ART-PRESENTATION:Lawrence Abu Hamdan-The All Hearing

The Jordanian artist Abu Hamdan interest in sound and its intersection with politics originates from his background in DIY Music. His work unfolds critical questions about our reliance on technology and its continual exploitation by sources of power. The artist blurs the personal and the political with humor.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: LAVERONICA arte contemporanea Archive

The Jordanian artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan (lives and works in London and Beirut), with his work explores the relation between words as “Questionable objects” and the ways in which and how they are said with politics, human rights, international law, and the act of listening through the production of audio documentaries and essays, installations, sculpture, photography, and performance. He believes that the voice itself becomes an instrument that allows the “Long ear of the law” to probe deeper into the body of its subjects. For “The All Hearing”, his first exhibition in Italy at the Laveronica arte contemporanea, he presents 4 of his works dating from 2013-14, connected with Cairo the loudest city of the Globe. The core of the exhibition is “The End of Every Illusionist”, presented on a tape-echo machine in the main gallery. The title derives from the original cassette tape sermon that Abu Hamdan’s commentary now overlays. The video “The All Hearing”, shows two local sheikhs delivering sermons on noise pollution in Cairo at the artist’s request. As the artist says: “The video, is about those amplified voices, which are carrying ethics but at the same time producing another layer of noise. Amplification is a very politically sensitive topic. On the one hand, hearing is being damaged by noise pollution, and on the other side, voices are being censored”. “Tape Echo”, in which second-hand cassette tapes of Islamic sermons are the primary medium and object of inquiry. The work documents the arrhythmic cacophony that resonates out across the river of Nile from these ungovernably loud, competing loudspeaker jurisdictions. “A Conversation with an Unemployed”, is an artwork presented in two parts and comprises a series of blown-up images of the magnetic strips of second-hand cassette tapes bought from Cairo’s Friday market. These tapes had sermons recorded onto them, erased, then re-recorded over many times, leaving sonic remnants. Presented on light boxes, these remnants are now visible as gaps, crevices and ravines on the tape’s surface, providing distinct sonic fingerprints of Cairo’s audio culture.

Info: The All Hearing, Curator: Robert Leckie, LAVERONICA arte contemporanea, Via Grimaldi 93, Modica, Sicily, Italy, Duration: 1/8-31/10/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 10:00-13:00 & 15:00-20:00, www.gallerialaveronica.it