It's been said that the '79 revolution in Iran was heard before it was seen; it existed first as a sound, a pressurized charge of multitudes that first resonated in Tehran without a single visible body. In fact the ghost of the future revolution had come to haunt in advance, and perhaps due to the overproduction and overcoding of images in our milieu, by the time this revolution and others became visible, it was apprehended, co-opted, territorialized. Affect wrought into a seemingly stable surplus.
We want to be cautious, however, of thinking that sound can transmit any more information to us about a revolution than images or text; in fact what we are interested in is how the acoustics of a coup can show us how little we actually know.
We want to be cautious, however, of thinking that sound can transmit any more information to us about a revolution than images or text; in fact what we are interested in is how the acoustics of a coup can show us how little we actually know.
