BUZZWA(O)L(R)K(D)
Looking at loitering as both pollution and excess, Angeliki Diakrousi invites you to join us in hidden and regulated public spaces at the centre of Amsterdam.
About the workshop:
Are you a local, a teenager, an active neighbour, a digital citizen, a skater, a curious adult, or do you just like to hang out at some square in your neighbourhood? This ‘buzzwalk’ invites you on a speculative walking tour through Amsterdam for audiating neighbourhoods and cities otherwise. What happens when the future of our cities is ‘smart’, automated, and mediated for reasons of safety and security? What is identified as noise and from whom? Who regulates noise and how does this affect access to public life? How might we trace the ‘unsound’, in Steve Goodman’s terms, the futures ‘not yet audible’ and ‘undefined’?
Led by designer and researcher Angeliki Diakrousi, this night walk playfully unfolds through ‘silent’ sounds and anecdotes from the city of Rotterdam – translated to the Amsterdam context – with the use of speakers and special sonic detectors including the Mosquito Harmonizer developed in collaboration with MAYB Studio (Mitchell Akiyama & Maria Yablonia). The materials gathered during this expanded time hanging out with others, researching, walking, and encountering loitering teenagers and inhabitants, will offer a starting point in considering Amsterdam’s borders, frequencies and other possible resonances.
BUZZWA(O)L(R)K(D) occurs on the occasion of the work Hunting Mosquitos which explores urban sound technologies and the socio-political implications of their use. The work started as an invitation from the curator Linnea Semmerling and TENT, Rotterdam where it will be exhibited in December of 2022. The work, supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL, examines the ‘Mosquito alarm’ or ‘The Mosquito’, a technology used in public places in Rotterdam that emits sound at a high frequency, audible only to young people to deter them from loitering. It comes as a solution, activated mostly during the night, to issues of urban crime and security. Its use has triggered discussions about the extent to which this technology constitutes discrimination.
Participation
The walk will last approximately 2.5 hours, is aimed for a group of maximum 12 participants, and welcomes individuals regardless of experience. We ask participants to bring their own headphones and to wear comfortable shoes and clothes for walking outside. If the weather conditions are bad, time spent outdoors will be minimised.
