The Power and the Politics of Sound

It could be as loud as a fire alarm or soft as a whisper. Either way, sound has the power to seep into our perceptions while influencing and impacting our actions. However, we often intake sound unconsciously and act automatically in its presence. What is sound? It is a wave form that is perceived by the ear and then interpreted by the brain. One can passively hear or more intentionally listen to a sound. Noise, a subset of sound, is often interpreted negatively. Jacques Attali alludes to noise as an interruption of the message. However, what if it contained a message, and if we listened, what would we hear? In the hands of an artist, sound can become material that can shift a listener’s perception and perspective. For example, Jacob Kirkegaard’s piece 4 Rooms, captures the minute sounds of four abandon rooms in the in Chernobyl’s “Zone of Exclusion,” thus, speaking to governmental negligence and resilience of the natural world. Sound artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan reconstructs an auditory Foucaultian panopticon from silenced and blind folded political prisoner accounts of the Saydnaya Syrian military prison. A message becomes clear through protest as in the 2017 Chicago Women’s March, which advocated for women’s rights. In an energetic chant, a group of women exclaimed “This pussy fights back!” Artists or not, these women expressed their message artistically through sound. This demonstrates the political and artistic power of sound, and its strength as an artistic medium.