The Silent room is a shed inserted in a dense urban public context accessible to the general public. The space can be experienced individually, for a time span of say a maximum of 30 minutes per person. Individuals are invited to use it not to perform or achieve anything, but just to be. It is stripped bare of all unnecessary distractive elements. The interior is a cocoon-like environment where the visitor becomes aware of the limits of his body, and therefore of his entity, against a warm and protective envelope. It is isolated from outside noise, with yet one sound: the hum of the city at its quietest hours.
We live in an environment where we find ourselves subjugated by a constant flux of information and distraction, both visual and sonic, through billboards, vehicular traffic, construction sites, phone rings, ambient music… This ubiquitous sonic and visual intensity, generated by our urban environment, infiltrates our body and mind while having a strong influence on our behaviour, mood, and way of thinking. The overflow of contrived advertisement and spectacle manipulates our desires and contributes to the build-up of a hyper consumerist society. We yearn for the latest unaffordable products to satisfy our perpetual superfluous needs. With this overabundance of distraction and mental stimuli, our private thoughts are under constant disruption, distancing us from what truly matters to us. Our ability to think critically is hindered and diverted into an ever-increasing state of subjugation and consumption. This becomes evident when witnessing how governments and political parties succeed in propagating fear and dreadful promises through the distribution of constructed images and sounds, using similar tools as the marketing industry to sell their narratives.
We need more Silence. Silence as a cleansing necessity to reclaim authorship of our thoughts and of ourselves. “Let us have the luxury of silence,” Jane Austen
Silence is an exceptional privilege only a few can indulge. It has been absorbed by the systemic commodification of our capitalist system. Silence is now a luxury good, as we witness its value as a premium benefit in airport business lounges, Zen compartments on trains, and in the advanced technology of new vehicles. Our cities are often configured in such a way that underprivileged communities are the most affected by higher noise pollution (roads, airports, industry). Urban segregation can be mapped through noise variations across the city. Noise pollution, as experienced differently between rich and poor inhabitants of the city, represents a social injustice.
Mathew Crawford writes: “We’ve auctioned off more and more of our public space to private commercial interests, with their constant demands on us to look at the products on display or simply absorb some bit of corporate messaging. Lately, our self-appointed disrupters have opened up a new frontier of capitalism, complete with its own frontier ethic: to boldly dig up and monetize every bit of private head space by appropriating our collective attention. In the process, we’ve sacrificed silence — the condition of not being addressed. And just as clean air makes it possible to breathe, silence makes it possible to think.”
As our public spaces are subjugated to the tyranny of this all-encompassing noise, the following project advocates silence as a form of resistance.
