A LIVE AUDIO ESSAY BY LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN
WONDER CABINET, BETHLEHEM, PALESTINE
Thursday, 27 February 2025 - 7 pm
The Wonder Cabinet in collaboration with Alserkal Arts Foundation announces the first showcase in Palestine of Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s project Zifzafa, with a live simultaneous audio-visual performance on Thursday, 27 February in the performance hall of Wonder Cabinet in Bethlehem.
Zifzafa, is an Arabic word to describe a wind that shakes and rattles all in its path. Here, it becomes the title of a performance of artist and researcher Lawrence Abu Hamdan, that enmeshes sonic composition, video game engines and spoken word, to immerse us in the heart of a movement to resist green colonialism in the occupied Syrian Golan heights.
Over the next few years, wind will become an increasingly important point of focus both as a source of energy in the place of fossil fuels and as a destructive byproduct of a warming earth. As such we are already starting to see wind becoming an agent in the reorganization of social and political networks and territorial imagination. Lawrence Abu Hamdan explores how forms of social organization around wind, that have lasted for at least 50,000 years, are now transforming.
Map illustrating the acoustic footprint of the proposed wind turbine project as it is planned to be built by Energix
Zifzafa takes us into the occupied Golan Heights, in a particular microclimate, where the ensuing environmental damage and social displacement caused by the noise of 30 of the largest land-based wind turbines, looms heavy.
Zifzafa is written and performed by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, with music scored by Busher Kanj Abu Saleh and performed by Busher Kanj Abu Saleh and saxophonist Amr Mdah. Zifzafa is produced by Earshot (Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Caline Matar,Fabio Cervi, Adnan Naqvi).
On this occasion, the live performance will see the in-person presence of artists Busher Kanj Abu Saleh and Amr Mdah in Bethlehem, while Lawrence Abu Hamdan will be playing remotely from Dubai - as it is usually vice versa. This adjustment is intrinsic to the presentation of Zifzafa in Palestine, with the travel restrictions it entails, resulting in a unique cross-border artistic collaboration defeating overimposed geopolitical barriers.
This performance of Zifzafa is made possible by Alserkal Arts Foundation, who co-produced the first iteration with Festival d'Automne à Paris and L'Art Rue as part of Dream City 2025.
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ABOUT LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a researcher, filmmaker, artist and activist or, as he puts it, a ‘Private Ear’. With over a decade of experience investigating audio, and a doctorate from the University of London on the role of sound in legal investigations and political discourse, in 2023 he founded Earshot, the world’s first not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the study of audio for human rights and environmental advocacy. His work has been presented in the form of forensic reports, lectures and live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions all over the world.
His investigative work has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and in a formal request to the International Criminal Court. His research in sound and acoustic events has played a central role in advocacy campaigns for organisations such as Defence for Children International, al Haq, Human Rights Watch, Btselem, Forbidden Stories, Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International. His work with Earshot regularly furnishes journalists at Washington Post, Sky News, AlJazeera and others with the information they need to produce the most accurate reporting they can.
Abu Hamdan’s projects have been presented at MoMA New York, MUAC Mexico, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, the 58th Venice Biennale, the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the 13th and 14th Sharjah Biennial, the 34th Biennial of São Paulo, the Tate Modern, Hammer Museum L.A and the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, and his works are part of prestigious collections. Abu Hamdan has been widely recognized internationally with awards such as the Grand Prix at Winterthur International Film Festival, the 2020 Toronto Biennial Audience Award, the 2019 Edvard Munch Art Award, the award for best short film at the 2017 Rotterdam International Film Festival and the 2016 Nam June Paik Award for new media. For the 2019 Turner Prize, Abu Hamdan, together with nominated artists Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani, formed a temporary collective in order to be jointly granted the award.
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ABOUT WONDER CABINET
The Wonder Cabinet is a space for artistic production and cultural development in Bethlehem, Palestine.
It brings together an ensemble of people and initiatives from different backgrounds, sectors and geographies to implement experimental projects and productions, encompassing the visual and sound arts, artisanship, design, architecture, food, landscape, research and education, with an intuitive approach built on knowledge exchange and cooperative labor.
With headquarters in a new building inaugurated in May 2023, Wonder Cabinet is an invitation to explore the space and its surroundings through sound, discussions, objects, food, and the encountering of people and disciplines with each other. The space comprises a production facility, artist studios, a flexible multipurpose hall, a listening bar and food laboratory, a store, a sound production and Radio alHara station, Beesh Cafe, and a community garden.