credits +-

1: Angeliki Diakrousi. 2: Serene Hui. 3: Cengiz Mengüç. 4: Gilles Aubry. 5: Effi & Amir. 6: Santiago Pinyol. 7: Concrete Blossom.

Gilles Aubry, Concrete Blossom, Angeliki Diakrousi, Effi & Amir, Serene Hui, Cengiz Mengüç, Santiago Pinyol. Curated by Linnea Semmerling.

The exhibition There is no party so noisy as the one you’re not invited to shows how mechanisms for distinguishing between wanted and unwanted sounds have shaped the city’s auditory culture since the 19th century. The exhibited artworks, artefacts, and policy documents include signs prohibiting singing in public facilities, by-laws against musical instruments popular among the less affluent, registration forms for regulating honking cars in Turkish wedding motorcades, and ultrasonic devices to deter teens from public spaces. Combined, they reveal how dominant modes of listening, such as white listening, wealthy listening, and able-bodied listening, have been adopted as norms and enforced by various bureaucratic technologies and administrative instruments.

How can citizens, elected representatives, civil servants, and businesses become more sensitive to the diversity of Rotterdam’s soundscape? Can we learn to deal with sound differently, beyond the divisions current policies draw through the city? Could we respond more sensitively if we learned to listen with more empathy?

Events with this show

artists

Gilles Aubry, Concrete Blossom, Angeliki Diakrousi, Effi & Amir, Serene Hui, Cengiz Mengüç, Santiago Pinyol. Curated by Linnea Semmerling.