Does Sound Deceive? The Forensic Art of Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Tutor documentation 2018-10-19

The past and recent works of Lawrence Abu Hamdan, tutor at finished Temporary Programme School of Missing Studies (2013-2015), were featured in "Does Sound Deceive? The Forensic Art of Lawrence Abu Hamdan" written by Ben Mauk for Frieze and published on 27 May 2018.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist-investigator of our acoustic shorthand. His video and audio installations trace a path from hearing’s biological origins to the legal and technological appendages it has lately acquired: a century of aural mutations of which the owl dares not to dream. As a forensic audio analyst, who sometimes collaborates with the human-rights research agency Forensic Architecture, Abu Hamdan has become a Konishi for the nation-state, a soothsayer whose work augurs the evolution of a new kind of hearing. He calls it ‘forensic listening’ and its subjects are manifold. A Palestinian in the UK pronounces the arabic word for ‘tomato’ as benadoora instead of bendoora; as a result, his application for asylum is rejected. A sheikh in Cairo risks official censure broadcasting a sermon on noise pollution from his mosque’s loudspeaker. A political detainee maps the prison beyond his cell by the muffled sounds of interrogators beating unseen compatriots with a length of pipe. If we have learned anything from the age of for-profit surveillance and deep-state data, it is that, no matter who we are, someone out there is listening. But who exactly is listening and what is being listened for depends on our political selves. Abu Hamdan tunes his work to undocumented persons, surveilled citizens, immigrants and prisoners – to those scrambling beneath the talons of the state.

Read more at: https://frieze.com/article/does-sound-deceive-forensic-art-lawrence-abu-hamdan-0