Project Diary – Oceania @ Göttingen

17. October 2025Working Paper published: “The Koch Tape Collection (Kiribati 1963/64): Digitized Overview and Thematic Lists” This paper presents a structured and searchable overview of the Koch Tape Collection – songs and dance chants recorded by Gerd and Sigrid Koch during their 1963–64 fieldwork on Tabiteuea, Nonouti, and Onotoa (Kiribati). The project combines digitized versions of twelve BASF mono tapes with OCR-processed catalogue data from an unpublished 1964 manuscript to create...
4. December 2024“Music and Dance in the Fight Against Climate Change: Interlinked Effects of Dance Costume in Kiribati” (published in German in “Weltenfragmente”) Reference Elfriede Hermann and Wolfgang Kempf (2024):Musik und Tanz im Kampf gegen Klimawandel: Verknüpfte Wirkungen von Tanzkleidung in Kiribati. In: Michael Kraus (ed.): Weltenfragmente – Die Ethnologische Sammlung der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Göttingen: University Press, pp. 274–287. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2024-2696.
27. July 2023Paper presented @ DGSKA Conference, 25–28 July 2023, Munich, Germany »„Tell me Tolly“: Indigenous Appropriation, Ethnographic Knowledge Production, and Sound Heritage in Kiribati« by Wolfgang Kempf
5. December 2022“The Koch Tape Collection from Kiribati: Emergence, Efficacies and Representations” (published in German in Baessler Archiv 68, 2022) The focus of this study is the historical exploration of a collection of audio documents with songs and dance chants from the Gilbert Archipelago in the Central Pacific.
6. June 2022Paper presented @ 13th ESfO Conference, 2–5 June 2022, Ajaccio, Corsica, France »Im/Material Dimensions of Historicity: Linking Sound Documents and Historical Representations of a Religious Movement in Kiribat« by Wolfgang Kempf
27. January 2022Paper presented @ ASAO 2022 Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, USA »Sounds from the Past: Reassembling Songs and Memory« by Wolfgang Kempf (University of Göttingen) & Lisa Lawson Burke (Framingham State University).
28. May 2021Paper presented at Online-Workshop »Re-activating old film reels – Debating methodologies of collaborative restitution of archival film« @ Frobenius-Institute, Frankfurt »Reassembling Image and Sound: On the Post-Synchronization of Film Doc« by Wolfgang Kempf (University of Göttingen)
12. February 2021Report in Kiribati Newstar