Noise related conditions:
Igniting a firework is easy, it only requires a lighter or a match. From there, the small fire pulled from your pocket is ready to become something bigger and brighter. The fuse sparks to life, and the flame travels down the sting, leaving it bunt and limp. The rocket then escapes to the sky, up into the black, and releases all the sound, heat and light you can store in a few grams of gunpowder.
People around you will have time paused for a second; they will look up and see colours drifting like broken cobwebs. Through the fizzes and pops, they might deduce there’s a holiday or suspect there’s a riot.
Luminescent sparks take a few seconds to die.
Loud sounds maybe tens of seconds.
The deep bang will walk the streets of the small hours till only the walls can hear it.
A dog will bark for a few minutes.
It might take an hour or so for someone woken from a dream to fall back asleep.
If the noise came from a riot, the burnt out cars would last in the road for a few days. It is very difficult to measure how long the energy would reside in rioters’ bodies, or in spectators’ bodies, or in bodies who will only ever notice the shockwaves, not the explosion. It could be a week, years, a lifetime. Long after your body was buried in the ground.
The title of this show is pulled from ‘The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022’, a piece of legislation that widened the conditions in which protests are considered illegal. Sonic disruption in particular is singled out, with vague language that gives authorities the benefit of ambiguity. You could be forcibly dispersed or arrested for being at a demo, under the pretext of being too loud.
After this happens, the adrenaline might stay in you for a couple of hours. The police could hold you for a day or two. Bruising could stay for a week. However, the ripples made across time are incredibly hard to quantify. Some actions produce images so bright that they burn themselves onto printing presses and penetrate your subconscious, to dwell in the sediment for years to come. Here they move in loops and spirals, to re-emerge down the line.
Tomorrow, next year, outside of your lifetime… Text by Will Hilless
Curated by George and Will Hilless.
All proceeds to the Filton 24, to support the activists and their loved ones while they await trial.