SAM Talks: “Unpacking My Collection” – Vinyl, music, and our desire to collect with Jon Dale

If you’re an old soul with a love for physical media in the digital age, you’re invited to join us for an exciting iteration of SAM Talks, led by University of Melbourne’s Jon Dale.

This talk unspools a thread from critic Walter Benjamin’s 1931 essay, Unpacking My Library, where the author explores the practice of collecting, with the collector “locking… individual items within a magic circle”, while attempting “to renew the old world” – to “bring… coherence to a chaotic world”, as scholar Kevin Moist notes.

What does it mean, then, to collect records, for their status both as objects themselves and as carriers of recorded culture? Using Brett Whiteley’s record collection as an example, this talk considers the desires that underpin the chaos and order of the collection – and of the collector.

Program Details
Date + time: Thursday 18 September, 6pm to 7.15pm
Location: Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton
Price: Free – registrations essential

Register now

About Jon Dale:

Jon Dale’s teaching encompasses cultural studies; noise, sound and music; and critical theory. He has also taught across a number of institutions in avant-garde art, experimental film and music, experimental writing and poetics, sociology, media and communication, literature and creative writing, anthropology, and criminology. He has also given guest lectures in fashion, visual arts, youth studies, and presentation strategies.

His research currently focuses on the intersection of arts education, conceptual art, DIY practices and post-punk music in England through the 1970s. He has published book chapters on the vinyl record and its significance to dance music culture, histories of popular music criticism, experimental music and improvisation in the Aotearoa/New Zealand underground, and the relationships between experimental film and music.

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