After SFX -Earwitness Inventory, 2018
95 objects and video, black and white, with surround sound, 26′30′′
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Acquired 2023
Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Earwitness Inventory brings together ninety-five objects derived from legal cases where sound became crucial evidence. From a selection of shoes to customised doors, each object recreates a noise described by earwitnesses attempting to recall moments of acoustic violence. Testimonies liken collapsing buildings to “popcorn” or gunshots to “dropping a rack of trays,” revealing how memory translates trauma into analogy. The installation functions as both an archive and a sound effects library, drawing attention to the ways in which acoustic experience is reconstructed and mediated, exposing the fragile relationship between hearing, memory, and truth. Rooted in Abu Hamdan’s investigations into sonic testimony, the work foregrounds how voices are heard, interpreted, or dismissed within legal and political systems. Earwitness Inventory ultimately asks how sound can carry evidence, and how listening itself becomes an act of justice.
Earwitness Inventory emerges from Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s broader engagement with the politics of listening and the conditions under which testimony becomes audible. His work with organisations such as Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture, particularly in investigating the Syrian prison of Saydnaya, informs the project’s methodology. In spaces where vision is restricted, prisoners develop acute auditory awareness, making sound a primary means of perceiving and remembering violence. To access these memories, Abu Hamdan challenged conventional sound effects libraries, building his own archive tailored to earwitness testimony. The objects in the installation function as mnemonic devices, each embedded with narratives that span geographies and histories—from collapsing mines to tear gas canisters. An accompanying animated text further traces the investigative process behind these sounds. This cross-temporal collection reveals how sonic memories persist as “acoustic debris” in the mind. By materialising these sounds, Abu Hamdan not only reconstructs events but also interrogates the limits of evidence, framing listening as a critical and political act. The work resonates with a broader rethinking of the Middle East as a shared space shaped by testimony, migration, and contested histories. Abu Hamdan’s focus on listening as a mode of witnessing parallels ongoing efforts to foreground entangled narratives and voices that have often remained unheard within dominant Western perspectives.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan was born in 1985 in Amman, Jordan. He lives and works in Dubai, UAE.
