This paper explores contemporary art practice in Hamburg as a way to counter current trends of regeneration in different areas of the city. While officials promote the concept of “the growing city”, artists have employed various strategies of resistance.

For a couple of years now, artists, urban anthropologists or filmmakers have been mapping the city from different perspectives (urban, audio, post-colonial). The paper presents the case study of an artistic intervention organised by the independent radio station FSK collaborating with a dozen artists and researchers in a workshop. In a “futurist search for traces” a mapping of disappearing city sounds forms the first part of the project. In a second step these soundfiles are archived on the website of radio aporee (http://aporee.org/maps/). Here the sites and sounds can be accessed by GPS-enabled mobile devices. Aporee thus forms an expanding archive which enables us to trace changes in urban space, e.g. in the course of gentrification. The paper analyses the politics of disappearance as a counter strategy and critically examines archival practices to rescue oppositional experiences.