For people and communities whose pasts have been erased or denied historical documentation, sound presents a rich potential for rediscovering them. Sound has been used effectively in this regard for various experiences of the second world war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, in 1992, the Polish theatre company, Teatr NN<\/a>, sought to resurrect the Jewish district of the Polish city Lublin, which was obliterated during the second world war, by using sound. Printing the names of former inhabitants and streets of the disappeared quarter, they invited visitors to speaks the names out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy speaking a name, by vocalising that person\u2019s most intimate identification,” says sound theorist Se\u00e1n Street.<\/a> “their presence moves through time once again.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Accessing forbidden pasts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sound is also an effective way to access forbidden pasts, experiences and subjectivities that are problematic or complicated for us today. One such past is the experience of everyday Germans in Nazi-era Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through extensive archival research and oral history interviews, media academic Carolyn Birdsall has developed what she calls \u201cNazi soundscapes\u201d<\/a>. These are sonic remnants such as songs, sirens, allied plane engines and oral testimony from German civilians in the second world war. Combined, they create potent access points to a past experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This notion of silence is of keen interest and importance to theorists of oppression, colonialism and racism, such as Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire<\/a> and Edward Said<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n C\u00e9saire\u2019s Discourse on Colonialism<\/a> quickly became seminal on its publication in 1950. It persuasively debunked contemporary arguments that the colonial project economically benefited the colonised. Edward Said would later assert<\/a> that C\u00e9saire\u2019s intention \u201cwas not so much to reveal the silence of these colonised people but to shatter their wall-to-wall description (by the oppressor), leaving new space to be filled by people who can speak for themselves at last\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Inhabiting the past in the present<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In parallel with the experience of the colonised, sound can also be an ally for other kinds of oppressed people whose pasts have been distorted, repressed, erased or silenced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sound theorist Se\u00e1n Street says that<\/a> \u201csound provides direct entry to a lost or forgotten experience\u201d. In this vein, I used sound in various ways to access moments of my own silent past as a gay child in a conservative part of rural Ireland in the 1980s. Sound helped me excavate the specific contours and feeling of that experience and ultimately represent it on stage in a way that was emotionally understandable to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I performed my one-man show last year at the HearSay International Audio Festival<\/a> in rural county Limerick, Ireland. You can listen to a short clip from the show below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n