The sounds of Hanoi and the after-image of the homeland

This paper discusses the soundscape of Hanoi and of the countryside north of Hanoi in the Bac Ninh province with the experience of the two authors as artists in two collaborative projects, Arrival Cities: Hanoi and Que/Homelands. The content is structured in three layers, a conversation between the two authors on their individual experience of the projects, a jointly written text which takes a more distant perspective to the topic and a series of video and audio files taken from the two artistic projects. While the two projects were completely independent, this paper identifies ways in which they complement each other and, taken together, the sound art collected within the projects may have a further political meaning. The authors suggest that the shifting soundscapes of Vietnam are a direct reflection of social and political change in the country.