• Works
  • Info
  • Notes from the Aural Contract Audio Archive
Menu

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

  • Works
  • Info
  • Notes from the Aural Contract Audio Archive
Still from my new video work titled The All-Hearing 2014  So pervasive to daily Cairo life is the a loudspeaker libertarianism, that the issue of hearing damage and noise pollution was immediately accepted as a topic for a Friday sermon when I suggested the idea to two Cairene Sheikhs. Despite new laws that the military government established that seek to monotonize the delivery of sermons by enforcing Sheikhs to only give speeches according to the weekly government sanctioned topic, our Sheikhs remained even more determined to have the issue of noise heard. And heard not only to their congregation inside the mosque but to all those passers by who were barraged by the mosques loudspeakers broadcasting into the streets outside. The military crackdown on the amplified voices of the city is done in the name of policing noise and the lawless terrain of the loudspeaker yet it is in fact simply a means to direct the flow of voices away from espousing anything against the government. Anything that they do not want heard. Hence on the day the Sheikhs delivered their sermons on noise pollution as far as the ear could hear all the mosques in the surrounding area were explaining the Prophets’s Ascension to Heaven, the government dictated topic of that week.  The All-Hearing is part of  Positions  a collection of 5 solo exhibtions opening at the Van AbbeMuseum this Saturday. There I will present the full  Tape Echo  project, co-commissioned with Beirut in Cairo and including a new video work produced for  Position s. With  Tape Echo  Abu Hamdan proposes a series of methods for documenting and intervening within of Cairo's dense audio urbanity, looking at how voices are distributed and hearing is damaged within of the city's rapidly changing sonic conditions. http://vanabbemuseum.nl/en/programme/detail/?tx_vabdisplay_pi1[ptype]=18&tx_vabdisplay_pi1[project]=1266

Still from my new video work titled The All-Hearing 2014

So pervasive to daily Cairo life is the a loudspeaker libertarianism, that the issue of hearing damage and noise pollution was immediately accepted as a topic for a Friday sermon when I suggested the idea to two Cairene Sheikhs. Despite new laws that the military government established that seek to monotonize the delivery of sermons by enforcing Sheikhs to only give speeches according to the weekly government sanctioned topic, our Sheikhs remained even more determined to have the issue of noise heard. And heard not only to their congregation inside the mosque but to all those passers by who were barraged by the mosques loudspeakers broadcasting into the streets outside. The military crackdown on the amplified voices of the city is done in the name of policing noise and the lawless terrain of the loudspeaker yet it is in fact simply a means to direct the flow of voices away from espousing anything against the government. Anything that they do not want heard. Hence on the day the Sheikhs delivered their sermons on noise pollution as far as the ear could hear all the mosques in the surrounding area were explaining the Prophets’s Ascension to Heaven, the government dictated topic of that week.

The All-Hearing is part of Positions a collection of 5 solo exhibtions opening at the Van AbbeMuseum this Saturday. There I will present the full Tape Echo project, co-commissioned with Beirut in Cairo and including a new video work produced for Positions. With Tape Echo Abu Hamdan proposes a series of methods for documenting and intervening within of Cairo's dense audio urbanity, looking at how voices are distributed and hearing is damaged within of the city's rapidly changing sonic conditions. http://vanabbemuseum.nl/en/programme/detail/?tx_vabdisplay_pi1[ptype]=18&tx_vabdisplay_pi1[project]=1266

The All- Hearing

July 3, 2014
← Cleckhuddersfax 2013 Tour video Contra-Diction in Art Forum →

 

Notes from the Aural Contract Audio Archive
Hearing Things, Frieze Issue 196
about 8 months ago
Eloquent and concise review of Bird Watching in Brussels
about a year ago
Earwitness the Saydnaya Prison
about 2 years ago
H[gun shot]ow c[gun shot]an I f[gun shot]orget?
about 2 years ago
Taqiyya : The Right to Duplicity my solo exhibition at Kunsthalle St Gallen in Jpegs
about 3 years ago

 Tweets

  • RT @wittedewith__: Enter the weekend with an exhibition walkthrough by Rosa de Graaf, offering personal insight into ‘Lawrence Abu Ham… https://t.co/ataR7LN7ek
    about 3 hours ago
  • RT @ForensicArchi: Our latest investigation is out. We examined the 2015 killing of #TahirElçi, a prominent Kurdish human rights lawye… https://t.co/fb2iA00SAL
    about a week ago
  • RT @Bidoun: Lawrence Abu Hamdan solo ⁦@wittedewith__⁩ opens this week: https://t.co/vTyhUd7Ci4 https://t.co/zfIaBmSIul
    about 3 weeks ago

Forthcoming / Current:

 

 

 

 

Powered by Squarespace.