Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Politics of Listening | Art21 "Extended Play"

(gentle music)

(dynamic music)

(train screeching)

- I'm not really an artist.

I never studied at art school.

I call myself a private ear.

And I've dedicated a lot of work

to thinking about a politics of listening.

That's quite different
to politics of speech,

where everyone should have a voice.

Because where and when
those voices are heard

is just as important.

(dynamic music continues)

Not truly understanding
how that voice is heard,

you miss literally half the story.

Part of the work has been
to try to sort of define

where those limits are,
those limits of listening.

(dynamic music continues)

When I began an acoustic investigation

into a prison that was
modeled on this GDR archetype.

The Mercedes-Benz of prisons in Syria,

the one I investigated,
is called Saydnaya.

These films and
performances are a proposal

to listen to people in ways
in which I think is adequate

for the kind of political
claim that I'm making.

This listening tower has a...

In a documentary, or in the news,

there's really strict conventions

about the way we think we
should listen to people.

In the space of the museum,

you have this chance to experiment

with the ways in which you
can actually present a story.

(banging)

Walled Unwalled is a set of reflections

from having conducted an investigation

into the Syrian regime prison
for Amnesty International

working with Forensic Architecture.

(crowd shouting)

- [Narrator] Since 2011,
tens of thousands of people

have disappeared into a
vast network of prisons

run by the Syrian government.

Many have been taken to Saydnaya.

Amnesty International
and Forensic Architecture

traveled to Turkey to meet a
group of Saydnaya survivors.

We used architectural
and acoustic modeling

to reconstruct the prison

and their experiences of detention.

Because the prisoners
were held in darkness,

their memories depend on an
acute experience of sound.

- I was tasked to lead the sound component

of that investigation,
and to try and solicit

as much information as we could

about what was happening inside there.

And yet, all of the
witnesses insisted to me

that the walls of their cells

shook from the beatings that took place

in distant and unlocatable
areas of the prison.

Later I understood why.

The shape of the building,

the dimensions of the corridors,

meant that sounds made in the cells

are reflected towards a central tower.

For them to kind of claw back knowledge

in the face of sensory deprivation

was a real powerful experience.

(person shouting)

The wall is something that was
completely containing them.

Yet, the leaking of the
sound through the wall,

that was their way out to the world.

The wall was kind of porous.

- Room one series
closeup, take one. (claps)

- The whole idea with Walled Unwalled

was to have this performance play out

in an old recording studio.

Everything you see is shot
through that soundproof glass.

It all felt like a way of
speaking about the prison.

And in some point in the film

you see someone flashing a light.

She was flashing the
light because there was no

audible communication through these walls.

I mean, they were really soundproof.

Now, no wall on earth is impermeable.

Today, we're all wall, and no wall at all.

Ironically, the more we are connected,

the more walls are shown to
be this sort of futile thing,

the more we're invested
in protecting the border.

(somber music)

Borders are not lines.

They are these layered
spaces, rich with history.

- There is a US border guard
sitting in that car there.

The engine stays running

and his eyes remain laser
focused on the main door.

(mysterious music)

Each visitor who crosses
the street over from the US

must also exit back into the US.

Those who come from
the right, from Canada,

must not, under any circumstances,

even if they have a valid visa,

exit the library into the US.

The border cannot be crossed here.

And yet, inside it's like the
border doesn't even exist.

Technically, Agatha Christie
sits on a shelf on US soil,

while Iggy Pop's biography is in Canada.

- [Film Worker] A1-Eagle,
take one. (claps)

- This library and opera
house were built on the border

between Canada and America.

And that seemed to me as a space in which

you could tell the story of borders,

starting with that electrical tape

that cuts through the library.

Expand on that and show all of the way

in which the border exists
as something that is absurd.

And yet, they are this
sort of network of power

that is being exerted, sometimes
in completely lethal ways.

- When the murder took place,

the murderer and the
murdered were actually

in entirely different jurisdictions.

Though Mesa's firearm was stretched out

into Mexican territory,
his feet were three inches

behind the American border.

If Agent Mesa had stepped over the line,

there would be no question of Mexico

demanding his extradition
for murdering their citizen.

(haunting music)

At the Supreme Court,
a hypothetical emerged.

If Mesa could be prosecuted,

could anyone killed abroad by a US agent

seek justice in an American court?

No.

- It was such a close decision, five-four.

What swayed it was to recognize

that should they convict Agent Mesa,

they would be opening up
themselves to litigation

of every drone strike, because
it's the same story, right?

Someone pulls the trigger in Arizona

and somebody dies in Yemen.

(haunting music)

Well, I was born in Jordan.

But I also grew up in Yorkshire.

And I was exposed to the
DIY music scene in Leeds.

(dynamic music)

I spent years abusing my hearing,

playing in bands and
making a lot of noise.

It showed me how organization around sound

and music was a political act
to bring together communities.

Works that I make are cross-disciplinary.

And they demand the help
and resources of people

who are really in their discipline.

It's always a a team effort.

(moaning, clanking and tapping)

The beginning was great.
- Yeah.

- The sort of the keys.

- Can you hear that, I don't?
- Yeah.

I think starting with those details,

working with the knocker,

and then moving between the
sort of the lollipop on that,

and then to this.
- Do you like this?

Do you like opening this, or
should I stay away from it?

- No, no, do that.

That was really good.
- I'm kind of like...

(moaning)

- I specifically didn't
want a sound effects artist

to play those doors because
I knew that they would

know what they're doing with them.

That they would sort of fall
into a disciplinary mode

in which they're able to
do things with those doors

that is part of their professional world.

(tapping)

I wanted to see what else those
doors would be able to do.

Making whale calls, then slamming them

and bringing them back
to their door-like form.

And that was really important to the story

I was trying to tell
about acoustic memory.

(mallets banging and tapping)

Sound effects are really
key in the way we can both

solicit memory, but the way we also

commit those sounds to our memories.

The doors in Saydnaya Prison

had a similar effect on its survivors.

See, none of the door sounds I played

satisfied Samara's acoustic memory.

We found one that was okay,

but he kept telling me
to raise the volume.

The sounds were getting louder and louder,

until finally I played him the sound

of a huge metal door slamming

with the reverb set to
Notre Dame Cathedral.

Upon hearing this, Samara was taken aback.

He stopped me and he said,
this sound was present.

This was the exact sound, not of the door,

but the sound of sheets of bread

being dropped to the
ground outside my cell.

(pounding)

We would use a lot of sound effects

for those ear witness
interviews to really get to

the sound that we were talking about.

And sort of also place them in space.

And so I built this
inventory of sound effects.

(banging tapping and popping)

Based on all the legal
cases I'd worked on,

what would I've used
in a case where I need

to recreate a ricochet off
a border fence in Palestine?

(banging and crashing)

They really were very important
in the case of Saydnaya.

The metal door, a wooden door,

and a car door, adapted for my means.

And the idea that you
could really construct

a whole array of door sounds
from just this one instrument.

Goalkeeper gloves.
The granite stone tiles.

Green coconut, shouting.
Ice cream truck.

Where is the gun?
Music box.

(airplane whooshing)

Over the last 15, 16 years, Israeli jets

and drones flying over
Lebanon have created

a kind of acoustic fearscape
for people living in Lebanon.

Air Pressure began as a
acoustic investigation.

(keyboard tapping)

It's a website that sought to produce

some understanding
about what was happening

in the air over Lebanon.

I'm trying to, you know, Shazam the skies.

Hear a unmanned aerial
vehicle, identify that.

Hear a fighter jet, identify that.

And then start to hear the difference

between an F16, an F35.

We produced the first database

of these military aircraft in the sky.

And the numbers were staggering.

22,111 of them over the last 15 years.

(somber music)

And you see them interlinking
and overlapping over time.

It's not a map of a territory,

but it's actually a kind
of cartography of pressure

that's being exerted down.

It happens to be the shape of Lebanon

simply because the aircrafts have covered

the entirety of the country.

This is not a work about whose
air it is being violated.

The air doesn't belong
to the Lebanese either.

It's a work about how
you turn the air violent,

and how sound is really an
effective way to do that.

(airplane whooshing)

You can see every tweet and video made

referring to these aircraft in the sky.

You see people joking.

Some people say, "Oh,
look at these planes.

They're going so low they're
gonna cut my laundry wires."

Other people, you can tell they're scared.

They say, "Look what they
have in their arsenal.

May God protect us."

Other people simply use this hashtag

حربي بالاجواء

which means war in the atmosphere.

The website circulated very heavily

because no one had ever
done that work before.

And in fact, the Lebanese
government who contacted me later

had basically told me that
they had never even done this.

(airplane whooshing)

When I was producing Air Pressure,

and it got all this
international attention,

it occurred to me that 10 years had passed

of doing this kind of
acoustic investigation,

and that it needed its own kind of space.

Well I decided to start
this agency called Earshot.

(dynamic music)

We're a small team of people.

There's been a greater
awareness of why sound matters

for open source investigations.

I'd learned enough doing these projects

that I could also start
to train other people

to do this work, and we could
start to build our own agency

for acoustic and audio analysis.

I wanna build greater cognizance for what

good listening can do, and
what story sound can tell.

There's so much more to do,

and so many other ways in
which we can give people

the space and time to be heard.

(dynamic music)
(people chattering)