Echoes of Urban Catastrophe: Sonic Governance in an Era of Crisis and Vulnerability

Disasters disrupt, altering the course of urban futurity and how people navigate and make sense of compounding risk and uncertainty. This talk argues for greater attention to the sensory dimensions of urban crises, particularly as experienced through sonic rupture. Catastrophic events not only generate profound disruptions to the social, economic, and temporal rhythms of everyday life. They also effect a radical sensory reorientation—one that compels new ways of being in, caring for, and attuning to urban environments through sound. In an era dominated by vision, what can the sounds associated with declared emergencies reveal about crisis governance and experiences of vulnerability in the city? How might listening to acoustic atmospheres offer new insights into states of exception and their implications for collective life? Drawing on embodied “soundwork” conducted in Hanoi, Vietnam during the pandemic, this talk examines how urban soundscapes became sites of intervention within a framework of “sonic socialism.” Media infrastructures and sonic technologies amplified state authority, rallying public attention against external threats, yet social cohesion coexisted with acoustic dissent. By centering sound, this talk shows how a sensory grammar of crisis opens critical possibilities to attend to vulnerability and urban care practices amid intersecting emergencies. 

Held by: Christina Schwenkel (University of California at Riverside) Further information on the event's website