Not Peaceable and Quiet
Exhibition — 2018
M:ST 9 Biennial, The National Music Centre, Calgary, Alberta
The title Not Peaceable and Quiet is taken from the 1855 California Vagrancy Act, a so called race-neutral piece of legislation that attempted to frame Mexican Americans (a relatively new identity in the mid-nineteenth century) as loiters and idlers — as not peaceable and quite persons. This research-based performance examines normalized associations between criminality and sound, with special attention given to notions of silencing as a form of social control and voicing as a form or social resistance. How does noise come to be defined? Under what conditions are certain definitions of noise mobilized to maintain authority over marginalized communities? As an investigation into the politics of sound, Not Peaceable and Quiet contests institutionalized epistemologies by placing academic scholarship on sound in proximity to experimental noise performance, redefining what kinds of auditory experiences are understood as acceptable and what kinds are understood as antagonistic in the struggle over political, economic, and social equity.
