Sound art/street life: tracing the social and political effects of sound installations in London

Stirling, C. (2016) Sound art/street life: tracing the social and political effects of sound installations in London. Journal of Sonic Studies, 11 ISSN 2212–6252

Abstract

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. ******* PLEASE NOTE: This article is available open access at the 'Official URL' given below. *******

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