Carolyn Birdsall

'Affirmative resonances' in the city? Sound, imagination and urban space in early 1930s Germany

“Affirmative Resonances” in the City?: Sound, Imagination and Urban Space in Early 1930s Germany This article focuses on the role of sound in producing urban space and reworking identity formations in the early years of the Nazi regime. I analyze a case study about the mythology created around the Nazi party martyr Albert Leo Schlageter in the German city of Dusseldorf. By tracing the cultural events, political struggles and propaganda strategies involving Schlageter during the 1920s to the three-day festival in 1933 at the location of his death, I investigate the ways in which the Nazi Party (NSDAP) utilized music and sound in public spaces, particularly in urban street environments. This raises questions about the status of sound as an important part of Nazi spectacles, in popularizing mythology, and in disciplining the senses: How does sound perform or play out certain power relations in urban space? How are forms of embodiment produced through experiences of sound or sound-making? In which ways can songs and musical performance be used for political purposes and to capture the popular imagination? The concept of “affirmative resonance” is developed to address the role of sound in contexts where groups of people created resonant spaces within urban environments, whether through collective singing and cheering, loudspeaker technology, or in the call and response interactions between a speaker and the crowd. In this case, “affirmative resonances” are viewed as mechanisms that worked to affirm the legitimacy of the Nazi party, normalize social transformations, delineate patterns of belonging, and activate the “auditory imagination” (Ihde).

Capturing commemoration: Using mobile recordings within memory research

This paper details the contribution of mobile devices to capturing commemoration in action. It investigates the incorporation of audio and sound recording devices, observation, and note-taking into a mobile (auto)ethnographic research methodology, to research a large-scale commemorative event in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. On May 4, 2016, the sounds of a Silent March—through the streets of Amsterdam to Dam Square—were recorded and complemented by video grabs of the march’s participants and onlookers. We discuss how the mixed method enabled a multilevel analysis across visual, textual, and aural layers of the commemorative atmosphere. Our visual data aided in our evaluation of the construction of collective spectacle, while the audio data necessitated that we venture into new analytic territory. Using Sonic Visualiser, we uncovered alternative methods of “reading” landscape by identifying different sound signatures in the acoustic environment. Together, this aural and visual representation of the May 4 events enabled the identification of spatial markers and the temporal unfolding of the Silent March and the national 2 minutes’ silence in Amsterdam’s Dam Square.

Advancing Memory Methods

This introductory chapter provides an extended reflection on the scope of memory methods, charting the existing methods-based research, and how an affective turn in the humanities and social sciences has prompted scholars in memory studies to engage with more-than-human and embodied methodological approaches. The introduction also outlines the themes covered by the volume: an ethics of care, experiencing and emplaced (researcher) bodies, and places—mapped and digital. We summarise the contributions, explicating how they push traditional methodological boundaries in their engagement with multisensorial and embodied memory-work, and use memory places through mapping and digital media.

Using Emplaced Ethnography, Mobility, and Listening to Research Memory

This chapter explores two examples of collective national remembrance that occur in the Netherlands on 4 and 5 May annually. A visual and sound-based ethnography was used to better understand the relationship between the practice of commemoration and its affect (Anderson 2004). On 4 May, the sounds of a silence march—through the streets of Amsterdam to the Dam Square—were recorded and complimented by video grabs of the march’s participants and onlookers. On 5 May, sounds and atmospheres (cf. Sumartojo 2015) were recorded at one of Holland’s biggest ‘freedom festivals’, named Bevrijdingspop, in Haarlem. We highlight how by paying more attention to the sounds (and images) rather than solely to text, we better understood the role they played in the co-constitution of commemorative spaces.