You don’t have to have lived in Buenos Aires for long to notice that it is not immune to the scourge of many capitals: noise. The compressed-air brakes of out-of-breath buses, the passing of speeding cars, unbridled motorbikes, jackhammers disfiguring the pavement, the repetitive beeping of car park doors: the streets and avenues are tunnels of decibels from which there is no escape. In the shops lining these same arteries, music is often spat out through speakers at the end of their lives. Underground, the cavalcade of the underground is accompanied at every stop by a metallic screech and a strident sound signal designed to rouse the alienated traveller from his daily torpor. And even our apartments are acoustic sieves that don’t isolate us from our neighbours and the city’s construction work.

How can we recover our silence when the servants of the state are assailing us with these incessant nuisances? The police cars and their shrill sirens, the helicopters that seem to fly lower every time, the dictatorship of noise is everywhere, it’s the first form of pollution.

So where can you escape to? Silence has become rare, and is primarily a class privilege. Acoustic bubbles reserved for the rich are built at the scale of the car, the workplace, the house, and sometimes even the (private) neighbourhood. In some cases, this is a form of sanitisation, but above all it is a preciously guarded right that we have every right to envy and to want to implement and generalise in our cities, albeit under a different model of course.

Noise is a common scourge. Workers in the public space, who are sometimes the actors of this noise, are obviously the first to be affected. They are exposed to these nuisances for long periods of time, forced to drown in the deafening noise, with no possibility of a break. Ordinary city dwellers navigate their way through the chaotic soundscape of the city, using the signals of the cacophony to find their bearings. Sight is no longer enough; hearing is essential to survival and sometimes becomes the first sense used to avoid the risks of traffic. One wonder if we’ll be able to find our way around a silent city. We will have to relearn how to walk and live in the city. Re-learning to taste freedom.

In the meantime, the deafening noise is increasingly accompanied by blinding lights, and tired vision and overstressed hearing combine to deny us sound darkness, visual silence and calm. In the midst of urban tinnitus, the incentive to consume that devours the city is based on ultra-stimulation of hearing and sight, with no room for physical or mental rest. We sleep less, stress and anxiety increase, and noise even drives away the natural species that share our cities and our lives.

Collectively, the tyranny of noise locks us into individualism, we no longer understand each other, the uninterrupted din fosters dissension and leads to conflict; we isolate ourselves, each on our own, incapable of meeting and sharing.

It’s time to recognise sound as a new weapon of repression to better protect ourselves and the cities where we live, work and stroll. The loss of silence, the loss of darkness (even of night) is a loss of a common good, a common fatigue from which we should be able to free ourselves so that we can hope to recover social harmony and rest.