Olivia Melkonian is an audio producer, sonic artist/archivist and founder of Analog Armenia - an archival project dedicated to the preservation of Armenian cassettes. In exploring and documenting the Western Armenian experience, she uses audio to work with fragments of memory to reimagine and reconstruct what has been lost, forgotten, and misremembered, addressing absences and epistemic gaps. Her practice uses sonic archiving to preserve associations of place and memory as a result of endangered histories, addressing archival absences while questioning memory and knowledge formation. Olivia’s work preserves intangible cultural heritage, exploring how sound-based memory informs collective knowledge and sustains cultural continuity. Through acts of remembering, she considers how historical consciousness is carried into the present and informs contemporary modes of living, learning, and connecting.

Analog Armenia (archive)

Analog Armenia is an archival project dedicated to the preservation and celebration of Armenian cassette culture. As both a physical and digital archive, Analog Armenia safeguards intangible sonic heritage including endangered dialects, folk songs, revolutionary radio broadcasts and religious masses. Sourced from Lebanon, Armenia, and community contributions, the project also traces the social, cultural, and historical narratives embedded within these recordings.

Upon Closer Listening (mixtape)

Upon Closer Listening explores what it means to protect, revive, and interact with intangible heritage through a mixtape of Armenian music and sonic material originally found on cassette. These material artefacts safeguard what genocide could not physically destroy.

This mixtape is a varied catalogue of sounds and voices, documenting the breadth of Armenian experiences during more than a century in exile. The Armenian language, particularly the Western Armenian dialect, has persisted amid suppression, with its continued use reflecting an enduring resilience through which identity is retained. Ongoing colonial and geopolitical conditions still distance people and their sounds from their points of origin, producing an archive marked as much by displacement and interruption as by preservation and active efforts of recovery.

The entire work is first created through the digitisation of analogue media. Some pieces experience natural modification of frequencies, a symptom of use and degradation over time. Fragments of others are manipulated through techniques such as pitch-bending, echo, and reverb. These chance and deliberate interventions reflect the instability of memory, in recognition of histories that are fragmented, altered, and continually reconstructed. Rather than presenting memory as a fixed archive, the work foregrounds its volatility, mediation, reinterpretation, and continual reshaping through acts of listening, reproduction, and circulation.

Sounds From an Armenian Childhood (radio documentary)

Olivia Melkonian invites you into the 42nd house of her grandmother to explore the sounds from an Armenian childhood. As a child, this space always felt magical to Olivia. Now as an adult, she's discovering more about the stories that have shaped the space. From her family's experience of war and fleeing conflict, to the cultural traditions that have followed her grandmother around the globe, this programme explores the importance of sound for nostalgia.

Without Interruptions (soundscape)

A curated sonic environment made up of field recordings from Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Libya and London with archival radio material from Kurdistan, Armenia, Palestine and Iran featuring Yezidi popular music.

The Listening Lounge (installation)

Reimagining how archives are built, activated and used, don’t worry i won’t forget you presents the entire physical archive of the West Asian and North African Women’s Art Library (WANAWAL) for the first time since its inception. Books, tapes, magazines, research and various ephemera are displayed to create an intimate and welcoming setting that encourages visitors to engage directly with the material. By rejecting traditional and hierarchical approaches, this alternative environment explores how experimental archival methods can facilitate inclusive, generative experiences. Here, visitors are invited to thoroughly explore the archive, delve into the wealth of stories and histories it preserves, seek parts of their own narrative or find joy in discovering others. Participating artists include: Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri, Xece "Khadija Baker", Meriem Bennani, Shamiran Istifan, Olivia Melkonian, and Sara Rahman.