Street cries as a paradigm for urban ritornelle.

Description

Street cries, though rarely heard in North European cities today, testify to the ways in which audible practices give shape and structure to urban space. As paradigmatic for what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call ritournelle, the ritualized and stylized practice of street cries may point at the dynamics of space-making, through which the social and territorial construction of urban space take form. Drawing on a diverse material of historical Danish and contemporary Japanese street cries the article presents some considerations on the role of sound and noise not only as a qualification of a predominantly visual space, but as appropriation of social space. The inquiry will in turn question conceptions of urban sound environments as soundscapes, maintaining the stability of such environment, while suggesting the concept of acoustic territoriality as an alternative, emphasizing the dynamic and social character of auditory spatiality.