A number of creative concepts and ideas are pushed forward by the authors in the essay as well as from their own work. One example could be Vidali's efforts to 'release' the archive from capture by reaching out to individuals and organizations that may have interest in their collected material, locating the descendants of the individuals that they recorded as a means to 'give back' and the lauch of the Bemba Online Project as a repository of a continously changing archive.
Similarly, Philips efforts for the archive to speak for itself by "splicing" and remixing David Yumba previously recorded statements and stule of rhetoric in order to produce and read out scripted letters so as to reproduce and bring the listeners as close as possible to Yumba's workplace is unconventional but speaks to the idea of interpretating and connecting to an archive in more ways than one as well as bring insights for the present by reconnecting to the past (s). Finally, the use of physical and interactive installations in order to bring about the engagement of the audience not just as a silent observer but an active and intrepretative one in order to produce 'new' meanings collectively and thereby bringing in more voices to the continued production of the archive ( instead of only the singular one of the archivist or ethnographer )
The article primarily revolves around a more nuance and multi - modal approach to archives. Essentially it argues that archives are not bounded or fixed entities that are constructed primarily of material documents and a single interpretation of a researcher using them. Instead, the authors put forwar the argument that archives are in a constant process of negotiation between institutional factors that seek to bound it within a framework and decentralized actors and forces that push for diversity. The ethnographic archive, therefore, is in man ways a decolonization project, speaking back to the homogenizing narrative of the state, essentialization of meaning and understanding of ethnographic and archive date as processes of collection, appropriation and linear representation.