This Bachelor’s thesis presents a multi-layered sonic archive investigating the ZR van culture in Barbados as a “vessel of the diaspora” and a form of “mobile social architecture”. It marks a definitive methodological shift in my practice, moving from a performance-based DJ practice (KA-RABA) towards an institutional, research-led sound installation practice, and from passive hearing towards a situated archival practice.

Navigating European cultural infrastructures from a Black and Queer perspective, my work addresses a central research question: How can I investigate imbalances and connections that reveal the hidden histories of shared spaces through listening practices as a form of resistance and care? This research interrogates how colonial infrastructures shape the perception of “noise” versus “knowledge” through the lens of deep listening and the Black Atlantic theory.

Barbados was chosen to engage with a sonic environment fundamentally more vibrant, intentional, and semiotically dense than the European context, where public life operated at a subliminal intersection and the mundane becomes ritual. Crucially, this choice is obscured through Édouard Glissant’s framework of the “right to opacity,” serving as a protective operational layer that allows marginalized spaces to exist on their own terms without having to explain themselves to the Western world.

In this soundscape, the sonic environment serves as an immersive, embodied architecture where music spills into the public sphere as a form of sonic agency, and communal meaning is stored in vibrational frequencies rather than static monuments.