The sound of placards

This piece follows two demonstrations from London and Los Angeles. A decade apart, the protests are described at first hand (London) and via mediated sources such as uploaded videos to twitter (Los Angeles). In this article, I build upon the resistant capability of organization within networks of communication and isolate one of the products of this organization; the street protest, in terms of its sonorous form in contrast to both its physical (numbers of protesters, critical mass) or symbolic presence (slogans, placards, banners). Using narrative, and examples such as the jangling of keys (Wenceslas Square, Prague, 1989), I take this murmur and buzzing of voices that declare a political intention as an opportunity to ask what the political identity of this public becomes when its symbolic meaning is ‘denatured’ (Barthes).