In the Shadow of Shadow (2010)

In the Shadow of Shadow (2010) was led by Strickland Distribution in collaboration with Ultra-Red, a collective who intervene in sites of struggle through sound recording and critical listening practices.

The work began with a walk from the centre of the city towards the Barras market in the East End. Around 50 people set out to analyse the city’s gentrification drive. Offering a spatial and economic ‘history from below’, facilitator Neil Gray’s discussion points included land banking and rent gaps, the upcoming Commonwealth Games (2014) and the links between the rise of the ‘creative class’, low-paid service sector employment and state-led property strategies. Activist Graham Campbell addressed the city’s links to the slave trade while Alberto Durano from the London Cleaner’s Campaign covered worker organisation in the service sector. The following week, the group met up again for a ‘listening session’ with Ultra-red, returning to recordings of the presentations as well as ambient sounds from the walk (such as a track entitled ‘demolition’).

This strategy of ‘political listening’ has been central to Ultra-red’s work since the collective was founded in LA during the early 1990s. They describe themselves as conducting ‘Militant Sound Investigations alongside social justice movements.’ With a background in the politics of HIV/AIDS, their activities have expanded to work with or within struggles centring migration, anti-racism, poverty and, perhaps most frequently, urban space and housing.

The sound documents were then made available for analysis via a set of ‘protocols’ for organised listening which begin with a primary question: What did you hear?  Ultra-red’s wother projects have included other questions including what is the sound of the war on the poor? … the sound of freedom? … of anti-racism? How can the loss of housing be rendered in digital audio?

In the Shadow of Shadow took place at a nascent stage of local organising around regeneration and the cycles of housing struggles. Participants included representatives from different groups and backgrounds keen to explore the possibilities for organisation and resistance.

Following the listening session back in 2010, Ultra-red reported a sense of deep frustration amongst the participants who wanted to know what the purpose of the session was and how it would connect to actual struggles. Reflecting a decade on, Neil Gray saw how valuable their horizontal ethos and the protocols were to the development of anti-gentrification and housing struggles in both Scotland and the US. Facilitators and participants including Gray and Dont Rhine went on to work with Living Rent and the L.A. Tenants Union.

Part of Uninstal, organised by Arika. For more information see here.