Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Air Pressure
octoberoct 7 – 8
Monday october 7
20h00
Tuesday october 8
20h00
Written and performed by Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Sound design and sound performance Moe Choucair.
Acknowledgements Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo et au Philadephia Museum of Art50
The CENTQUATRE-PARIS and the Festival d’Automne à Paris are co-producing this performance in collaboration with the Espace Niemeyer.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, artist, researcher and performer, revolutionizes the visual arts through the power of sound. As founder of Earshot, a non-profit organization that makes audio-based investigations for the defence of human rights and the environment, he kept a diary of Lebanon's anxiety-provoking airspace for a whole year. In a sound creation by Moe Choucair, he brings us a performance combining background noise and a climate of violence.
More than 22,000 Israeli military planes have violated Lebanese airspace since 2007. The screeching of these fighter jets and the constant buzzing of patrol drones have become a daily part of the Lebanese soundscape. In order to make these repeated violations of international law visible, Air pressure is both a website that seeks to centralize scientific and collective data and, a performance. By means of chronological sequencing and live sound creation, Lawrence Abu Hamdan examines life which has become dominated by the noise of violence. Here, he considers the atmospheric environment from both an aesthetical and conceptual point of view, thereby exploring how violence is made manifest. He does so by analysing the sky and air around Lebanon as a case study of a global weather situation.