Vieques, an inhabited island off Puerto Rico, was used by the United States Navy as a bomb-testing range from 1941 to 2003. The Navy was forced to evacuate after a civil disobedience campaign waged by local residents, with supporters from around the world. Over the course of a decade, Allora & Calzadilla contributed to the visual culture of this campaign with a long-term, multi-sited project including the Vieques Videos.

Returning a Sound was made at the beginning of the process of demilitarization, decontamination, and future development, and at once celebrates a victory and registers its precariousness. The video addresses not only the landscape of Vieques, but also its soundscape, invoking the memory of the sonic violence of the bombing. It follows Homar, an activist, as he traverses the island on a moped with a trumpet welded to the muffler. Throughout his circuit, Homar acoustically reclaims areas of the island formerly exposed to ear-splitting detonations. Scarred with bomb-craters and with its ecosystem contaminated, the former military land has been designated as a federal wildlife refuge, a designation that entails further violence by marginalizing the demands of island residents for decontamination and municipal management—the point of departure for Under Discussion.

In this video, an overturned conference table has been retrofitted with an engine and rudder from a small fishing boat. A local activist uses the motorized table to lead viewers around the restricted areas of the island, re-marking the antagonisms that haunt the picturesque coast and bearing witness to the memory of the Fishermen’s Movement, which initiated the first acts of civil disobedience against the ecologically damaging bombing practices.