BiographyLawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist and “Private Ear” with over a decade of experience investigating audio. His work examines the political effects of listening, using various forms of sound to explore their impact on human rights and law. In 2023, he founded Earshot, the world’s first not-for-profit organization 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 around the world.

Born in Amman, Jordan, to a Lebanese father and an English mother, Abu Hamdan grew up in the UK, where he also studied and received his PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2017. Describing himself as a “Private Ear,” his work confronts specific instances of listening and the voice as they relate to legal and political contexts. It has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and in a formal request to the International Criminal Court. His research into sound and acoustic events has played a central role in advocacy campaigns for organizations such as Defence for Children International, Al-Haq, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Forbidden Stories, Forensic Architecture, and Amnesty International. His work with Earshot regularly provides journalists at The Washington Post, Sky News, Al Jazeera, and others with the information they need to produce accurate reporting.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan has presented his work in the form of forensic reports, expert testimony, lectures and live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions worldwide, including at MoMA, the Sharjah Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and Tate Modern. His work has been recognized with many awards, including the 2019 Turner Prize, which he shared with fellow nominees Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo, and Tai Shani after they formed a temporary collective to be jointly awarded the prize.

‍Wind Ensemble
‍Single-channel video projection, sound, amplifier (2024)

A mesmerising single-channel video, Wind Ensemble, is part of Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s artistic documentation of a forensic audio investigation into the impact that electrical infrastructure for wind farms will soon have on the native population in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, where the Jawlani Syrians have lived under foreign military presence since 1967. Part of the project Zifzafa, meaning “a wind that rattles and shakes all in its path” in Arabic, it addresses the occupation government’s plan to construct 31 of the largest land-based wind turbines in the Golan Heights to harness wind energy — and points to the deafening noise of the turbines, built right next to the community’s homes.

Presented as one of the “conceptual tools to map a network of social relations transformed through and by wind” by the artist himself, Wind Ensemble manifests some of the everyday sounds that are soon to be swallowed by the howling turbines, disrupting both the personal and collective lives of the Jawlani community and, eventually, forcing them to leave their land. Projected onto the mesh of an amplifier, the video shows Jawlani saxophonist Amr Mdah performing a composition on the balcony of a home that will soon be located approximately 164 feet from one of the new turbines.