Introduction

“Total silence beyond birdsong.
Empty flight path above,
a car door closing down the street.”

Verity-Jane Keefe,
London-based artist, April 1, 2020, Twitter

“Humans are the virus, nature is healing” read one of the more popular memes that circulated during the months of the (first?) round of Covid-19 lockdowns in Spring 2020. Images of wildlife – ducks and geese in Las Vegas, goats in Llandudno, Wales, deer in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, and many others – roaming around city streets usually occupied by people who were otherwise taking care to isolate away from public places. Not only did we see “nature” more vividly, we heard it too. From my apartment in Athens, the unsettling stillness that defined that first phase of lockdown was accompanied by a heightened awareness of the birdsong outside.

At the time, I couldn’t tell if the birds were actually louder or if I was just listening harder, searching for signs of the changed city outside. Yet numerous studies from across the globe have since confirmed that our cities really did get quieter. ¹ Kate Wagner, critic and specialist in architectural acoustics, recorded a six decibel drop in her Washington D.C. neighbourhood, “roughly the difference between a city street at rush hour and 2 a.m”, as she wrote in The Atlantic. Wagner continues, “Under any other circumstances, such a quick and dramatic reduction in noise levels is unthinkable.” ²

Amidst this disquieting quiet, what did we hear?

We heard claps, cheers and chants. First, from balconies and porches across Europe, people celebrated health- and other undervalued essential-workers in semi-spontaneous moments of distanced gathering; togetherness expressed through voice. Later, following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, the calls and demands of Black Lives Matter protestors reverberated from the Twin Cities to metropolises around the world. More recently, we have heard the distraught voices of anti-government protests in Beirut, Belarus and beyond. Our cities may have quietened in 2020, but the political voice – the physiological and social phenomenon of having a vocal presence in society – has continued to punctuate our muffled environments.

The political voice is the subject of this, the second volume in an ongoing series of Sonic Urbanism publications edited by &beyond for Theatrum Mundi. As with the previous volume, the contributions published here are predominantly derived from the Crafting a Sonic Urbanism: The Political Voice conference organised by Theatrum Mundi and the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (IRIS), which took place at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, at Campus Condorcet in Paris in December 2019. That these projects were first presented in a pre‑Covid context does little to change their ongoing relevance in how the voice is produced, amplified, shared and otherwise heard in contemporary cities.

“Voices are arguably our primary mode of engagement with urban societies, but are little understood in the disciplines that design and plan cities […] ”

stated the call for contributions to that conference, conceived jointly by Arnaud Esquerre (IRIS) and John Bingham-Hall (TM). As we consider how post-Covid cities might evolve, perhaps now is the time to listen more closely to those voices.

In an extended media progression from the first volume, Sonic Urbanism: The Political Voice is published both in print and online. This means that the following publication will vary slightly depending on whether you are reading it on a screen or with the book in your hands. Both versions can be enjoyed separately in their entirety but they are designed to complement one another; benefitting from both the tactile delight of Diana Portela’s print design and the multimedia capabilities of the Theatrum Mundi website.

This approach has allowed us to commission audio pieces as well as texts, and to publish additional sounds and songs, voices and videos, to augment the contributions. In the case of Grégoire Chelkoff, whose article opens the publication, we share snippets from his cartophonies.fr project, a collection of in situ recordings taken across the world since 1979 which inform his understanding of how voices work in public spaces, and how they can inform the production of future cityscapes. His text is followed with Polyvocality, a lecture by Eleni Ikoniadou, which considers the disembodied politics of the voice and its mediation by mechanical processes from the nineteenth century through to today. Next, Tom Western and Kareem Al Kabbani provide our first audio commission; an emotional and incisive reflection on the sonics of public song and protest between Damascus and Athens.

The cries of London market-sellers are at the centre of Duncan MacLeod’s work, both through historic research as well as his own sound work “The Cries of Columbia Road” which we publish here alongside his text. The centrepiece of the publication is a discussion between curator Eric de Visscher and researcher Gascia Ouzounian, which can be both heard and read. Their in‑depth conversation looks at the historic workings of sound in museums, both as noisy interference and curated object, as well as de Visscher’s work with the Victoria and Albert museum in east London. Sticking with London, Ella Finer’s essay provides a detailed reading of Parliament Square, where decades of protests have sought to render themselves audible to the legislative buildings next door.

Noise becomes a cover for – rather than an amplifier of – dissent in Fabien Cante’s piece, Post-Conflict Sounding, our second audio commission. Cante’s research is situated in the peace-building processes of contemporary Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, with a particular focus on the role of public radio stations and the raucous energy of coupé-décalé music. In sharp contrast, Jonathan Packham’s intriguing analysis of Lin Chi-Wei’s “Tape Music” – part-composition, part-social experiment – follows with new illustrations by Tom Gooch (print only). Concluding this volume, Theatrum Mundi director John Bingham‑Hall synthesises the discussion between Saskia Sassen and composer Alexandra Lacroix which took place at the Political Voice conference in 2019, bridging the gulf between the muteness of financialised real estate and an artistic project based around the voices of local inhabitants.

“The proliferation of riot, civil unrest and occupation throughout the world in 2019 and 2020 is perhaps a symptom of an exhaustion with speech and a desire simply to be extremely, disruptively, and radically present. Not politely asking for a response but making a noise so loud all other conversations have to stop, even if briefly.”

writes Bingham-Hall in his conclusion.

From this disparate collection of texts and sounds, a persistent idea emerges: more than speech alone, the political voice is buttressed by the power of listening. At this moment in time, disrupted by pandemic and protest, it seems humankind has a choice: to persist as “a virus”, clamouring atop of one another, or, as part of nature, to start healing too – by listening.

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