After SFX

Live audio essay by Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Friday 19 September, at 18:00–19:00

150–150 kr

When sound emerges as the court’s forgotten witness

After SFX explores the complexity and potential of sonic memory, and how our recollections of sound can help reconstruct criminal offences and other events where vision falls short.

Abu Hamdan describes his practice as that of a ‘private ear’ or independent audio investigator, a role that comes into focus during this performance together with sound designer Adam Laschinger and percussionist Iain Stewart. He manipulates objects from his Earwitness Inventory, a collection of everyday items designed to recreate sounds described by crime witnesses.

These objects, from trays and plastic containers to gravel and metal rods, are used on stage to simulate memories of sonic events that witnesses recall with varying clarity, often reaching for comparisons that transform violent sounds into familiar imagery.

A gunshot might be remembered as ‘somebody dropping a rack of trays’, or a collapsing building as sounding ‘like popcorn’.

While performing, Abu Hamdan narrates his encounters with earwitnesses, weaving together legal cases, personal recollections, and reflections on language, listening, and the politics of sound. The result is a hybrid form of lecture, sound work and performance — what the artist calls a live audio essay — and a forensic listening session that draws the audience into the uncertain terrain where memory and justice meet.

Artist Talk

20 September 14.00 – 15.00 MUNCH I Toppsalen

The day after the performance, MUNCH hosts a conversation between Lawrence Abu Hamdan and curator Tominga O’Donnell. Taking Abu Hamdan’s solo exhibition at MUNCH, Zifzafa, and the performance After SFX as a starting point, the talk explores how sound can function as both documentation and resistance in the face of erasure and structural violence.

Facts

A live audio essay is is a form of storytelling or reflection that unfolds through sound, voice and occasional music rather than text. The term live emphasises listeners’ sense that the storyteller’s ideas take shape in the moment.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan has described himself as a Private Ear, on behalf of people under attack from state authorities and others such as Israeli soldiers in Palestine and the Parisian police. His work has been presented in the form of forensics reports, lectures, live performances, films, publications and exhibitions.
Abu Hamdan runs the earshot.ngo, a not-for-profit organisation producing audio investigations for human rights and environmental advocacy.
After SFX is presented in conjunction with Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s exhibition Zifzafa at MUNCH (18.9.2025–4.1.2026).