Lebanese-British artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan (born 1985) refers to himself as a “private ear” in reference to the acoustic investigations he takes on in his sound art – or rather, human rights advocacy work.

His role is made forensic by the act of “listening to, with and on behalf of people affected by corporate, state and environmental violence”.

As part of this social and political art activism, his artistic practice has included sonic evidence and forensic reports exhibited in the form of installations, films, lectures, live performances and publications.

His acoustic analysis was presented before the US Congress and the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal as evidence.

“In many ways, my whole practice has been about negotiating this gulf between what we say and how we are heard,” he said in a 2021 interview with Frieze magazine.

Abu Hamdan frequently collaborates with Forensic Architecture, a research agency based out of Goldsmiths College in London, with which he conducted research as part of his PhD.

In 2016, he worked with the group and Amnesty International for Saydnaya (The Missing 19dB), an acoustic investigation – in the form of an installation – into the Assad-regime prison in the Syrian city of Saydnaya, where an estimated 13,000 people were executed.

The work revealed the stark change in sound levels of the whispers of the inmates before and after protests that shook the city in 2011.

In a rather poetic statement, Lawrence Abu Hamdan won the Turner Prize along with three other artists, who all came together to make a request from the jury that they’d like to all accept the prize together instead of singularly.

Their request was granted, making it the first time the award was given to a collective (albeit an ad hoc one).

Abu Hamdan has additionally won the Nam June Paik Award for new media – an award organised by the German foundation Kunststiftung NRW that celebrates artists who “take risks, bridge cultural boundaries and whose work is transdisciplinary”, in the spirit of the late Korean artist Nam June Paik.

His 2022 show “Lawrence Abu Hamdan: The Sonic Image” at the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates was the largest institutional solo exhibition of his work to date, and featured the specially-commissioned work Air Conditioning.

And until June 11, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is exhibiting his show “Walled Unwalled And Other Monologues”.

Abu Hamdan is currently based in Beirut, Lebanon. Discover some of his most famous works below.

WORKS BY LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN

Abu Hamdan’s “investigations” shed light on social and political contexts via his acoustic works.

He often presents his sonic research and analysis in visual art forms that range from installations to film to “audiovisual essays” – evidencing blurred lines between researcher, archivist, sound artist and human rights advocate.

‘THE WITNESS-MACHINE COMPLEX’ (2021) 

Presented at the Kunstverein Nürnberg in Germany, The Witness-Machine Complex investigates acoustic happenings at the Nuremberg trials that took place from 1945 to 1946, specifically, electronic audio technology that assisted the live translation of the trial proceedings into Russian, French, German and English.

The translators in the trials were physically absent, and their role was only apparent with the placement of flashing yellow and red lights built into the witness stand and at the prosecutor’s podium.

These absent translators would request that speakers either slow down or repeat what they had said by switching these lights on remotely.

The artist presented a recreation of the infrastructure in the form of a sound and light installation, in a device that tells “a history of the trials exclusively through their interruptions”.

AIR PRESSURE

Presented in the form of a website with an interactive map and sound database, Air Pressure visualises and documents the 22,111 Israeli military aircraft that have violated Lebanese airspace since 2007.

These have included fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles that continue to distress the citizens of Lebanon, who continuously fear a looming war with Israel.

Abu Hamdan collated the data via 243 letters uploaded to the UN Digital Library.

The Air Pressure site reveals the date of the flyover, the aircraft type, and the total duration in a neatly-organised table that divulges Israel’s violations by making the information readily accessible and comprehensible to the general public.

‘EARWITNESS INVENTORY’ (2018)

How have cinema sound effects created a “collective acoustic unconscious”?

Ninety-five sourced objects – like shoes, coffee cups, a wagon wheel and a customised door instruments – reflect different legal cases from around the world in the large-scale installation Earwitness Inventory, first exhibited at Chisenhale Gallery in London.

Relying on first-hand interviews and trial transcripts across the globe, each object is correlated to a single case where an “earwitness” bases their claim on their memories of sound.

In one example, a popcorn maker connects with a sinkhole incident in Florida where a witness claimed a building’s collapse sounded like popcorn.

“It is a transhistorical collection of stories and objects, which speak to the broader concerns of the project and this question of sonic experience, conflicted memories, and the acoustic debris stored in our mind’s ear,” wrote the artist.

‘EAR SHOT’ (2016)

In collaboration with the human rights organisation Defence for Children International and Forensic Architecture, Abu Hamdan set out to investigate an incident wherein two unarmed teenagers were shot by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank of Palestine.

He used an “audio-ballistic” analysis of recordings to understand whether the soldiers had used rubber bullets (as they had claimed) or if they had fired ammunition and visualised the sound frequencies of the shots.

The verdict was that the soldiers had used ammunition and not rubber bullets.

The evidence that Abu Hamdan brought forth was picked up by news networks, and ultimately forced Israel to renounce their initial claim.

Ear Shot comprises six chromogenic prints of the sonic visuals along with his short film Rubber Coated Steel, winner of a Tiger short film award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Abu Hamdan’s audio analysis was later presented to the US Congress as an example of Israel’s violation of US-Israeli arms agreements, attesting to the advocacy power of his work.

‘WALLED UNWALLED’ (2018)

The video Walled Unwalled investigates how information that is transmitted through walls, whether via surveillance technology or human senses, has been leveraged as evidence in courts of law and “instrumentalised as a tool of the state”.

Multiple cases are presented in the video, including the case of “Kyllo versus United States” (a privacy violation lawsuit), the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius, and the accounts of survivors of the Syrian regime’s Saydnaya military prison, which he had previously investigated in the work Saydnaya (The Missing 19dB).

Walled Unwalled was acquired by MoMA in 2019, and in 2023, was presented at the museum’s Kravis Studio incorporating its floor-to-ceiling windows in tandem with multiple “audiovisual essays” performed by the artist.

Join us on a Journey Through Sound.

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Cover Credit: Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Still from Walled Unwalled. 2018, High-definition video (colour, sound; 20:04 min.). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Elie Khouri. © 2022 Lawrence Abu Hamdan, courtesy Maureen Paley, London.

Writer | Bana Bissat

Bana Bissat is a Milan-based writer who reports on sound art for Sound of Life. She has written for Flash Art, Lampoon, and Cultured. @banabissat

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