Exposition

Sound Art / Street Life: Tracing the social and political effects of sound installations in London (2016)

Christabel Stirling
open exposition

About this exposition

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in London (2013-14) to address the social and political effects of installation and place-based sound-works. I begin by reviewing a number of theoretical approaches to the city, using my own and others’ ethnographic accounts of London to problematize some of the affirmative conceptualizations of the city being propagated by non-representational theories and cultural geographers. In so doing, I provide the theoretical and contextual substratum for my ensuing discussion of the sound-works, and offer an initial view on why physical urban public space remains crucial to progressive politics. I then examine the sonic re-arrangement of public space in three site-specific sound installations. Through ethnographic analysis of the social dynamics summoned into being by each sound-work, and the “multiple mediations” that animated such dynamics (Born 2005), I offer interpretations as to whether, and if so how, the sound installations might be enlisted as part of a process oriented towards mobilizing democratic designs.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsaffect, ethnography, social mediation, sound installation art, urban politics
date06/12/2015
published13/01/2016
last modified13/01/2016
statuspublished
share statusprivate
licenseAll rights reserved
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/234018/234019
published inJournal of Sonic Studies
portal issue11. Issue 11


Simple Media

id name copyright license
234095 Figure 12. Image by author, 2013. Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234092 Figure 11 Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234079 VideoObject 3: Stepping under the arches, “Bridge Links”, Regent's Canal. Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234072 VideoObject 2 Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234069 Figure 10: Bell ringing performance at “Convergence”, Bow Church. Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234064 Figure 9 Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234061 Figure 8: “Bridge Links”, Regent's Canal. Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234055 VideoObject 1 Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234051 Figure 7 Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234047 Figure 6: “Phantom Railings”, Bloomsbury. Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234043 Figure 5 Christabel Stirling All rights reserved
234040 Figure 4 Christobel Stirling All rights reserved
234037 Figure 3: Windrush Square, Brixton. Christobel Stirling All rights reserved
234034 Figure 2: The Camden Bench, Camden. Factory Furniture Ltd. All rights reserved
234032 Figure 1: Anti-homeless spikes, Southwark. Andrew Horton, 2014. All rights reserved
234027 sonicstudies-banner-964-3 JSS All rights reserved

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