Petrograd (later Leningrad) by the Institute for the Study of Artistic Speech. An analysis of how sound recordings (including those of Alexander Blok and Vladimir Mayakovsky) were integrated into both research and creative practices in the 1920s makes it possible to outline a constantly shifting relationship between technology, memory, and performative practices.

Individual memory played an immense role in the reception of these recordings. Contemporary listening practices were often
based on prior experience, when recordings served as a material aid for recalling a poet’s “live” performance. However, listening techniques for literary audio recordings are shaped not only by the mechanics of individual memory, but also by broader social and cultural frameworks.

From the 1920s to the present day, recordings from the same collection have been incorporated into radio programming. They have also been released on vinyl records and later on CDs, and have become material for remixing and reworking – nowadays even more ubiquitous due to AI technologies. The memory studies perspective helps to explain the major transformations in how audio heritage is listened to and understood.