Christiania Sound Archive, 2023
Web archive and sound installation



The Christiania Sound Archive navigates the historical and ongoing negotiations of Freetown Christiania, a commune established in 1971, through its ambient currents and reverberations.

Initially organized as an inquiry into the textures of harsh noise, madness, disability, and self-organization at the Mælkebøtten neighborhood’s Researcher in Residence program, the archive emerged in response to ongoing feedback from Freetown residents, who continually renegotiate the terms of their living environment. In a setting where the possibility of municipal surveillance means necessary limits to visual documentation (signage in parts of the region alerts passersby to photo-free zones), sound-based inquiry proposed an ironically quieter form of engagement.

This repository approaches Christiania’s complex sonic ecology: a threshold between the nature preserve and urban space, local gatherings and tourist influxes, sub-communities, and their formation. In sound’s capacious register, the archive seeks a provisional form, articulating the resonances of social space: its frictions, subtleties, and intimacies. Guided by ongoing collaborations in “noise neutrality” and harsh noise research with S. Warren, the project also turns to noise’s generative potential. What is always occluded in sound (or image)? What do some of us register that others cannot? What degree of coherence are visiting listeners owed, guaranteed, or already offered?

The original recordings reside exclusively with Mælkebøtten residents and the Freetown Christiania Archive.