AdBlock, but for your ears

Whilst conducting research within the scope of my PhD thesis in Moldova’s capital Chisinau, I was struck by the sheer number of speakers in public spaces, which play music that serves purely commercial purposes. Curiously, none of the locals seemed to particularly enjoy the music selection, shrugging its presence away as an inescapable fact.

In less-regulated spaces outside of the heavily ‘revitalized’ parts of the city center, residents listen to a much broader variety of music. This is especially notable in places like Chisinau’s Central Market, a lively labyrinth where vendors play their personal music selection on portable radios. This market is facing imminent closure and will likely be replaced with a shopping mall.
Like many post-socialist countries, Moldova is still undergoing a turbo-neoliberal phase in urban ‘development’. An oligarchic class snatched unregulated public spaces away, aided by a cumbersome bureaucracy that hinders public scrutiny and participation at every turn. The result, a disaffected citizenry, avoids going through the trouble of reclaiming public space, withdrawing to their private spaces. The acoustic environment remains a rather underexamined area within the struggle for the preservation of non-commercial public spaces in the region.

Without stepping into the traps of nostalgia and romanticised notions of ‘authenticity’, I want to examine how the commercialization of auditory spaces ties into the larger processes of erasing parts of the city considered less presentable, and how this displaces already marginalized lower-income communities.

Whenever I spoke of this research, I encountered a strong response from other artists/researchers. Therefore, I would like to open the conversation up and, starting from the case study of Chisinau, see which types of audio advertising participants have encountered in their daily lives, how they address them, and what a resistance for a sonic commons could look like.