Soundscapes and the City

An upside down city.

Fiona Lee is interested in what cities sound like. She takes early morning walks around Manila, exploring the park by the bay, the jeepneys crawling the streets, the mass held in churches and cathedrals, vendors hawking beauty products in markets. 

All of these paint the soundscape of a living, breathing city--one constantly mutating and changing. And yet, alongside this chaotic urban space of the present, there exists another city, long gone but its ghost lingers in what has been left behind: newspapers from another century, celebrations preserved in exposures made on glass, recordings of a radio broadcast from decades back. 

The cauldron as genie granting us a glimpse of a city long gone. 

Fiona Lee brings all of these things together using upside down projections and radios and cauldrons as speakers that might as well be genies granting a magic wish to be able to experience a city long gone right alongside the city where we are not flesh and blood. The sounds of the cities past and the present sharing the same space, crafting a view of a possible future, if we want it.