Listening to the Urban Fracture: Co-Creating Soundscapes, Partnerships and Futures in the French Periphery during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Abstract:The COVID-19 pandemic with its social distancing measures changed the course of many anthropological projects involving fieldwork, rendering many unfeasible but also opening up new possibilities. The cancellation of a participatory filmmaking project is the starting point of the aural collaborations discussed in this article. These consist in a series of podcasts I co-created with an environmental journalist who specialized in radio, podcast, and soundscape production. In these sound pieces the research participants—a musician, a bird specialist and activists mobilized against territorial inequalities—build on their perception of the aural environment during the first coronavirus lockdown of 2020 to reflect on the present and on possible, perhaps more livable futures.