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
licenseAll rights reserved
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/234018/234019
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/JSS.234018
published inJournal of Sonic Studies
portal issue11. Issue 11


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nameFigure 12. Image by author, 2013.
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameFigure 11
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameFigure 10: Bell ringing performance at “Convergence”, Bow Church.
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameFigure 9
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameFigure 8: “Bridge Links”, Regent's Canal.
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameFigure 7
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameFigure 6: “Phantom Railings”, Bloomsbury.
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameFigure 5
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameFigure 4
copyrightChristobel Stirling
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nameFigure 3: Windrush Square, Brixton.
copyrightChristobel Stirling
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nameFigure 2: The Camden Bench, Camden.
copyrightFactory Furniture Ltd.
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nameFigure 1: Anti-homeless spikes, Southwark.
copyrightAndrew Horton, 2014.
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copyrightJSS
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nameVideoObject 3: Stepping under the arches, “Bridge Links”, Regent's Canal.
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameVideoObject 2
copyrightChristabel Stirling
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nameVideoObject 1
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