Harrogate Sound Survey

society, culture, documentary · EN

Every episode in this series starts the same way. I walk out with a recorder and no fixed plan, and let the town decide the route. That is close to what the Situationists called the dérive: instead of choosing where to go, you let the place choose for you. Flâneurs used to walk a city to see it properly. Sound Map of Harrogate does the same with a microphone, working through the town one place at a time. Some of these recordings come from streets everyone in Harrogate already knows. Others come from corners most people walk past without a second look. Either way, the point is the same: to hear the town rather than move through it. It shares the aim behind everything else The Stray Walkers do: becoming a stranger in your own town again. This is part of an ongoing project called The Stray Walkers, a Harrogate based not-for-profit collective of artists, activists and urban wanderers interested in psychogeography, public space and the h