Drips in the Underground: Creatively Activating Urban Ambiances

This paper examines how the sensory and embodied experience of After the Deluge, 2018, by Kingsley Ng articulates a reverberant site that engages the socio-spatial contours of the water management system, including the hidden labour involved in creating and maintaining it. Through an affective and poetic reimagining of site through walking, sound and installation Deluge questions the apparent disjuncture between the mythic, spectacular and catastrophic images of flood management and the often-invisible activity of the people who work with these urban water management sites. The continual push/pull between the material, social and symbolic makes Deluge a significant example of creative activation of ambiance and how it can be used to allow new perceptions and relations with urban space to emerge.