International Premiere of Zifzafa: A Live Audio Essay on the Sonics of Self-Determination

Alserkal Arts Foundation announces the international premiere of Zifzafa, a live performance by Lawrence Abu Hamdan with Busher Kanj Abu Saleh, Amr Mdah and the sound research and advocacy group Earshot.

Zifzafa, in Arabic, refers to a wind that shakes and rattles all in its path. Through Zifzafa, connections between people, pollen, dust and animals are mapped across vast space, using wind sound as a conceptual tool to trace the intricate network of social relations that it shapes. Wind, a destructive by-product of a warming earth, yet harnessed to replace fossil fuels, becomes an increasingly active agent in reorganising social, political and territorial imagination. The engulfing noise of Zifzafa serves as a border that restricts, confines, isolates and divides.

In 2023, political unrest erupted across the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as the Jawlani Syrian community protested against the looming construction of 31 wind turbines on the last remaining open space available. European regulations require these 256-metre tall turbines to be at least two kilometres from the nearest residences, but plans propose turbines as close as 35 metres, creating unbearable noise levels that will effectively displace people from their land.

Abu Hamdan–and the researchers at Earshot–developed a unique tool to challenge the construction. The team recorded noise at a comparable wind farm in Gaildorf, Germany. Using this data, they digitally mapped the noise propagation onto the landscape of the occupied Golan Heights at the precise turbine locations. Earshot collaborated with Jawlani musician Busher Kanj Abu Saleh, who made extensive field recordings, capturing the resonance between the people and their land. He recorded diverse sounds: cows, bees, thunder, saxophones, shovels, weddings, playdates, ravens, bulbul, blackbirds, sahrat, a shepherd playing the flute, jackals and water pumps.

The team then developed a virtual map within a video game platform, combining these layers of sound into a simulation that allows users to experience a virtual walk through the site. This simulation can be used by the Jawlani community to demonstrate to lawyers and judges how their lives will be affected, offering a visceral experience of life before and after, and illustrating how loud the turbines will sound from any location. By capturing the devastating impact of the noise on the Jawlani community, Zifzafa highlights the power of sound as both an artistic medium and a form of resistance.

The simulation becomes a musical instrument, acoustically guiding the audience through this contested landscape while unfolding a story of dispossession and resistance. The sounds from this simulation are accompanied by live music performed by saxophonist Amr Mdah, with a score by Busher Kanj Abu Saleh, both renowned for their work with the Jawlani band ‘Hawa Dafi’, meaning Warm Air. The sonic turbulence generated in this performance underscores a text delivered by Abu Hamdan, critically examining how a tool designed to produce clean energy can be repurposed as a machine that creates new borders with blades that slice through economic, spatial, ethnic, social and acoustic communion of the land. From this microclimate, the work expands the concept of self-determination to include sonic autonomy, highlighting the vital role sound can play in the struggle for liberation in the face of erasure.

Should these wind turbines eventually be constructed, the simulation will serve a different purpose: as a sonic archive of the area before the noise arrived. Should the Jawlani world be irrevocably altered, Abu Saleh’s recordings within the game will become the sole repository of the audible memory of life before the turbines.

This project evolved through Abu Hamdan’s close friendship with the Alserkal Arts Foundation as a member of its Selection Committee and regular collaborator. Through conversations with Shada Safadi, a former resident at the Foundation, Abu Hamdan was invited to participate in the Jawlani struggle for sonic autonomy. The performance is co-produced by and travels to Festival d’Automne à Paris, CENTQUATRE-PARIS and L’Art Rue as part of Dream City 2025.

About Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a researcher, filmmaker, artist and activist or as he puts it a ‘Private Ear’. Abu Hamdan has over a decade of experience investigating audio and a doctorate from the University of London on the role of sound in legal investigations and political discourse. In 2023 he founded Earshot, the world’s first not-for-profit organisation 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 all over the world.

His investigative work has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and in a formal request to the International Criminal Court. His research in sound and acoustic events has played a central role in advocacy campaigns for organisations such as Defence for Children International, al Haq, Human Rights Watch, Btselem, Forbidden Stories, Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International. His work with Earshot regularly furnishes journalists at Washington Post, Sky News, AlJazeera and others with the information they need to produce the most accurate reporting they can.

Abu Hamdan has held fellowships and guest professorships at the University of Chicago, the New School, New York and at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. His cultural projects that reflect on the political and cultural context of sound and listening have been presented at MoMA New York, MUAC Mexico, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, the 58th Venice Biennale, the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the 13th and 14th Sharjah Biennial, the 34th Biennial of São Paulo, the Tate Modern, Hammer Museum L.A and the Hamburger Banhnof, Berlin. His works are part of collections at Reina Sofia, MoMA, Guggenheim, Hamburger Bahnhof, Van AbbeMuseum, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. Abu Hamdan has been widely recognized internationally with awards such as the Grand Prix at Winterthur International Film Festival, the 2020 Toronto Biennial Audience Award, the 2019 Edvard Munch Art Award, the award for best short film at the 2017 Rotterdam International Film Festival and the 2016 Nam June Paik Award for new media. For the 2019 Turner Prize, Abu Hamdan, together with nominated artists Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani, formed a temporary collective in order to be jointly granted the award.

www.lawrenceabuhamdan.com

About Alserkal Arts Foundation

Founded in 2019, Alserkal Arts Foundation is dedicated to advancing knowledge production and creating dialogue across disciplinary boundaries.

The Foundation invites artists, researchers, and scholars to engage with key questions and issues of our time through its residency, research grants, symposiums and public art commissions, offering the freedom to challenge convention and share knowledge through new dialogues.

Situated in Dubai within Alserkal Avenue, the Foundation has a growing network of alumni and serves as a conduit to the region's thriving art scene.

Alserkal Arts Foundation is part of Alserkal Initiatives, a cultural enterprise focused on developing sustainable models for homegrown initiatives.