Lawrence Abu Hamdan is in Rotterdam ! "After SFX" performance on Thursday 24 January, starts 9:30 pm at WORM followed by "Lawrence Abu Hamdan, a solo exhibition", from 27 January till 28 April 2019 at WITTE DE WITH

| tag: Rotterdam

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE:

Artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan stages a one-night-only performance exploring various aspects of sonic memory. After SFX is a performance of the sounds from Abu Hamdan’s self-constructed sound effects library and their accompanying narratives. It uses inventive methods to uncover the unexpected ways in which we encode sonic events in our minds. After SFX is prompted by Abu Hamden’s investigations into crimes that had been heard but not seen. In his conversations with earwitnesses, he first attempted to use sound effects from the libraries of the BBC and Warner Brothers to see what comparisons could be made, however, these cinematic samples were too inflexible and imprecise to unlock the witnesses’ acoustic memories. He has since built Earwitness Inventory, a library of objects to be used specifically as mnemonic devices. These objects encompass both sounds that have been used in his interviews with earwitnesses to facilitate re-enactments of crimes, and sounds pertaining to stories in which surprising sonic analogies emerged, such as a building collapsing into a sinkhole ‘sounding like popcorn’.

Sound recordings and design by Adam Laschinger together with Lawrence Abu Hamdan.

This event is co-produced by IFFR and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, in conjunction to the exhibition at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.

sound//vision is IFFR’s innovative, experimental late-night programme, made up of four evenings and nights of live A/V performances in

WORM

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, a solo exhibition presents a new co-commission by the Beirut-based artist and ‘private ear’. Featuring three newly designed sound instruments, over ninety sourced objects and an audio work, Earwitness Theatre (2018) explores the political effects of listening through the hallucinatory world of the earwitness. The new commission is presented alongside Abu Hamdan’s recent film Walled Unwalled (2018), which together develop the artist’s ear-witness investigation into the Syrian regime prison of Saydnaya, which the artist was invited to carry out in partnership with Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths University, London, as part of a broader enquiry.

Abu Hamdan’s exhibition is commissioned and produced by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in partnership with Chisenhale Gallery, London; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. It will ibe presented at the partner venues throughout 2019.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Curators: Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Rosa de Graaf

 

WITTE DE WITH