Event

Humming Home, Public History and Sound (part 2)

  • Speaker  Dr. Lawrence Abu Hamdan

  • Location

    Online

  • Topic(s)
    Humanities
  • Type(s)
    Conferences, Free of charge, Virtual event

Online presentation and discussion with Dr. Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Humming Home is a FNR-funded series of events that aim to look at how different cultures, community groups, and people use sound, music, and silence to talk about their history.

What can music and history have in common? Can the sound tell us more about the past? What role does the voice have in this? And what about silence? Does it also speak? And does voice imply agency over history? How are sounds and their absence reflected in our political and cultural recollection of the past?

On Listening with Politics:

In 2023, Abu Hamdan founded Earshot, the world’s first organization using sound for the defense of human and environmental rights. Reflecting on its first year of operation, Abu Hamdan will be elaborating on the interrelations of art and activism and listening with politics. The presentation will focus on his latest project Zifzafa and use it to explore the concept and the struggle for a sonic self-determination.

Biography:

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a researcher, filmmaker, artist and activist or as he puts it a ‘Private Ear’. Abu Hamdan has over a decade of experience investigating audio and a doctorate from the University of London on the role of sound in legal investigations and political discourse. In 2023 he founded Earshot the world’s first not-for-profit organization dedicated to the study of audio for human rights and environmental advocacy. His work has been presented in the form of forensic reports, lectures and live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions all over the world.

Abu Hamdan has held fellowships and guest professorships at the University of Chicago, the New School, New York, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and currently at Cornell Tech. His investigative work has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and in a formal request to the International Criminal Court. His research in sound and acoustic events has played a central role in advocacy campaigns for organisations such as Defence for Children International, al Haq, Human Rights Watch, Btselem, Forbidden Stories, Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International. His work with Earshot regularly furnishes journalists at Washington Post, Sky News, AlJazeera and others with the information they need to produce the most accurate reporting they can.

Abu Hamdan’s cultural projects that reflect on the political and cultural context of sound and listening have been presented at MoMA New York, MUAC Mexico, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, the 58th Venice Biennale, the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the 13th and 14th Sharjah Biennial, the 34th Biennial of São Paulo, the Tate Modern, Hammer Museum L.A and the Hamburger Banhnof, Berlin. His works are part of collections at Reina Sofia, MoMA, Guggenheim, Hamburger Bahnhof, Van AbbeMuseum, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern.

Abu Hamdan has been widely recognized internationally with awards such as the Grand Prix at Winterthur International Film Festival, the 2020 Toronto Biennial Audience Award, the 2019 Edvard Munch Art Award, the award for best short film at the 2017 Rotterdam International Film Festival and the 2016 Nam June Paik Award for new media. For the 2019 Turner Prize, Abu Hamdan, together with nominated artists Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani, formed a temporary collective in order to be jointly granted the award.

Event Details:

As part of the series “Humming Home”, Dr. Myriam Dalal is hosting an online presentation and discussion with Dr. Lawrence Abu Hamdan on 26 February 2025 (17.00 to 19.00).

Please register to receive the Webex link. Registered attendees will be granted free access to watch Abu Hamdan’s documentary “The Diary of a Sky” (2024).

Documentary synopsis:

The Diary of a Sky unfolds an atmospheric symphony of violence over Beirut, revealing the haunting fusion of incessant Israeli military flights and the hum of generators during blackouts. This 45-minute video essay plunges viewers into a chilling chronicle of daily life transformed by the weaponization of the air, where the terror of repeated incursions becomes a disconcertingly banal backdrop.