Hello. My name is Tina Haver Currin,
and along with my husband,
Grayson, I am the founder and organizer of the Air Horn Orchestra.
The Air Horn Orchestra is a sound-based protest
that we created when then governor, Pat McCrory,
signed House Bill Two into law and carried on until his loss in November.
We begin the Air Horn Orchestra the way I
imagine a lot of millennial-led protests begin these days,
which is to say with a post on the internet.
After House Bill Two was signed,
we went online and asked a few of our friends if they'd be interested and willing to
join us outside of the Governor's Mansion after work to blow an air horn at the Governor,
and incredibly, what we thought would be a collection of maybe a dozen or so
of our friends turned into 150 or so people,
all spotting air horns,
and we met outside the Governor's Mansion, and we made a racket.
We depressed the air horns until they expired,
and that lasted about five minutes or so.
And with that many people,
with that much compressed air, it was loud.
It was really loud.
It was really fun.
People, I think, felt really impassioned about having an opportunity to express
their frustration and anger with
such a discriminatory bill in a way that was sort of kooky and unconventional.
And I think the strange sound of the air horns,
coupled with the frustration
and maybe powerlessness that the people were feeling about HB Two,
was really the crux of our success as a protest.
So, we continued to meet outside for 30 consecutive weeks.
And at first, the instrumentation was just air horns,
so the protests were very,
very loud but relatively short,
and as we carried on,
more people would arrive,
people ranging from age five to 95,
and they began to bring a diverse set of instrumentation.
So, we had bass drums,
and old trumpets that people hadn't used in 20 years,
and kids with kazoos and a shofar and all sorts of things.
And so, the sound grew from this sort of cacophonous air horn den to a full band,
and the sound wasn't really something that you would necessarily tap your toe to,
but it began to extend the protests from five minutes or however long
an air horn would last to 15 or 20 minutes of just racket, racket, racket.
And that helped us attract not only new players who found the use
of sound and racket an intriguing protest proposition,
but also the media took note as well.
Throughout the eight months that we organized the Air Horn Orchestra,
we had reporters from places like the New York Times and even
as far away as the BBC come out to cover the protest,
and we were on the nightly news pretty routinely,
routinely enough that media analysis puts
the broadcast viewership around 7.5 million people.
And if you were to buy, say,
entire HB Two advertisements to attract that many eyeballs,
that much publicity, it would cost you around $350,000,
which we achieved just through unconventional protest alone.
So, we felt really, really good about that.
[inaudible]
As far as
the sound of the Air Horn Orchestra,
I think the best way to describe it would be loud.
It was so loud that at times, during press conferences,
you could actually hear the din of our group through Pat McCrory's own microphone.
So, that was always really fun to
mess with him a little bit and to know that we were getting inside
of his mind and making sure that he knew
that our anger and frustration was palpable and that he couldn't ignore it.
So, that was really effective and I think the use of sound in this case, specifically,
was unusual though it built upon traditional protest means like chants and songs.
But it took it in a new direction,
a direction that I think was unexpected and unusual and that
that part of the protest is what led
to a lot of the media coverage and a lot of the participation,
and therefore, I think was the crux of its success.
[inaudible] Some of my past experience that informed my work
with the Air Horn Orchestra was another unconventional protest that
my husband and I started in 2015 called Saturday Chores.
And this was a protest where we would go to a women's health clinic each
Saturday morning and stand next to people who were harassing women going into the clinic,
and holding grotesque signs,
and yelling through megaphones.
We would stand next to them with our own signs that joked on them a little bit.
So, one person would have a sign that said,
"Babies are murdered here," and I would stand next to him or her with a sign that said,
"Weird hobby" or "I like turtles," and that went quickly pretty viral.
It's now been seen in pretty much every country around the world,
has been shared more than a million times.
It was covered by a lot of major media outlets as well,
and that original work with non-traditional forms
of activism taught me a lot about not only city ordinances,
but also what appeals to people,
and what resonates with people,
and what makes them want to share an idea or a movement online,
and what makes them encouraged to come out and participate in a movement themselves,
which of course, is key to any successful protest or counter protest.
So, with the Saturday Chores,
we were able to learn zoning laws and work with
the Raleigh Police Department to learn a lot about,
well, with the Air Horn Orchestra specifically,
we were able to work with our PD to learn about
noise ordinances and learn about our rights,
and where we could be as activists and where we
could not be and what kind of sound we could make and could not make,
and how to pull permits.
And learning those local laws informed
the Air Horn Orchestra in a major way because we were able to work within
the confines of the law to create something that was totally
a racket and totally disturbing but also within the letter of the law.
So, that previous experience certainly helped.
[inaudible] As far as takeaways from organizing the Air Horn Orchestra,
I learned, again, that the tools to
generate change are within all of us and we all have access to them.
If you're watching this, you have access to tools of change the same way that I did,
which is the internet and social media and kooky ideas,
and how quickly those can spread.
So, I would say use humor.
You can absolutely approach a scenario or a situation
that is uncomfortable and unfortunate and even discriminatory.
But you don't have to reflect that in the way you respond to it.
You can have fun.
You can enjoy yourself.
You can do something unconventional or unusual
and still generate a significant amount of change.
And that, to me,
has been the most empowering lesson that I've
learned through both Saturday Chores and through the Air Horn Orchestra.
With the use of the internet,
with an unusual idea,
and with the help of your community,
you can make the change and be the change that you want to see,
and you can help form North Carolina into the image that you would like.
So, I encourage all of you to go out and exercise your rights.
Use the internet. Do that kooky idea and make it happen. Thank you.
Pedro LaschVisual Artist and Associate Research Professor
Candice HopkinsDocumenta 14 Curator, Producer, and Author
Jace ClaytonComposer, DJ, Author, and Lecturer
Mathias HinkeComposer, Researcher, and Professor University of the Arts (UdK) - Berlin
