Sonic memory interventions against politics of urban silencing

Abstract

We discuss the political implications of the noise/silence dialectic in order to reflect on the urban and social materialities of sonic memory activism in the post- Yugoslav space. We see the privatization of public space as one of the defining issues of current socio-political tensions and we strive to offer a more nuanced model for thinking about grassroots practices of musicking and listening in the context of resistance and power and control redistribution. Discussing sonic interventions in Ljubljana and Belgrade enables us both to uncover how important global processes are reflected in these local contexts and to locate diversity of present practices of resistance.