JUSTIN BENNETT
Invited at the recommendation by Muziek Centrum Nederland / Ned. Fonds voor Podiumkunsten+.
Plan: ‘Shotgun Architecture’ – acoustic research in public space of the Zuidas that will result in computer drawings, architectural sketches and a sound composition (10 inch vinyl, published by Onomatopee); sound walk through the (summer of 2009).
‘In my sound walk I want to offer people a different experience, to have them listen to the actual sound of the area. The Zuidplein with its large buildings sounds very different than a chaotic old city. Sound is underestimated as a component of the built environment. For example, what will be the consequences of the dock model? The fact that the noise of the highway and trains goes underground seems fantastic. But by removing the masking sound of the highway, the noise of the airplanes will probably be a tremendous nuisance in the Zuidas. The question is, what’s better?’
The rhythm that is proper to capitalism is the rhythm of producing (everything: things, men, people, etc.) and destroying (through wars, through progress, through inventions and brutal interventions, through speculation, etc.).’ Henri Lefebvre.
The animation “City of Progress” and the sound project “Shotgun Architecture” refer to the idea of the balance between creativity and destruction that is implicit in any large urban development.
Many of the financial institutions situated on, or involved in the Zuidas invest their money (and our money) in companies that produce cluster bombs, depleted uranium munitions or nuclear warheads. Imagine the effect of using those weapons at ground zero of the Zuidas. Of course, that’s highly unlikely. As a consequence of globalisation, those weapons are mostly produced and used in other countries - the war has been out-sourced. In some godforsaken place on the other side of the globe an explosion has left an enormous crater the size of the Zuidas, a negative space, like a perfect mould of the Zuidas itself.
No, the violence here in northern Europe is more subtle – it acts through the systematic privatisation of public spaces and services, through the displacement of populations in order to gentrify neighbourhoods, through the use of our current obsession with security to create spaces of fear. Or through the relegation of the public sphere to the internet where citizens can safely play out a simulation of democracy, or even worse, police themselves more efficiently than Orwell could have ever imagined.
These themes will be combined with a research into the soundscape of the Zuidas in an audio-guide for the area. This audio-guide will be presented in 2009 as part of the project “Soundtrackcity Amsterdam”.
