Sound art and the making of public space

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper draws on a collaborative sound art project that aimed to explore how sound art as a non-representational method might attract and produce new publics and re-signify iconic public spaces. We describe how the project, AGORA, proceeded and to what extent it transformed the spaces it was performed in and made new, if transient, publics in the moments of performance. This paper focuses on the British Museum and St George’s Church, Bloomsbury. In the Museum, the contemplation and resignification provoked by the intervention enlivened the sacred character of the museum. We argue that this (re)sacralization can be experienced as a practice of decolonization, albeit perhaps limited to the space and time of the performance. The Church, already signified as a sacred space, provoked another kind of encounter with the sacred and the colonial. The extended period of reflection provoked by the performance made visible the etchings of colonialism in the fabric of the building. Our contribution is primarily to the geographic literature on non-representational theory in relation to sonic geographies and music geographies. This paper points to the potential of sound art to make us listen to spaces more attentively.