Tuning in – Acoustique de l’émotion is an innovative new exhibition that explores the links between voices, heritage and humanitarian action, drawing on the audio archives and collections of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum.

Which voices do we keep, and why? Who speaks, who has the right to be heard? What role does music play in humanitarian action? What kinds of emotional bonds can be carried by the voice? What is the relationship between the act of hearing and the act of being heard? How can we hear a voice that produces no sound?

Contemporary recordings, posters, photographs and prisoners’ objects feature alongside historical artworks and new productions by Manal AlDowayan, Betty Danon, Marco Donnarumma, Gregor Hildebrandt, William Kentridge, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Piero Mottola, Julia Scher, and Dana Whabira. The exhibition aims to rediscover the sound archives of the ICRC, as well as those of the IFRC, with decolonial, feminist and inclusive perspectives, in order to achieve a constellation of relationships between sound, archives and humanitarian action.