A newspaper exploring how sound shapes our experience of public space, blending essays, interviews, and speculative pieces to uncover hidden histories and reimagine urban environments through sonic landscapes. With Sound! Scan the QR-codes!
Would you have a picnic at the doctor's office?
Utopia - the Spaces We Seek
The dual meaning of the term Utopia, when pronounced in English; Utopia (from the Greek meaning "no place") and Eutopia ("good place”), blends the concepts of a non-place and a good place. The notion of Utopia has fascinated humanity for centuries. But is there a true Utopia for all? A place where everyone gets along and shares a common truth and opinion? Is it a place or a space? Maybe a Dystopia?
”We should stop naming other phenomena. In addition to democracy, also culture.”
”I remember learning which late-night shop lets you borrow the
Between Clinched Jaws
On Public Sounds and Space
Editorial
By Maria Morberg
The super election year of 2024 did not turn out a tribute to democratic governing. Everything is shaky. Romanticism made a comeback, while Enlightenment is spread as missile flares and trace lights. Children order murders from other children in chats, and the other children book tickets in another app for justin-time delivery. People debate which government is to blame. People debate who are the most one-eyed; those who wanted the world's largest democracy – so it is called – to be supervised by the Orange-White-Haired, or those who in a socio-politically filtered group vacuum had ruled it out. The reference to hair colour I use in the way one used to, in ancient times, conjure oneself from evil powers by not mentioning them by name.
We should stop naming other phenomena. In addition to democracy, also culture. The words are soundbites that could contain anything. If useful things break, however, they need to be rebuilt, be given new roles. So, let us talk about public space instead. About its sounds and images; what public space manifests; how it acts in us.
There is no inherent goodness or reliability in the sound element "culture". The purpose of the 0.6 per cent cannot be to shape future generations, but to give space to imagination, allowing experts to fund ideas based on potential threshold of originality. We need surveys. Reports and reviews from political scientists and economists. Facts, calculations, evaluations, analyses. Trials. Yes. And correspondents for free media. Although free media is yet another dead-end soundbite. We pay for freedom with clickbait. In philosopher Jonna Bornemark’s words: Which desires ought to shape society?
I have sought the powers for a comment, but they do not respond ,,
Over the past 50 years, average funds allocated to culture in Sweden were on today's level: 0.6 percent of the national budget. Those who commission sounds and images cannot offer minimum fees to performers. Nor afford the rent for space where sounds and images may be exhibited. Sounds and images in public space constitute social structure that is becoming less and less able through the 0.6 percent.
The most significant financial contributors to culture are individuals who buy tickets. Those who can afford to pay for both housing and food, that is, fewer and fewer. Sweden’s Central Bank’s Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel was recently awarded to academics who proved that inequality is counterproductive for social prosperity. How great that this important discovery is rewarded. What leaps to mind is a folklore tapestry embroided ‘a big dick is a small comfort in a poor home.’
Sweden now wants to manifest That Culture is Very Important through a literal canon. A measure which seems whipped up to parade a proactive response to weak results among elementary school pupils. Now that alarming results apply not only to other children but to those whose parents bring a lawyer to PTA meetings demanding a raise of their kids’ grades. Because they're worth it.
I have sought the powers for a comment, but they do not respond. So, I imagine timbre based on their statements. Verbal artillery between tense jaws, clattering lunges, unwarranted rationalizations. I then realize that the Futurists made such compositions, and that the movement's founder Marinetti, like most in the lowest, that is the largest, caste of the culture business, worked extra hours to make a living. He was a speechwriter for Mussolini.
Without interpretations of occurrences and mental states; pain and nourishment; people and places; death and life – no context. "Don't worry about cool, make your own uncool," Sol Le Witt wrote to Eva Hesse, when she got stuck in her processing of occurrences and mental states. "You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!"
The protagonist of the Danish author Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume seeks methods, tricks, and systems to re-experience seasons of the year, despite her captivity in the same November date, day after day. She tries to embrace her place in the world and the meaning of it, even though events constantly repeat themselves. All the tenderness, fear, attention, anger, and longing that could save us, era by era, awaken by the whims and dumb plays that we call art.
On The Calculation of Volume, Solvej Balle (planned series of seven books, 2022 –)
The letter from LeWitt to Hesse, April 14, 1965, Letters of Note. Correspondence deserving of a wider audience, ed. Shaun Usher (2014)
Maria Morberg Lower East Side dweller turned woodland lover. Former editor, Moderna Museet; producer at Fylkingen; public property-related art curator in Skellefteå. Writer.
Printed by Bold Printing Mitt, Örebro, Sweden, 2025.
Editors and publishers: Johanna Fager, Jo Mikkel Sjaastad Huse and Nicole Cecilie Bitsch Pedersen.
All texts, illustrations, photos and images by the editors if not stated otherwise.
Contributing writers: Maria Morberg, Jasmine Hinks, Morten Vestergaard Kristensen and Sarah Momtaz.
Contributing voice actors, readings, interviews: Roger Bejinha, Jannike Fager, Morten Vestergaard Kristensen, Petra Jingstål, Marceline Fager Bejinha and Sarah Momtaz.
Hello, Dear Explorer, Did you come here by the commuter train? Are you tuning into the rhythm of the neighborhood ? Do you pass the corner kiosk to pick up your monthly packages from the vendor who recognizes your face, but not your name? Maybe you noticed the small details, a flower growing in a crack, the laughter spilling from an open window, bringing a sense of change in the familiar, when you were on your way home? After a long and cold winter, when spring arrives, do you go to the bench in the park, sit with your eyes closed, face turned toward the sun, soaking in its warmth?
You are actions, words, gestures, a series of performances, repetitions. maybe with symbolic meaning, in a specific order, marking particular events, purposes, transitions.
You are Christmas lights from November 1st every year, a morning coffee on the same bench, a sense of structure, an experience, shared, connections of different memories, or intentions. Community or tradition.
Repetitions of actions, familiar and comforting, Formal or informal.
Are you what makes everyday the same? Or are you what makes some days stand out from the continued everyday sameness? Both?
The something happening, but at an interval, va repetition of the same, a repetition of the same, but different. Hello there, dear urban dweller, Do you come here often, to this exact spot?
Do you go by the same routes, stopping at the same view?
Are you the conscious presence in a fragmented habitual everday?
Are you a testament to the rituals of the city? Are you a city-dwelling shaman? Do you conjure up the life that makes this city alive?
Sound as Sanctuary
Echoes of the Unseen: Listening to the Sonic Landscape of Society
By PUBLIC RETREAT
You hear the cars, the honking of their horns. You hear the loud bangs and the persisting sound from a pneumatic drill. The presence of your immediate surroundings. But do you hear the ticking of the traffic light? The chirping of the birds in the tree outside your favorite café? The slightly resonant thump of stepping on a manhole cover? Sounds help us navigate the world. Subconsciously, listening creates rudimentary maps of our changing, current surroundings. We localize ourselves through auditory cues and echoes.
Sounds are intrusive and omni-present. This invisible wave-force that is everywhere, immaterial translations of happenings bouncing off different materials, moving through and around and between objects and creatures, received and processed as experience via the ear. Is the present too noisy? Are we taking too much control of our own experiences? How does the city sound for those without sight? How does the city feel for those who cannot escape the sounds of their surroundings?
Listening and not listening lets us meander between different forms of presence. Sounds are constantly being produced, and examining the nature of these sounds can be used to map out societal and biological conditions, culture and ideology – albeit in a muddy, translucent, intangible manner.
We hear sounds, but we also feel them in our bodies. It hisses, rustles, roars, knocks, hums.
The heart races, the ear buzzes, we feel and hear how it throbs in a tired foot, we clear our throats, swallow, chew so that our heads crackle, laugh - it reverberates. A single note can carry us back in time, to a life we once knew—or to a place we’d rather forget.
As cities grow denser, the spaces that once offered solace are vanishing. PUBLIC RETREAT EXPLORER invites you to rethink how we inhabit our cities, asking if we can transform urban spaces into places of rest through the act of listening.
Urbanization places immense pressure on city planners, architects, and policymakers to create environments that ensure a high quality of life for all. While the demand on public spaces will only continue to grow more complex, with careful attention, these spaces can be transformed into sanctuaries of sound, making space for urban oases of rest.
In your hands, you hold an archive of sorts—a condensed and subjective collection of collective and personal memories, both real and imagined stories, illustrations, essays, poems, and testimonies from more-than-humans, urban inhabitants, and the realms of mystery. This archive weaves speculative journalism with imaginative storytelling, and much more. Almost every piece has its sonic counterpart — accessible by scanning the QR codes.
PUBLIC RETREAT EXPLORER asks, dear reader and urban explorer, who should decide how the future should be built? And how are we, humans and non-humans, doing in our cities, really?
This publication is made and produced by PUBLIC RETREAT, an interdisciplinary, practice-based art project centered around the exploration of our common auditory urban environment and the human, non-human and more than human experiences of and relations to it. The project is led by composer and sound artist Nicole Cecilie Bitsch Pedersen (DK), visual artist and writer Jo Mikkel Sjaastad Huse (NO) and architect and artist Johanna Fager (SE), with an international network of collaborators and conversation partners engaged.
Imagine you are a species Of your kind Maybe a human Or non human More than human Human human Or animal Plant A Rock Dead or alive Eating Sleeping Doing Working In the sense that work is doing A purpose
Can you imagine a city
Imagine you are an inhabitant
Of a home A place What is the territory, domain, space, land, region, realm, habitat, ground, environment of your kind
Can you be an inhabitant without being a species?
Imagine that you are an inhabitant without being a species.
How to behave in public (space)?!
Hello, dear member of society...! In this guide, weʼre going to learn how to behave in public space. Before we dive into the question at hand, weʼll need to define the term a little more precisely.
Because where exactly does «public space» begin and/or end?
And can the the answer to such a question the same for everyone?
Being in public can broadly be seen as being outside of one’s own, or others, private sphere.
For a space to be truly public, it needs to be freely accessible to all – and owned collectively by the people of a place –typically with the state or municipality as a proxy.
Laws apply, but everyone is welcome –it is free to enter, pass through or linger. Ideally, it is open around the clock, and is relatively unconstrained.
Are there many spaces such as this? Your answer is of course entirely dependent on where you find yourself residing! And on what policies are prevalent, or entirely dominant, there.
But between the intimately private, and the completely public, there are myriads and multitudes of amalgamations – variations, hybrids, liminal nooks and crannies, compromises and coincidences. In fact, most of our lives in public take place exactly in these many in-betweens, maybe’s, yes-and-no’s, both’s and neither’s.
Let’s start at home… In your apartment.
Maybe your living room window directly faces the windows of the police station canteen, or the city’s most popular playground, or a public square teeming with tourists. As a result your daily actions, your inadvertent butt-scratches and naked five-footstep-long journeys between your bedroom and bathroom, are somehow both private and public simultaneously. Do you feel your routines and basic bodily functions slowly adjust to an alien tempo, entrained, synchronized to the rhythms of police office lunch hour, playground high noon and tourist bus syncopation? Or do you just pull down your curtains, and pursue a life in the shadows – a never ending, self-imposed dusk?
Curtains or not, at some point, the summer heat forces you to open and
keep open your windows for weeks on end – and in addition to hosting insects searching for love, sounds and scents effortlessly bridge the divide between the bustling street and all the rooms of your home. Your farts seated in the safety of your own bathroom are now a semi-public matter – experienced by commuters who travel to and from the adjacent bus stop. Drunken late-night kebab street bench conversations overlap with the climate crisis documentary, the chess championship commentary, the action movie one-liners, the weather report, the reality show flirting dialogue that lulls you to sleep on the couch when you thought you couldn’t, wouldn’t, fall asleep in at least another few hours.
Still, your apartment is not completely public, but neither is costly public transport, and public swimming pools cost even more.
And how do we compromise, attune to, make and hold space for each other, in public?
If every place we share is meant to be accessible to every kind of person, each with their individual needs and wants and sensibilities simultaneously, mightn’t that swiftly turn into a veiled tool of exclusions?
To sleep right there... on a bench in full view of the kindergarten?! To wash a dirty foot... in a drinking fountain! ,,
Libraries have opening hours, shopping malls are private property. The rich inhabitants in affluent waterfront neighborhoods use their influence to make bathing after midnight de facto illegal, and the piers are patrolled by diligent security guards. Angry apartment dwellers who live by the basketball court will call the cops on you if you bounce a ball even once after their kids have finally fallen asleep. The street might be wide, but eternal rows of privately owned cars stand along each side. Seven electric scooters protrude from a snow pile. A two-week-long beer-and-hotdog festival gets to borrow your local park for free from the municipality, but charges a hefty entrance fee – and thus the blooming of your favorite tree is enjoyed only by the most hardcore beer-and-hotdog enthusiasts.
Have you ever thought about arranging a picnic in the waiting room at your doctors office – or to even just spend some time there reading a book, borrowing the toilet, calling your parents, without waiting for an appointment?
Oh, and if you’re looking for public toilets – good luck!
And if you happen to find one, good luck yet again…
– Of course we have some rules, we need some rules. And systems. We just have to try our best to accommodate each other. But how do our needs differ?
The idea of what constitutes a public nuisance is generally tailored to protect a certain kind of supposed, stenciled, perfect model citizen. Nuclear families and dutiful daytime office workers who own, or safely rent, comfortable places to live; who have access to private bathrooms; who buy tickets, bottled water, and can afford to abide by inpublic alcohol consumption bans by drinking in bars. Who have time to sit on a bench while the sun is still up, or energy to jog through the park after the evening news.
Those who won’t, or can’t, fall in line with the demands of the near-dominant fog of the normative capitalist hetero-patriarchy, are easily othered, subtly ostracized or even have their mode of living made illegal or near-impossible-to-survive-without-breaking-the-law-legal.
Certain common, universal silent agreements prevail – are learned and enforced uncritically by normal people: the state of one’s clothes; the smell of one’s body; the amount of personal matters – problems, issues, conditions – one displays, divulges, should, can or can’t keep hidden.
To smell like that… in the newspaper reading lounge at the local library?
To sleep right there… on a bench in full view of the kindergarten?!
To wash a dirty foot… in a drinking fountain!
To ask strangers for help, to tell them of their ailments and wring their sympathy for cash – cash that they’re anyway only going to use to feed their illegal addiction!
If one doesn’t follow the rules – one has oneself to blame for all the ill that befalls one, right?
…Sorry – What was I trying to teach you again?
Oh! Right! How to behave in public space!
Maybe we just need to jump into it, even though I’m not sure we even managed to properly define its bounds.
Ok!
So…
To behave in public space, you need to acknowledge our many differences, and understand which systems, whatever their form, are put in place to divide us, and which are there to help us thrive –collectively!
To behave in public space, you need to ask yourself why you are behaving the way you are in public space – and whether that is the way you want to behave in public space. And to ask yourself, and others, how you want others to behave in public space, and why, and whether your wishes are worthy of attention or if you should somehow work on yourself, unlearning ingrained thoughts and toxic reactions.
To behave in public space, you need to assess your society – how safe it is, for whom, how dangerous it is, for whom, how accessible it is, for whom, how big, how large, how free or constricted, how fun or depressing, for whom.
To behave in public space, you need to think about what you are bringing to the table, what you are being afforded and enjoying by the table, and what you are being served at the table that you do not want.
To behave in public space, you need to understand who public space belongs to, who it is needed by – and you need to know who it is controlled by, engineered by, defined by.
To behave in public space you need to reflect on our differences – our varying levels of access, power, influence, freedom, mobility, healthiness, happiness, needs, demands.
To behave in public space, you need to understand that many of the problems that can be observed in public space generally have less to do with individual transgression, and more to do with societal failure in trying to take care of all citizens.
To behave in public space, you just need to try to be the least bad that you can.
Good luck!
Ocular bias and sensory architecture - creating a sense of place and space
Images, video and text flood us in an evergoing mix everywhere. Yet, it is the sound we cancel out.
If you were to describe your local town square, you would most likely start with a description of its buildings, or stone paved ground surface, or you might be saying something about a fountain and what you see from the corner coffee shop terrace. A, not so far fetched, guess, is that you would describe your space based foremost on its visual objects and stimuli. Characteristics that in many ways are more intrusivethat you can not make disappear with the closing of your eyes - sound and smell, might not be among the first things you were to talk about. Why is that?
Today’s cities can be said to suffer from an ocular bias. The Finnish architect, and former professor of architecture and dean at the Helsinki University of Technology, Juhani Pallasmaa, writes in his seminal work on architectural theory The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses in a 3rd edition from 2016:
“Instead of an existentially grounded plastic and spatial experience,
architecture has adopted the psychological strategy of advertising and instant persuasion; buildings have turned into image products detached from existential depth and sincerity.”
This ocular bias together with the overall densification of cities leads to a disappearance of the un-programmed, vague, slow rooms where we really get a chance to hear, feel and encounter our city and local community. Add global changes like economic restructuring, climate change, war and migration, traditional notions of fixed identities in specific spaces and places are being challenged.
social contexts. It encompasses how built structures interact with their surroundings and the experiences they create for people. Architectural phenomenology studies how architecture is experienced by individuals, and how actions, events and desires meet spatially.
Knowing all this - how do we build, then? For whom and why? Shelter and home. Expression and being.
... you would describe your space based foremost on its visual objects and stimuli. [...] Why is that? ,,
In architecture, place is the open area, the void between the structural, built element - the mass. You can see the boundaries of the place. Its floors, walls, ceilings, departments. Its shadows and lighting. Its soft and hard parts. Space is carved out of space. Space is created in a space.
Place, in architecture, refers to the unique character and significance of a specific location, shaped by its cultural, historical, environmental, and
An aesthetic can indicate a larger societal artistic trend, hopes and views of the future. Architecture can also be an echo from history - show us what has been and place us in a cultural and social context. A context that sometimes goes against what and who is there on the site today. Many areas with former workers quarters are now seen as trendy and housing there is bought by the (upper) middle class, working from home in a virtual world. Workers and immigrants are pushed out, further and further from the city center. The groups meet, occasionally, on public transport, or on different sides of the cashier’s desk or maybe at the doctor’s office. Layers merge onto layers and everyone who passes
and stays in a place becomes part of its history.
The ornamentation and form of the architecture bears witness to the lives that have been lived. The lack of ornamentation, in its classical sense on a house facade, is an equally important time marker. There are plenty of architectural details. From the colonial gingerbread; carpenter gothic and picturesque designed porches; via modernism’s plaster and rhythmically spaced pillars and window bands; the patterned stones of the paved street; the undulating waves of the brick tiled roof - to the placement of a marble slab in relation to the underlying cupboards in the modern kitchen. The choices of materials, their joints, void and mass, shadow and light. Architectural terminologies change, as do aesthetic preferences and cultural and religious superstitions. The human body stays pretty much the same, though. Modes of perception alter slightly with technology. But it is still the human hand that shapes and feels, and the ears that listen. We think with our senses.
Close your eyes.
Revisit your local town square, yet again, how would you describe it?
Beyond the blu eprint:Acoustic visions
Exploring the Overlooked Role of Acoustics in Architecture and the Importance of Listening to Our Sonic Environments
Interview
In fall 2024, Petra Jingstål, an architect-turned-acoustician and writer, shared insights on sound and acoustics in the built environment during an interview for PUBLIC RETREAT Radio. Advocating for a holistic design approach, Petra stresses the importance of integrating auditory, visual, and material aspects in the architectural process, and promotes collaboration between architects, acousticians, and artists.
We first met Petra over ramen near her office at Delta Akustik in Stockholm. After reading her articles about the lack of sonic training in architecture education, we reached out for a conversation and found many shared ideas. Our second meeting took place at Färgfabriken in Stockholm, followed by a radio interview. Below is an excerpt from the interview aired on Oct. 30 on RadioOrakel (Oslo).
You work with sound, but from a slightly different angle than us. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? I mean, you started as an architect but switched to acoustics. What are the reasons behind that?
A lot of people are afraid of noise, and the definition of noise is unwanted sound. Whenever sound is going to come into projects it’s usually because you want to take away the sound, the noise that disturbs you.
As an acoustician at Delta Akustik but as well as in general, maybe you could give some examples of what an acoustician does?
The acoustician is basically responsible for the sound. Very often we work with regulations and guideline values that we’re supposed to fulfill.
So it’s the experience of a space?
The experience, yeah. And even more, which I think is very important to mention, is how it’s very subjective what we feel like when we hear a sound.
Like some people love the idea of having a kindergarten. Yes! The laughter of kids. And some - oh my God, will there be kindergartens here?
Like disconnected from your body somehow?
Disconnected is probably the word. So that in itself, I’m not a fan of. But I can also sit on the subway and activate the
So I, as you said, started out as an architect and I actually thought that acoustics would be a part, a big part of the architectural education. I started studying architecture in Scotland, in Edinburgh. And it was definitely not part of the education in itself. It was even as bad as I tried to use acoustics in my first design project, and I was told by the tutors that also were practicing architects, that they couldn’t help me out in the project because they didn’t know anything about acoustics.
I started working as an architect for a company that had both acousticians and architects, which was definitely my dream, to do both things at the same time. But to be honest, after a while I just had to pick one of them.
It’s very interesting what you say about the lack of training in acoustics or sound environments or soundscapes at the university.
We can’t avoid sound. It is going to be part of our experience of a space. In every space, not just a concert hall.
But in Delta Akustik we also work with psychoacoustics a bit, or at least try to communicate and talk about psychoacoustics as another aspect of sound. Because it can get very mathematical and very hardcore physics when it comes to acoustics. But psychoacoustics is more a way of investigating how people react to different sounds and why.
But it’s the same with things that we see. If we find something beautiful or ugly, it’s also very much up to each person. One of those acoustic concepts that we actually work a lot with is something called reverberation time. When I was doing my master’s thesis project at Chalmers I found this underground water reservoir with an extremely long reverberation time. And these musicians used the long reverberation time as part of their performance which was very cool. This is very uncommon but basically you can imagine a space about 20 by 20 square meters big. I was there with just one friend and if we were further away than one and a half meters apart we basically couldn’t hear each other talking because it was just such an echo within this
I find it a bit sad for sure that if our cities contain sound that people donʼt want to hear and they just block out the sound, theyʼre not experiencing the space. building.
If we are considering how we are building now, denser and denser. What are your thoughts on the fu-
ture?
I would say we need to be very careful with what kind of acoustic solutions we put in. Say that you put a sound barrier on the side of a road because you want to block out the sound that comes from the road. You’re actually reflecting the sound towards the other side. What we end up with is a lot of people wearing headphones. They basically create their own soundscapes locally where they are. And myself, I’m not a big fan of noise cancelling headphones or noise cancelling in itself. For example, when I’ve been trying to use that in the kitchen and I’m cutting an onion, I’m super clumsy in the kitchen and I’m close to cutting myself because there are these subtle sounds that I would normally hear that will make me adapt, moving away my fingers instead of cutting myself. But I realized that when I don’t hear those sounds, it becomes unreal to me, like the soundscape and I react really…
noise cancelling on my earphones and just listen to something that I do want to listen to. And then I can turn it off just to listen to the soundscape and see the difference. I find it a bit sad for sure that if our cities contain sound that people don’t want to hear and they just block out the sound, they’re not experiencing the space. As I would think, would be, as an architect at least, I would find it really nice if people wanted to experience the space as it is instead of trying to create their own space within the space to survive…
… The talk went on, we thanked Petra for joining us on radiOrakel and for challenging us to rethink sound in design. Instead of seeing it as a disruption, she urged us to view it as something that can enrich spaces. Her message: listen more deeply, with all our senses, to create environments that are more human and connected. Sound isn’t just a technical detail; it’s fundamental to how we experience the world.
Listen to the full interview here
Photo by Ismail Malikov
Petra Jingstål
Do you notice the material textures of your surroundings?
Notes from a taxi
On a late May night, I sit in the backseat of a taxi, cruising through the heart of Stockholm. Perhaps Iʼve just left a party or a lively dinner with friends. As we travel through a city caught between night and day, spring and summer, my conversation with the driver becomes a doorway to parallel worlds ̶ stories, testimonies, and glimpses into the lives of the people who call this city home.
The tunnel spits us out from the underworld. It is 10 minutes past 1 at night. May 25th. We are in the middle of Stockholm, the central station can be seen if looking back to the right and a Sheraton hotel to the left. Behind us, we share the streetscape with buildings representing power - the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Defense, and the less democratic - Boston Consulting Group. Rosenbad, the home of the Swedish Government, is a stone’s throw away.
We drive fast, along the Central Bridge, passing Ragnar Östberg’s City Hall. I see the old town’s blended buildings - Nordic austere, Baroque ornamentations and the squiggly designs from the Rococo era, standing side by side like a long composite backdrop. A subway squeaks as it drives by on a separate bridge to my left. The traffic apparatus cuts like a wound through the historic city.
A red light at an intersection. I open the window slightly, the rhythmic ticking of the turn signals seems to beat in sync with the music the driver is playing. A drunken man staggers and falls. Drops his smoke, looks like he hurt himself. A couple on the same side of the street takes a big turn around him, so as not to get close. One of them, a woman, pauses, stops, turns as if to help. The one she’s holding hands with doesn’t let go, but keeps walking, they’re linked now by only one finger. He pulls her, in that one finger, come, we’re going. The drunk has sat down on the ground. Crying quietly behind his hand. The woman seems to confer with herself for a second, then turns and walks away. Hand in hand with her lover.
how long he’s been driving a taxi, if he enjoys it. He begins to talk about his first time as a taxi driver. After living in Sweden for 17 years, it was like getting to know Stockholm all over again, he says.
things in their lives. Or just small talk. A bit like you imagine a bartender in an old movie, haha. The car becomes this semi-public, moveable space.”
We’re driving on Ringvägen past Zinken now, Tanto.
”I quickly learned where to stop with the taxi and take a break in peace and quiet. Sit on the hood and roll a cigarette. Alone. With my city. I thought of Per Anders Fogelström a lot. You know, he who wrote the Mina Drömmars Stad-series, depicting Stockholm, its working class people, their lives, struggles, and loves. I think during the second half of the 19th century? I remember trying to recall all the characters in his books. Where Henning wandered, if I could understand where Lotten’s job was. Was that her name by the way? Maybe it was Emelie.
The taxi rolls on. The driver clears his throat, I ask
“I remember when I was studying to get my taxi license - I taped up maps of the city on all the walls of my rented room. Skarpnäck, Akalla, Sköndal, Handen, Norrmalm, Reimersholme... Stockholm’s contours, lines, waterways, subway network and of course roads. In my dreams, I moved through the streets of Stockholm. For the first time in my life I dreamed in Swedish. I tried to understand how it was all connected. How the tunnels are linked, how the biggest streets in the road network are woven together with all the smaller ones. Where there are one-way streets, where you can park. Where the large, and small, public squares are. The most popular ones, as well as the more hidden ones. Where there is always a crowd on weekend nights, thanks to concerts, karaoke, sports games, underground bars, strip clubs or whatever. At first it felt like an insurmountable task. I remember the first nights I drove. Those summer nights driving on Västerbron, amazed every time by the endless views, the feeling of freedom the job gave. Of course just an imagined freedom, but it was like that, then. I remember how Stockholm suddenly felt so beautiful, a bit like falling in love with your partner all over again. How the city belonged to no one and everyone. How it belonged to me. I have never felt so at home in the city as during that initial period.
As a taxi driver, you get to be part of a person’s life for a short while, you just get thrown right in. Many people talk to you, you know, tell you profound, tough
Mapping sonic landscapes
A sonotope combines sound and place to describe the unique sonic identity of a specific location. Coined by landscape architect Per Hedfors, the term draws on the Latin word sono- (sound) and Greek word -topos (place). Just as a biotope captures the distinct ecosystem of a habitat, a sonotope represents the characteristic sounds of an environment, shaped by its physical layout, activities, and natural features.
What is a Sonotope? Sonotopes are defined by recurring patterns of sound that emerge from the specific activities and features of a location. The materials, layout, and natural elements of a place influence how sounds behave—amplifying some while dampening others. These acoustic characteristics, along with the activities occurring at a location, shift with the seasons, weather, and time of day. As a result, the sonotope of a
I remember learning which late-night shops let you borrow the toilet. Always at Reza’s on Renstiernas gata, always at Samira’s on Odenplan, never at Anton’s in Huddinge.”
We drive on. He tells me what a normal night can look like, short fragments, about how in a matter of minutes you can find yourself in diametrically opposed worlds.
“One moment you’re holding the car door open for princesses and dukes at Haga, only to 1 hour later drop off a prostitute at her home in a sleepy so-called suburb, in front of a sleepy 3-story building, after a night on the town, on the streets. Then the remote pings and it can be a new fare with pickup from Vita Liljans väg to Grevgatan, Östermalm - the posh part of the city.”
Vita Liljans väg, Bredäng. Narrow, long, up to 9-storey tall 1960’s tower blocks are laid out in a west-east direction in a green landscape. Close to the water. Constructed during the Million Programme era. At the intersection with Concordiavägen, Bredäng must have its highest point? At the top of those houses, you have a view that goes on for miles, both towards Stockholm’s inner city and out over the southern parts. If you stand on one of the balconies on New Year’s Eve, you have the glittering crowns of the fireworks at eye level. Giving the impression you can catch them with your hand.
place changes over time, offering a completely different auditory experience depending on the context.
For example, the sonotope of a city square during the day might be bustling: footsteps on the pavement, birds chirping, snippets of conversation, and the steady hum of traffic. At night, this same square quiets down as human activity fades, leaving behind the occasional rustle of wind tossing leaves or trash bags, the
distant rumble of a car, and the rhythmic beeping of a pedestrian crossing signal. Each sonotope is a dynamic interaction between a place, its inhabitants, and their activities. Like a biotope, a sonotope can encompass a wide scale, from a single
street to an entire city. These varying scales create overlapping dynamics, revealing the relationships between different sonotopes. By tuning into these interactions, we uncover the stories that a sonotope tells about its environment.
Listening to the stories of the landscape
An audio reportage from the forest floor
On a warm May day, PUBLIC RETREAT reporters Nicole and Jo Mikkel ventured into Klosterheden Forest, not far from Sound Art Lab in Struer, Denmark. They set out to uncover the layers of stories embedded in a landscape shaped by glaciers, ancient waterways, Bronze Age farmers, industrious beavers, and the bustling ant civilizations beneath the forest floor.
Armed with recording gear, they listened closely to the forest’s inhabitants, both past and present, human and more-than-human alike. Listen in as this short reportage explores the connections between history, ecology, and the small yet profound ways life reshapes the land.
A line is drawn. Maybe with a ruler. Another with a shaky hand. A line forms our horizon - when you get close it moves, dissolves - becomes another, further away. The line gives you information, it has a direction- that way, that's where we're going - hurry!
Hindering the movement of migrating animals. Altering futures and disconnecting from the past.
Still, in this world of lines, animals and humans navigate with their senses. The compass is superfluous.
Just like animals, sounds don't care about borders or lines on a map.
he Soundof Lines Navigating
TThe line forms letters, dots, signs, musical notations and mathematics. Our entire, written, figurative, conceptual world can be expressed by means of the line. It lets us communicate our thoughts, our desires, our meaning. Differentiate and equate. Discriminate and unite. The line creates the tool - the alphabet, the symbol, and the form, for everything we measure. Circumference of a circle, statistics on number of dead, born, how many green kitchens we paint versus how many red, and what that might indicate.
In the city, lines drawn on maps are almost sacred. If you own land, you receive a piece of paper as proof - a seemingly objective, legally binding reality. A staggering thought.
Who gets to claim a place, to keep their land, give someone else’s away?
Cartography is violent. A line across a mountain ridge, separating the peak from its valley, perhaps following the archipelago's coves and craggy rock coastline. Cutting cultures and communities in half.
They travel freely through any material that offers it an opportunity.
What does the city you live in look like inside your head? Eyes closed, in the darkness, sitting or lying down on a bed in your home, on a bench in the train station, on the grass in a park.
How would you draw it? Imagine, conceptualize and feel and dream and nightmare it? Clusters connected by squiggly lines that skip, dis- and re-appear. Emotional distortions changing the layout of entire neighborhoods. In this map, there must be places shrouded in the tint of teenage love’s first kiss. Clouded by disoriented puking in the dirt on the side of the road on the way home from a work party. Some buildings grow, other buildings shrink or disappear completely. Streets breathe, slither and never lead to the same place twice... Voids, loop- and wormholes, shortcuts that probably aren’t shortcuts.
What does it sound like, this city of yours? Can you hear it?
Without even trying, you have built a whole world based on spatial auditory memories created with the help of the ear. Following your own internal map you let yourself be guided by different auditory markers.
Do you hear all of these places, all at once? Every listening being creates a map of their own. Their cities are different, even if they live right down the street. You’ve tried to imagine them, haven’t you? How their worlds sound.
the Hidden Maps of Sound, Space
Ding ding ding…. broooom broooom broom, beep, whirr, ta ta ta ta, *mumbling as in a restaurant hall, a mall or a train station*, *rough vocalisations of traffic or building*, *light bright vocalisation of wind*
That park, right by the river, the one that always, for some reason, smells like wildflowers and horse shit in the most spring-like and beautiful way – is it saturated with the sound of laughter? Old men sitting for hours on the benches right by the pavilion. Is the park, like quite a few other parks, built on top of a cemetery where poor people used to be buried? Are the childrens swings particularly squeaky? Places of worship, restaurants, dive bars, cafés, textile by the meter, thrift stores, a subway station that has the aura of a space age palace, places that gleam and sparkle with the presence of the city’s best falafel vendor, right in the middle of the horrors of societal mistreatment of people who struggle with addiction. The dog on the hill by the foot bridge – each bark bounces back, woof woof, woof woof, echoes letting the lone dog emulate dialogue.
You place people into all of the little windows of the building across the street.
,
andMemory
You give them pets, pests, smelly armpits, CV’s and job interviews …the simulation grows, how many individuals can you keep alive – believable, authentic, varied –simultaneously? Sociolectal nuances, they each have their own voice, hairline, gray hairs and wellness routines. How do their sneezes sound? Their farts? Their decades old or brand new coffee makers? Their cupboard doors? What’s the resonance of their bedrooms like? How sensitive is their smell? What allergies do they have? Prescription glasses and lenses, medicine cabinets and vitamin deficiencies, bad tv shows they watch when they eat, boredom, sex life, fear, anger, underwear worn to pieces, socks they hate but don’t get rid of, kitchen routines, tunes they whistle and hum and want to remember or purge from their minds. How do they sound when they’re angry? Have you ever imagined them cry?
Non-Places and Utopias
The Spaces We Seek
TIs this a place? Is this a space?
Is this a good place? This is not a place. This is a non-place. Yet, here we are. Can you see it? Hear it? Taste it?
Touch it? Dream it? Is it utopia? Who’s utopia?
he word Utopia comes from a combination of the Greek “ou” meaning not and “topos” meaning place, with the suffix “ia” giving it the meaning “nowhere”.
In Greek, if you put together “topos” with the prefix eu - meaning good, you get “eutopia” - which means a good place. In the English language, though, these two words - “non-place” (Utopia) and “good place” (E-utopia) are pronounced the same way.
We, humans, have long contemplated upon utopian, ideal, worlds. One can just imagine discussions around a bonfire, collectively dreaming of other lives and worlds, better ones, slightly altered maybe. Perhaps a dream of a better division of labor from a tired man seeing how he carries heavier than his brother. Or a dream of a more just division of food between the adults in the family, from a seemingly constantly hungry young woman, in the process of feeding her babies with food her body produces.
In literature, Plato’s tremendously influential philosophical the Republic (from around 375 BC), on how to organize the state and how to administer justice, is seen as one of the first books on utopia. In a
I’m your land
You have taken me
Pushed me and my boundaries And made me
You have planted your seeds in me And reaped my fruits
Taken everything for yourself And left nothing for no one else But the birds and the beetles
You have putten your pole in me
Raised towers on my cheeks
You beg me, repeatedly to shave my rainforest of ideas i see you
You raze the arch of my lips and words are caught but a whisp
You utterly destroy me hollow out whats left of me prey upon me and everything that’s mine
Socratic dialogue - an open conversation seeking an answer to a posed question or problem - Socrates in a talk with Athenians on justice, love, poetry, ageing and the soul, draws the city Kallipolis. A utopian city ruled by philosopher-kings.
The term though - Utopia - is said to have been coined nearly 2000 years later, by the English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist, Sir Thomas More who wrote a novel called Utopia - on the best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia, in latin in 1516. The book is a work of fiction and political philosophy and depicts a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many have said that the descriptions of Utopia match life in monasteries. He criticizes the political leaders and social evils of his time. Some have also said it is a satire, an example of what can happen if people become too liberated, and is in fact a depiction of Dystopia. Throughout the years people have also associated the book with socialism, communism and the Soviet-Union.
The first part of the book deals with dialogues and correspondence between statesmen.
In the second part, More lets a Portuguese sailor and explorer he meets in Antwerpen, tell us about a society he lived in for 5 years. A society far away, one he came to by serving as a sailor on a boat steered by Amerigo Vespucci.
This society, that the Portuguese man describes, is an antithesis of the English at that time. All land is commonly owned. All food is stored in communal warehouses from where the citizens, the Utopians, can request food. Only the exact amount needed to get full.
He writes: “The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and
You grow me
But do not understand I’m alive
You adore my flowers But hate my thornes
You envy my poems but fear all the words
You profit from me Trade me
Make money on keeping me down
You draw lines on my body
Tear down and build back up
You conquer me, annex me, occupy me, make war on me, colonize me, you destroy me
Over my dead body
By Sarah Momtaz
holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends. [...] Utopus, that conquered it (whose name it still carries, for Abraxa was its first name), brought the rude and uncivilized inhabitants into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that they now far excel all the rest of mankind. Having soon subdued them, he designed to separate them from the continent, and to bring the sea quite round them. To accomplish this he ordered a deep channel to be dug, fifteen miles long; and that the natives might not think he treated them like slaves, he not only forced the inhabitants, but also his own soldiers, to labour in carrying it on.”
It becomes clear that, like almost all known ideologies, or thought experiments, Utopia is only a Utopia for some. The Englishman’s dream society was created on stolen land, colonizing its original inhabitants.
There are still slaves in More’s Utopia. Women did work in (almost) the same trades as men, but they also had to take care of the home and the children. The children had few, if any rights.
The capital Amaurot is described in great detail, it is situated on a hill, with buildings trickling down towards the banks of the river Anider. The buildings are “so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house.” Public and private space are described. The conqueror Utopus was the urban planner, but he “left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection.”
The structure of the architecture is described carefully: “[......] their houses are three storeys high, the fronts of them are
faced either with stone, plastering, or brick, and between the facings of their walls they throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat, and on them they lay a sort of plaster, which costs very little, and yet is so tempered that it is not apt to take fire, and yet resists the weather more than lead. They have great quantities of glass among them, with which they glaze their windows; they use also in their windows a thin linen cloth, that is so oiled or gummed that it both keeps out the wind and gives free admission to the light.”
Everything in life, regarding humans, marriage, punishments, house, street, traffic, cutlery and so on, are described in great detail.
One can imagine the novel being radical in its day. But reading it within today’s societal context, it is of course a very dated novel that depicts a racist, fascist, violent, colonial society where only a few are free. To describe a perfect utopian world, a true one where all are liberated, seems more difficult the more you try, the obstacles and problems pile up.
Can everyone get along? Is there a common truth? Does everyone have to agree? Could it be easier, then, to think of a utopian space, than a whole society? A place where you are fully present? What would a utopian, public space be like?
Sound like?
To your ears, that is.
Utopia - on the best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia, Thomas More (1516)
Birdsnest for rent
Do you need help developing a public retreat?
Designing a new type of graveyard? New thoughts and ideas for a park? Don’t exactly know yet but feel like you need input?
Sound installations, theater, soundwalks, radio, public interventions, listening workshops, speculative architecture, newspapers, concepts, ideas, posters, blankets? -we do it all!
Reach out to PUBLIC RETREAT today! contact@public-retreat.com
*Tweet tweet!* Looking for a cozy place to call home? Located near Trekanten, this cozy nest offers great views of the park and water, as well as access to unlimited crumbs and table scraps from Espressohouse for easy dining. Perfect for sparrows, tits, and other small flyers (NO magpies!). The nest is sturdy and wind-tested, roomy enough for two adults and chicks, and nestled in the trees for privacy. First come, first perch! Fly by and check it out! -Tweet for more details.
Signed, A Lövholmen-hatched house sparrow, age 2
Dear Editors,
I was recently the witness to a strange occurrence – three adults who seemed, in all seriousness, to be playing (a game?) in public. Their instruments, upon which they seemed intently focused, were for recording sounds, the noises of the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
Somewhat perplexed, I engaged them in a conversation and discovered them to be artists and architects. I wonder if any other fellow readers have come across these figures? What kind of future are they imagining? What kind of architecture could be informed by this playing with sound, and with fabricated narratives, in public?
Yours,
Curious of Gröndal
In loving memory
R.I.P. Rest in Public Mourned by all who dared to pause, Lost but not forgotten.
Do you remember the sound of your childhood neighborhood?
You are in the city, with the rest of us.
e is my c ity
The PUBLIC RETREAT Word Search Puzzle Myhomeis
But still, right now, you stand alone in the midst of all this, quiet. You listen. It gets silent.
Johanna Fager (b. 1982, SE), architect and artist working with public art, text, spatial installations and complex architectural projects. Her focus is often on the human experience of space(s) and their sequences, materiality, sound and the political context. She is educated at KTH School of Architecture, Royal Institute of Art (SE) and Academy of Art Architecture and Design (CZ).
Place yourself somewhere shielded from the environment. It can be an imaginary or a real physical place. There, here, you are protected from the cold, from the snow and the rain. Indoors? Or maybe on a sheltered street corner. In a store. In an office. A mind palace. A subway. Your home. Your space. Big or small, abstract or concrete - your own personal refuge.
Close your eyes. Place your hands on your knees, if sitting. Let them hang, heavy, down the sides of your body, if standing. The shoulders relax, they are lowered. Move your head slowly. Up and down. To the right, to the left. The chin upwards, again. Click. Click. Click. You hear the neck move, the bones in your body turn slowly. The cartilage cracks. It creaks, squeaks, or maybe it grinds? Sort the sounds you hear. Forget people’s voices, the noise of a TV, the ringing of telephones, the alarm of cars and emergency vehicles. The whirring, the swooshing, is growing in strength, maybe it’s the ventilation, or the wind in the trees out there, or your blood. You feel your heartbeats, you hear the blood pulsate.
The city contains an array of spaces, more or less public, more or less accessible, more or less oppressing. Drawn, thought of and built with certain publics in mind. These spaces and their people - inhabitants and visitors, parasites or pollinators or other groups of people whose label varies according to who defines them. All of this can teach us something. By looking, listening, reflecting, being. In all of these spaces you’ll find an archive of stories, destinies, families, friends, sorrows, joys, memories - lives. Witnesses and participants to the history of the city. Linked forever to its inhabitants, various waves of development, or perhaps stagnation.
Move your head again. To your right, to your left. Does your neck still crack? Now start to walk. It can be an imaginary walk, or a real one. You decide. But stay in your refuge, just for a little longer.
Bring it with you.
Jo Mikkel Sjaastad Huse (b. 1991, NO), visual artist and writer working primarily within the fields of text, installation, performance and sound. Huse has education from art academies in Oslo, Bergen, Tromsø and Stockholm. Huse stages objects and creatures, and lets them speak on his behalf about work and leisure, and the position of the animal in a human centered world.
Nicole Cecilie Bitsch Pedersen (b. 1990, DK), composer, visual-, and sound artist exploring the interweaved relationship between nature, sound, and technology. Pedersen holds a Master's degree in composition from the Danish Institute of Electronic Music (DIEM) and a postmaster in public art from OPI Lab at Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Sweden.
PUBLIC RETREAT wishes to extend our hearfelt and sincere gratitude to Jonas Dahlberg and Jasmine Hinks at Of Public Interest (OPI) Lab, Lars Lengberg at Radio Sydväst, Jacob Eriksen and everyone at Sound Art Lab, Seppo Julin and Mr Suomi at Lähiradio, Ville Pulkkii, Per Hedfors, Maria Morberg, Lou Mouw, Maya Nagano Holm, Sofia Priftis, Dave Budd, Petra Jingstål, Tina MK Madsen, Petri Kuljuntausta, Nicolai Schröder Wetlesen, Benedict Beldam, Roger Bejinha, Jannike Fager, Eli Mai Huang Nesse, Morten Vestergaard Kristensen, Marceline Fager Bejinha, Sarah Momtaz, Ingmar Robert Nielsen, Alf Haakon Pietruszka Lund, Hanna Rye Hanssen and Olga Nikonova at radiOrakel, and all friends, family and fellow artists (and the ones we might have forgotten!) for their help and support, insights and discussions into the world of sound, art, architecture and public space throghout our work with PUBLIC RETREAT.
Collaborators and conversation partners to PUBLIC RETREAT; Prof. Ville Pulkkii Aalto University (FI), Sound Art Lab Struer, Of Public Interest (OPI), Radio Sydväst and Lars Lengberg, Lähiradio, IDA radio, Maria Morberg, Per Hedfors, radiOrakel, Platform Stockholm, Färgfabriken, Oksasenkatu11.
PUBLIC RETREAT has during fall 2023 until winter 2025 been generously supported by
Photo by Maya Nagano Holm
Helgo Ze ervalls Fond
No Respite For Public Retreat
Who cares what the city sounds like?
By Jasmine Hinks
Since 2022, Johanna Fager (SE), Jo Mikkel Sjaastad Huse (NO) and Nicole Cecilie Bitsch Pedersen (DK) have been collaborating on artistic and architectural investigations and reimaginations of what it means – and how it feels – to inhabit a city. Initially working together on NYA LÖVHOLMEN, a citizen proposal and mixed sonic zoning plan developed within the frame of OPI Lab 2022/2023, they have since been collaborating on PUBLIC RETREAT, an interdisciplinary art project that explores experiential relations to our lived environments through sound.
PUBLIC RETREAT uses a blend of practices and knowledges composing and writing through fact and fiction to explore the potential pasts, presents and futures of the built environment.
The project offers a speculative approach to considering the ways we exist in contemporary urban contexts, imagined through human and more-than-human experiences. Its authors, an architect; a visual artist and writer; and a composer and sound artist respectively, have collaborated on topics and themes centering around the city, public space, art, architecture, and sound for almost three years, making exhibitions, radio and sound work, text and publications, listening sessions and workshops.
During autumn 2024, PUBLIC RETREAT returned their attention to Lövholmen with a residency at Platform Stockholm (Platform Deep Dive, 1 August – December 2024), during which publics were invited to participate in listening sessions and sound workshops, and the exhibition Public Retreat on Fire (1-27 October 2024 at Färgfabriken). The exhibition considered the site of the former Kolsyrefabriken factory, a key building for Lövholmen’s history and the debate around regulation, demolition and architectural heritage. In 2021 it was destroyed by fire. Using original bricks to demarcate where the building formerly stood, the site became the locus for a ritual where participants were invited to consider which sounds they would like to let go, and symbolically burn in the fire, and which sounds they would like to hold on to.
The sound ritual formalized a core question that reverberates throughout the entire PUBLIC RETREAT project – are everyday sounds worth saving? If so, which ones?
Throughout the fall, in parallel to this presence in Lövholmen, PUBLIC RETREAT Radio was broadcast weekly from Oslo on RadiOrakel, the world’s oldest feminist community radio station. A sound magazine in twelve parts, each episode explored a
particular theme including time, sound, death, water, relaxing in public, utopia, suburbia, and more. Building soundscapes through interweaving field recordings, poetry and radio play(s) together with knowledge from environmental and architectural experts, the episodes ruminate on questions than most of us haven’t yet articulated.
–What might daily life sound like in a newly planned residential area?
–How does echoic memory work? Do the bones of the inner ear shape how we perceive ourselves as part of the landscape in which we live?
–What do pigeons think about having to share their cities with humans?
In the second episode of the series of twelve, a sequence plays which intersperses four minutes of sounds recorded at the same time on the same day – Friday 16th August 2024 – at the three separate studios of the authors of PUBLIC RETREAT, in Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm. An artwork in itself, this tapestry of everyday sounds serves to extrapolate the generic within the specific; the flow of beauty woven together from the apparently mundane. Narrating the piece, Johanna Fager asks us listeners to consider what we heard, or didn’t. What we attuned our attention to –what we might remember. PUBLIC RETREAT echoes the city back to itself, giving us cause to think, and also to reflect on how things might be otherwise.
This is how the three practitioners behind PUBLIC RETREAT operate – subtly directing a nuanced curiosity about so many things, leaning on specific knowledges to find out more, and sharing these through manifold outputs.
The research that acts as an undercurrent in this project can sometimes seems tangential conversations with an architect-turned-acoustician who imagines the sonic mapping of newly designed architectural masterplans, interviews with a geologist whose knowledge of volcanoes allows him to consult on how to clean the soil in our cities… PUBLIC RETREAT operates as a spider web, using sound as a vehicle and evocative subject to dig deeper at the intersections of art, built environment, and human experience.
Sound is only one element of the work carried out in PUBLIC RETREAT. But it is perhaps the most graspable output from their prolific collaboration. Though intangible in its very soundwaves, these works create spaces that bring people together: physically through collective listening, remotely through the knowledge that others are listening elsewhere, and also by acknowledging the sometimes-invisible labor behind the networks of other actors involved: poets, artists, sound technicians and the distribution platforms that
keep artistic sound production alive. By continuing to record and produce material in spaces where artistic, architectural and sociopolitical discourses intersect, PUBLIC RETREAT highlights the importance of the overlaps between their practices as sound artists, writer, and architect. In doing so, they underline the valuable perspectives that these practitioners and platforms can contribute to discourse about how our built environments exist.
The newspaper you are reading now is a collage of speculative narratives, poems, interviews, scores for rituals. It presents new work together with material produced for PUBLIC RETREAT Radio, and so builds on research, recordings, and writing developed during residencies, exhibitions and workshops in Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Helsinki and at SoundArtLab in Struer, Denmark.
How can this publication offer a PUBLIC RETREAT? What does it mean to retreat in public? Can this newspaper offer a reprieve, a break from everyday life? Does it crystallize the debate around the culture pages of a daily broadsheet, and the luxury of reading for pleasure, or to expand knowledge for one’s own interest?
Or could it simply be something to hide behind, while sitting on a public bench? It gives a reason, or even an excuse, to rest in public. To sit on a bench, uninterrupted and without apology, and close one’s eyes. Being present, listening and bearing witness to that which swirls around us, often unnoticed, every day?
Jasmine Hinks is an independent curator, writer and editor. She holds the position of Curator of Editorial at Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm, and is lecturer at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm where, together with artist Jonas Dahlberg, she runs Of Public Interest (OPI) Lab, a one-year advanced course and experimental practice-based laboratory for working with art, architecture and public space.
