Manchester's queer sonic geographies

Norrisette – Alan Turing's Heartbeat

Norrisette sat down at the Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Gardens and placed contact mics on the statue. She knocked on his chest and the apple he holds to give him a heartbeat and bring him back to life. She also recorded from beside his head, asking what Turing might hear if he were sitting there now. Harsh industrial sounds from around the Village cut against her soothing, ethereal vocals, and synthetic brass and strings rise to a crescendo. She calls the piece a "sonic souvenir". It reflects on queer elders and queer auditory pasts, and through it she felt she had taken "a little ownership" of a village that does not always feel like hers.

Gary Fisher

Gary set out with no plan: "I feel like life is just improvised." For him, walking is itself a way of composing: "you're not choosing the sounds but you're choosing where to go." He drifted towards Canal Street and recorded everything he noticed as sounds faded in and out with each step. His soundmap retraces the route from memory, drawing each sound where he heard it. Because Gary identifies as queer, he understands everything he makes as queer. The piece suggests that queerness may lie less in the sounds themselves than in an open, improvising way of being present and listening.

Phia Sky

Phia was drawn to a car park in the Village, which we explored from the roof downwards. She recorded rain, metal, the stairwell and the strange chimes and beeps of the lift. In her composition she plays with these timbres through sound design. Her soundmap, which "coincidentally looks like a flamingo", colours sounds by the conversations they sparked. She describes the piece as a map of her Manchester but not her queer Manchester, because Canal Street does not represent her. Out of that detachment comes something new: building a sonic world, on her own terms, in a space of transit.