Writing Performing Cities

Undesigning sound: AdriftPM’sPortable Soundscapes

“…The development of the project, and this exegetical piece in particular, is an enterprise speaking interdisciplinarily to concerns around the performativity of the urban context (Bennett 2001;McAuley 2006;McKinnie 2007), the liberatory potential of the artist or intellectual as drifter (Harvie 2009;Whybrow 2014aWhybrow , 2014b, the participatory possibilities afforded by digital theatre (Causey 2006;Kershaw 2008;Blake 2014), and the reluctant tuning of performance studies scholarship to the aural (Curtin 2014;Home-Cook 2015;Rebstock and Roesner 2012;Roesner 2014;Thomaidis and Macpherson 2015). Our practice took cue from the figure of the drifter, and our nomadic exploration of the urban was understood as performative; however, rather than attributing ocularcentric significance to the cities visited as spectacles, we acted as sound-curious travellers.…”