Archive Fever

Recorded in May 2024, seven months after the deadly 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, Clare and Yves are joined by Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein, whose book The Palestine Laboratory was first published in May 2023. The dates matter, as numbers of Palestinian casualties grow and the genocide in Gaza continues to unfold. Where did Antony’s instinct to be an irritant germinate? How does researching against the grain of hegemonic power put him in the literal firing line? Why is WikiLeaks his go-to archival ground zero? And how do you document a genocide that is being livestreamed while the archives of a people are being reduced to rubble in an act of ‘politicide’?

Clare and Yves are joined by Jazz Money, a queer Wiradjuri filmmaker, poet and artist whose debut feature film WINHANGANHA (2023) uses archival footage by or about First Nations people from the National Film and Sound Archive to ‘make sense of the archival inheritances that shape our present realities’. What does it mean for First Nations creators to speak back to the colonial archive? How can we honour the archive of the body? And why is it essential to foreground love and joy and sexiness and strength, alongside violence and suffering?

Before British colonisation, there were more than 250 languages spoken on this continent. Less than half survive today, and most of them are under threat. In a live episode of their hit podcast, Archive Fever, historians Yves Rees and Clare Wright are joined by special guests Cheryl Leavy and Paul Girrawah House to discuss orality as archive: how language helps us know the past and why the work of language revitalisation – bringing languages back to life – is so vital to the future.

In the final episode for Season 5, Yves and Clare are joined by filmmaker, conservationist and adventurer, Oliver Cassidy, on a meandering journey from the fires of archival passions to the watery depths of the Franklin River and its deep time. Oliver takes us through the research and emotional backstory to his stunning documentary film, FRANKLIN, to reveal the relationship between human diversity and biodiversity. How does the dual transition narrative of the film demonstrate the quest to be the best version of yourself? What story do we tell ourselves about who we are, both as individuals and as a nation? Is it possible to heal multiple wounds – historical, familial, environmental, political – by using a river as archive, as a source of evidence? How can we use can we use documentary film footage as a tool of archival activism so that current generations can draw courage from the traditions of commitment, protection and responsibility of past change leaders?

Can historians kick off the shackles of footnotes and approach the past in the spirit of play? This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves are joined by Dr Nadia Rhook, a historian and poet whose most recent collection is Second Fleet Baby (Freemantle Press, 2022). In a conversation that tackles the limitations of the history discipline, Nadia shares her journey from conventional academic historian to creative writer who connects with the past from the fullness of herself. How can we restore the past in ways that nourish the historian? Why does being more creative involve giving up authority? And what can settler historians learn from First Nations archival poetics?

This week, an Archive Fever first: live music! Clare and Yves are joined in studio by acclaimed musicians Nigel Wearne and Luke Watt, who collectively record as Above the Bit. Their debut self-titled album is a feast of revisionist storytelling, featuring lyrical tales of mutineers, rebels, warriors and wayfarers in Australia’s history. How can traditional music – like oral history – serve as an endless archive? When songwriters do research, what comes first: the story or the music? How much historical licence can you take in songwriting that has truth-telling (and activism) at its heart? Why don’t some tales heal unless they are told? And why does listening to music make even the most hardened of grown men cry? Spoiler alert: this episode comes with bonus musical tracks. Get out your tissues.

Bonjour Australie! This week, Clare and Yves put on their berets and grab a baguette to talk Australian history through a French lens with Dr Alexis Bergantz, historian at RMIT University and author of the award-winning French Connection: Australia’s Cosmopolitan Ambition (NewSouth, 2021). How does being an outsider give one fresh eyes on a nation’s past? Why should we disrupt the monolingualism of Australia’s settler history? What do non-English archives bring to the table? And can foreign-language sources help us challenge nationalist mythologies?

This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves dive down into the archival underbelly of 1930s queer, criminal Sydney, with author, performance and activist, Fiona Kelly Macgregor, whose recent novel Iris is a stunner. Why does holding the bullets from a woman’s gun – trial evidence – compel you to spend twenty years writing a book? How do you get a voice from the dead to rise up out of the grave, speaking in the urban colloquial vernacular of a bygone era? At what is all this nostalgia for a pre-digital age where it was possible to driftnet fish in the stacks? Fiona takes us on a tour through tattoos, night clubs and streets that might just be familiar to you … sort of.

Who said archives had to be on planet earth? This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves are joined by Kamilaroi woman Krystal de Napoli, an astrophysicist, advocate for Indigenous astronomy and co-author of the award-winning book Astronomy: Sky Country (2022). How does the sky function as an archive for Indigenous knowledges? Why does light pollution threaten this celestial library? And why must any recognition of Indigenous sovereignty extend to the sky? Once you learn about Indigenous sky rights, you’ll never think about Country the same way again.

This week is a first for Archive Fever: a lawyer in the hot seat! Clare and Yves are joined by Professor Kate Auty, barrister, magistrate, law reformer and, with the 2023 release of her book O’Leary of the Underworld, historian. What are the differences between legal research and historical research? What happens when an archivist turns informer? Why, when you ‘enter a justice space’, is writing an explainer simply not an option? What happens to judicial impartiality when you want to flay your historical protagonist alive? And how does it feel, down there in the gutter fight of history?