{ brisik }
To disturb is to invite.
Brisik, in Bahasa Indonesia, denotes a noisy disturbance: an excess of sound that carries the weight of hysteria, impropriety, crowds, and loss of control. Historically gendered and moralised, the term is often used to discipline bodies that exceed normative thresholds of audibility, those who take up too much space, sonically and socially. Brisik is not merely noise, it is sometimes overwhelming, often familiar, and irreducibly present. It names sound that refuses absorption into the quiet regimes of order.
In Swiss contexts such as Lausanne, public space is governed through sonic policing that privileges acoustic “cleanliness,” valuing silence, restraint, and predictability. Drawing from theories of racialization of sound, silence operates not as neutrality but as an active technology of governance that produces and maintains bourgeois norms of civility tied to whiteness and class. Noise functions as a form of spatial discipline, determining who may gather, how, and under what conditions. It is tolerated when commodified or institutionalised, but suspect when informal. Diasporic and racialised forms of gatherings are more readily framed as disruptive or uncivilised, and the threshold of acceptable noise is unevenly distributed. To be called noisy is not only to exceed a decibel limit, but to become the problem.
As a conceptual approach, brisik intervenes in the smooth functioning of public order by reframing disturbance as hospitality. Rather than understanding noise as a breach of decorum, it is considered as a relational practice that invites gathering. Through an ambulant karaoke system moving across Lausanne, lyrics are projected onto public and private surfaces, blurring the liberal separation between home and public realm. Karaoke, an activity that toes the line between cringe, endearment, irritation, and fun, becomes a tool of temporary occupation that draws people in. These sonic interventions create fleeting informal gatherings that test the uses of public space beyond its intended design. Brisik oscillates between intrusion and invitation, seeking to challenge the exclusions embedded in spatial sonic regulation.
Approached as a reclaimed accusation, Brisik’s negative connotations are not rejected but rather reoriented. It remains constant, overwhelming, and present, refusing disappearance while using disturbance as a means of connection. To be brisik is not to seek permission, nor permanence, but to continue insisting through repetition and ephemerality, and to question what is deemed excessive. It is to take up space through the joy of being noisy, and to insist on presence, intimacy, and togetherness in spaces structured to suppress them.
