Zifzafa

“Wind is always a force of transition; we only really notice the wind when something is in the air. And there are so many forms of transitions coming.”
- Lawrence Abu Hamdan

We look back at the international premiere of ‘Zifzafa’ by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, co-produced and presented by Alserkal Arts Foundation in September 2024.

Through the live audio essay, Abu Hamdan and the Earshot team explore the role of wind as both a connector and a divider—highlighting its impact on the Syrian Jawlani community in the occupied Golan Heights, and their struggle for liberation.

Here's our exclusive interview with the artist.

About the project

In 2023 political unrest erupted throughout the occupied Syrian Golan Heights on a scale unseen for more than forty years. The impetus for this protest movement was the looming construction of thirty-one large-scale wind turbines on the last remaining open space available to the resident Jawlani Syrian community already subject to Israeli occupation since 1967. European regulations stipulate that turbines of this size be at least two kilometres from the nearest residences. This project has planned turbines to be erected as close as thirty-five metres to homes, causing an unbearable amount of noise that will effectively force people off their land.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan and fellow researchers at Earshot set about to create a tool that could help challenge the construction of these turbines by demonstrating how this noise will impact life on their lands. To simulate this, the group first measured and recorded noise at the only accessible site in Europe with similar 256 metre turbines, in Gaildorf, Germany. The team then digitally mapped the propagation of this noise onto the landscape in the occupied Golan Heights at the precise locations where these turbines were set to be built.

Earshot teamed up with Jawlani musician Busher Kanj Abu Saleh who then made extensive field recordings in the area itself, sounds capturing the consonance between people and land. Over many months, he stuck the mic next to cows, bees, thunder, saxophones, shovels, weddings, sahrat, playdates, ravens , bulbul, blackbirds, a shepherd playing the flute, jackals and water pumps. Simultaneously, the team developed a virtual map within a video game platform, and then convolved both layers of sound into the simulation, allowing a virtual walk through the site. This simulation can be used by the Jawlani’s to demonstrate to lawyers and judges exactly the way lives will be affected, experiencing directly how loud the turbine will sound from any location.

Should these wind turbines finally be constructed, the simulation will serve another purpose entirely; it will serve as a sonic archive of the area before the arrival of the noise. Should the world of the Jawlani’s be fundamentally altered, Abu Saleh’s recordings within the game will become the only place where the sound of life before the turbines remains audible.

This project evolved partly through Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s close relationship with Alserkal Arts Foundation as a member of our selection committee, semi-permanent artist in residence, friend and sounding board. It was through conversations with our previous resident, Shada Safadi, that he was first invited into the Jawlani struggle for sonic autonomy.

Credits

Co-produced by Festival d’Automne à Paris, CENTQUATRE-PARIS and L'Art Rue as part of Dream City 2025.

Music score composed by Busher Kanj Abu Saleh. Performed by Busher Kanj Abu Saleh and saxophonist Amr Mdah.

Video by Kais Dahoul.