Vox Casseroli

Reimagined by Aaron Rosenblum.

I was a former resident and regular visitor of Montreal when the casserole marches began. As a US citizen, I was unused to seeing such mass protests over such "small" issues (a comparatively modest increase in student fees and tuition). I came to appreciate the notion that a failure to protest even small increases was tantamount to implicit permission granted to the government to continue raising the price of an education.

Short, non-verbal sounds from throughout the recording were isolated, modified to highlight musical or aesthetic characteristics, and looped. This process mirrors the interpretation of such mass events by the media, in which individual protesters, organizers, or opponents are singled out to represent the whole in print or on the air. Quotations and sound bites from these single voices are then often repeated, creating a chorus that appears to represent the real variety of opinions and motivations, but inherently fails to do so.

Part of the Protest and Politics project - find out more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/protest

Photo credit: Francis Bourgouin.