Installation comprising Rubber Coated Steel (HD video, color, sound, 21:47 min.) and six chromogenic prints on Kodak metallic paper (125 × 50 cm each)
In May 2014, Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank of Palestine shot and killed two unarmed teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and Mohammad Abu Daher. The human rights organization Defence for Children International contacted Forensic Architecture, a Goldsmiths College–based agency that undertakes advanced architectural and media research, which in turn worked with Abu Hamdan to investigate the incident. The case hinged upon an audio-ballistic analysis of the recorded gunshots to determine whether the soldiers had used rubber bullets, as they asserted, or illegally fired live ammunition.
A detailed acoustic analysis, for which Abu Hamdan used special techniques designed to visualize sound frequencies, established that they had indeed fired live rounds, and moreover had tried to disguise the fatal shots to sound like rubber bullets. These visualizations later became a crucial piece of evidence picked up by CNN and other international news agencies, forcing Israel to renounce its original denial. The investigation was also presented before the US Congress as an example of Israel’s violation of US-Israeli arms agreements.
A little over a year after Abu Hamdan completed his report, he returned to the case in his exhibition Earshot. Expanding on the original body of evidence, he created an installation encompassing sound, photographic prints, and a video to reflect more broadly on the aesthetics of evidence and the politics of sound and silence. The video, Rubber Coated Steel, is the main element and acts as a tribunal for these serial killing sounds. The video tribunal does not preside over the voices of the victims, but rather seeks to amplify their silence, fundamentally questioning the ways in which rights are being heard today.
This installation was commissioned by Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2016).
