What is the burden of the archive if not memory itself? Can we move on from thinking of archives as stores of data, and closer to an idea of a desiring archive, a reservoir of affective materials and resistant opacities? In establishing the Women’s Audio Archive in London (1985-1991) I had in mind both the collection and a site where the recorded conversations would participate in developing a history of women in the media-visual tradition, which by its ephemeral nature can easily be forgotten. The Archive with its attention to sound acted as an incision in the hegemony of visuality and adjacent commodity values of the 1980s. At the centre of the project lies a conversation offering a chance of escaping an existing code while introducing the idea of exchange as a form of rebellion. Drawing upon my own experience of living under a totalitarian cultural regime in which possibility of political subversion emerges in conversations with others, as well as by spreading the word, it was important to pay attention to mediation between desires and deeds. Through an ongoing Negotiations project I have been committed to changing the archive’s status from a private activity, originating in search of my own voice, to a publicly available resource. In the age of a depleted public domain and growing tensions around intellectual property rights, the Women’s Audio Archive encourages questions around our collective responsibility towards creating as well as protecting intellectual commons.