ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores acoustic ecology as ‘an interdisciplinary field embracing the artistic and scientific possibilities of listening to the environment and encouraging and facilitating participatory collaborations with local communities’, with a view to mobilisation towards climate action. It provides a theoretical analysis of noise and silence as forms of resistance and protest, building on Nancy Fraser's idea of ‘subaltern counterpublics’ to develop his theory of ‘aural counterpublics’. The book focuses on protest aesthetics to argue that social action and resistance though demonstrations are forms of performance, with understandings by the actors regarding how they will be received and read, framing ‘aural counterpublics’ as ‘a response to the systematic silencing imposed on them by the state and corporate media’. It presents an edited conversation between three uniquely situated artist-activists involved in a sound project called Street Hassle, exploring the ‘opioid crises’ in Toronto, Canada.
