Doors: 17:30
Event start: 18:00
Seated event
After SFX explores the complexities and potential of sonic memory, and how our recollections of sound can help reconstruct events where vision falls short.
Abu Hamdan describes his practice as that of a ‘private ear’ or independent audio investigator, a role that comes into focus during this performance together with sound designer Adam Laschinger and percussionist Iain Stewart. He manipulates objects from his Earwitness Inventory, a collection of everyday items designed to recreate sounds described by crime witnesses. These objects, from trays and plastic containers to gravel and metal rods, are used on stage to simulate memories of sonic events that witnesses recall with varying clarity, often reaching for comparisons that transform violent sounds into familiar imagery. A gunshot might be remembered as ‘somebody dropping a rack of trays’, or a collapsing building as sounding ‘like popcorn’.
While performing, Abu Hamdan narrates his encounters with earwitnesses, weaving together legal cases, personal recollections, and reflections on language, listening, and the politics of sound. The result is a hybrid form of lecture, sound work and performance — what the artist calls a live audio essay — and a forensic listening session that draws the audience into the uncertain terrain where memory and justice meet.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan (born 1985, Amman) has described himself as a Private Ear, on behalf of people under attack from state authorities and others such as Israeli soldiers in Palestine, the Parisian police or torture in Syrian jails. His work has been presented in the form of forensics reports, lectures, live performances, films, publications and exhibitions around the world. He runs earshot.ngo.
After SFX is presented in conjunction with Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s exhibition Zifzafa at MUNCH (18.9.2025–4.1.2026).
The performance on 19 September is a collaboration with Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.
© 2025 Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence
