This project is concerned with experiential ecological knowledge – working with the Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Camp (also known as Blikkiesdorp) doing research surrounding noise pollution in the "bucket brigade" style. The researcher works with community members to collect qualitative knowledge through interviews and diary entries and will put these accounts onto a story map, along with decibel readings taken by community members during peak noise hours.
This research will be put on an open source map to actively challenge neoliberal scientific understandings of how much noise pollution is too much and to interrogate the Environmental Impact Assessment that approved the move of the Cape Town International Airport airstrip and attendant displacement of the community, putting them in the line of even more harmful noise pollution levels.
Researcher
Alexandra Watkins, originally from Memphis, Tennessee received a BA in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, United States before moving to Cape Town to complete her masters in the Environmental Humanities at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is currently focusing on experiential environmental knowledge, transcorporeal embodiments and urban spatial ordering and drawing theoretically from biopolitics and neomaterial philosophy.