Welcoming sound: the case of a noise complaint in the weekly assembly of el Campo de Cebada

Abstract

This article deals with the relationship between a sonic entanglement and its ruling in a weekly assembly. In doing so, material participation is foregrounded through focus on this specific entanglement and the ways in which it is enacted within the context of a weekly assembly of a citizen-led project. Based on ethnographic work developed in el Campo de Cebada – a temporary use open-air urban site – I describe the case of a noise complaint, and how relationships around it are deployed in multiple directions. Different heterogeneous actors play specific roles in the development of a controversy, and the assembly of the project in question deals with them in order to govern them. The paper is organised around three moments: (1) the emergence and formation of a sonic entanglement; (2) the bestowing of legitimacy on the weekly assembly to deal with a controversy lacking legal standing; and (3) the process of ruling that sonic entanglement by the legitimised assembly. In studying this case, I explore how activist projects are complex heterogeneous assemblages that are developed, governed, and ultimately benefit from the enactment of what I call the ‘politics of welcoming’. I argue that those politics of welcoming – against politics of confrontation – are based on the management of timing through several governance mechanisms that allow stretching, lengthening, delaying, shortening or slowing time. Among those mechanisms, but not limited to them, we find radical openness, under-definition, re-definition, subjective perception, interpretation, exception and postponement.