De-composition: The Politics of Sonic Entropy

In 2016, hundreds of Indigenous people, led by women, staged a silent demonstration during the historic collective action against the Dakota Access Pipeline, also known as the Standing Rock Protests — a battle whose slogan, “Water Is Life,” emphasized that the proposed pipeline route posed a real danger to the waterways that sustained life in the region. The poignant juxtaposition of Edison’s preserved breath and the silent protest by Indigenous water protectors revealed a paradox: protest uses breath as a form of resistance to protect life, while the commodification of a dead man’s breath by industrialists like Ford, responsible for the proliferation of fossil fuels, offers only further destruction; yet it is that small vial that ends up being preserved.