Perceptions of place and identity can be ontologically interrogated and mined for more dimensional, associative meaning through the methodological application of ethnography. Ostensibly following a trail of experiential description, a focused reading of the corporeal, technical, sociological and political circumstances surrounding a sonic artefact. Steven Feld’s (1996, pp. 97) term of ‘acoustemology’ is designed to express and ‘to argue the potential of acoustic knowing, of sounding as a condition of and for knowing, of sonic presence and awareness as potent shaping forces in how people make sense of experiences.’ Listening and sounding within the context of acoustemology can yield surprising, often challenging, results.
In our own brief ethnography, I was drawn to observe the construction site noise in the centre of Elephant and Castle. A busy circuit of traffic roars around the base of the megalithic concrete and steel core of what is to be the new campus site of London College of Communication.
The amphitheatrical nature of the Elephant and Castle roundabout engenders a sonically reflective wash of percussive, arrhythmic machine noise and hammering. At that elevation and distance, it’s impossible to determine which sounds are generated by human or machine physicality. On a macro scale, all the audible sound is generated by human labour of some kind, and all the infrastructure that we depend on is a result of the fruits of that sounding. To reach a personally intimate ethnographic analysis would be interesting, zooming in on the blood, sweat and tears that can be overlooked as being base in an art world often sociologically walled-off from those who literally laid the foundations their institutions rest upon.
The ethical and pragmatic concerns large scale firms employing a proportion of foreign labourers and contractors enables the ethnographic exploration of working language and terminology, social pockets and structures existing within transplanted places.
The acoustic properties of construction are far-ranging and internationally variable; the landscapes there are interfacing with, changing or destroying, the people it employs, ensnares or relocates, innumerable factors engender multifarious acoustemological associations and readings. What makes London construction different to Jakarta or Murmansk? What factors separate rural building from chip factory construction?
The Ab Reinhardt quote ‘art is art and everything else is everything else’ annoys me to no end. To me, it alludes to the implicit establishment of art as a separatist staging ground against normalcy. Intentional or not, it plays into the narrow and performative institutional engagement with the outside world and its concerns. Much of the commercial art world is run out of, props up and promotes the continued existence of the elevated, ‘glass palace’ archetype. Does the art world truly reach back down to touch those who put them there?
Bibliography:
Feld, S. (1996) ‘Waterfalls of Song: an acoustemology of place resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea’, in S. Feld and K. H. Basso (eds) Senses of Place. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, pp. 97
Allies and Morrison (2024) London College of Communication. Available at: https://www.alliesandmorrison.com/projects/london-college-of-communication#:~:text=The%20new%20home%20for%20UAL’s,screen%20%2D%20and%20almost%2060%20courses. (Accessed: 17 March 2024)
University of the Arts London (2024) LCC New Building. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-college-of-communication/about-lcc/lcc-new-building (Accessed: 17 March 2024)