Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Live Audio Essays

An anthology of Abu Hamdan’s disquieting audio-essay monologues on the soundscape of political life

This volume compiles transcripts from performances and films by Beirut-based Lawrence Abu Hamdan (born 1985), an artist known for his political and cultural reflections on sound and listening. Taken from seven works dating from 2014 to 2022, Abu Hamdan’s intricately crafted monologues are at times intimate, humorous and entertaining, yet politically disquieting in their revelations. Utilizing personal narratives, anecdotes, popular media and transcripts rooted in historic and contemporary moments, the artist leads the reader through his investigations into crimes that are heard but not seen. His live audio essays are an exercise in listening to acoustic memories, echoes of reincarnated lives, voices that leak through walls and borders, the drone of warfare, cinematic sound effects, atmospheric noise, the resonant frequencies of buildings and the sound of hunger.
Collected here for the first time, all the texts were transcribed from performance documentation and edited with the artist.