Abstract

This audio paper is a provocation in response to the political provocation of generic (Schmidt 2023) aural gentrification. Earlier this year the Danish government considered legislation that would see the restriction of outside service in bars, bodegas and cafes after 10pm. A politician in support of the proposed law said, »We must have a city you can live in: one in which you get a good night’s sleep and can get up and go to work the next day« (CPH Post Reporter 2023). This imperative that the soundscape of urban space should conform to the generic schedules of the forms of life associated with upwardly mobile, white collar professionals has already had a dramatic influence of the the night life of a number of urban centers of culture and counterculture around the world, that mostly sees already marginalized groups pushed out of their communities (Assiter 2022, Román-Velázquez 2022). This tendency looks set to continue with ever more self-righteous health and productivity justifications.

Building an argument situated in Nørrebro, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Copenhagen at a moment of intense protest on the street, this audio paper will combine, audio, analysis and anecdotes to contest the ongoing naturalization of the generic redefinition of the urban soundscape (Venäläinen et al. 2021). By connecting the audio artifacts of the lived environment to a theoretical critique of identity as completability (Berlant 2022, Savransky 2021, Harney & Moten, 2021), this paper will contend that far from their being some virtue containing the sonic chaos of urban space, there is in fact a paradoxical ideological attempt at sonic warfare (Goodman 2009) to reduce the experience and emotion of encountering difference in service of producing a generic urban non-place (Augé 2008) that facilitates the narrow goals capitalism.