Hostile Melody
Site: Vanløse Station, Copenhagen, DK
Year: 2024
Status: Temporary public artwork
Materials: 19,200 4/4 measures at 114 beats per minute (12 hours) notated, printed and pasted to advertisement column
2.1 x Ø1.15m
This project examines urban maginality in Danish public space by critically engaging the discourse surrounding the figure of the “Indvandrerdreng”—a compound term combining immigrant and boy, frequently deployed in racialised media and policy narratives. Central to this inquiry is what this project terms the Hostile Melody—a sonic deterrent commissioned by Danish State Railways (DSB) in 2023 and broadcast at selected train stations during evening and night hours, designed to discourage the presence of “Indvandrerdreng”.
As a publicly owned institution, DSB operates through a combination of state subsidies and ticket revenue, with its infrastructure legally defined as a public service. In principle, this status mandates spatial accessibility and democratic openness. However, this project interrogates how DSB’s sonic interventions function as a form of biopolitical control—regulating affective atmospheres and rendering public space selectively inclusive.
At the centre of the project is a music-notation installation posted on the station’s advertising column: a twelve-hour transcription of the Hostile Melody played daily from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. This materialisation of an otherwise invisible mechanism of exclusion renders the practice visible. In doing so, the work raises critical questions about access, participation, and the silent architectures of exclusion shaping urban space.
conor k. coughlan 