WALLED UNWALLED

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

PYLON-Lab is pleased to present the video-installation WALLED UNWALLED by current Turner Prize nominee LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN.

The continued screening will begin on Thursday, November 7th at 7pm and is part of the cooperation with Hellerau – European Center for the Arts and the festival „4:3 Kammer Musik Neu“ (see link below). The festival focuses on experimental chamber music by ensembles and artists and investigates how music creates and defines space in an architectural, but also social, private and political context.

WALLED UNWALLED (2018) is a single channel 20 minute performance-video-installation. The performance comprises of an interlinking series of narratives derived from legal cases that revolved around evidence that was heard or experienced through walls. It consists of a series of performances reenactments and a monologue staged inside a trio of sound effects studios in the Funkhaus, East Berlin.

The starting point of Abu Hamdan’s audiovisual installations and performances is a profound exploration of auditory consciousness and memory, usually in the context of highly political contexts. His interest with sound and its intersection with politics originate from his background as a touring musician and facilitator of DIY music.

In 2017 Abu Hamdan received his PhD from Goldsmiths College London. His audio investigations have been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and as advocacy for organizations such as Amnesty International and Defence for Children International together with fellow researchers from Forensic Architecture. Abu Hamdan won the Nam June Paik Award for new media in 2016 and is currently nominated for the Turner Prize for his exhibition „Earwitness Theatre“ and his performance „After SFX“.

The screening is kindly supported by Kulturstiftung des Freistaat Sachsen, by Landeshauptstadt Dresden – Amt für Kultur und Denkmalschutz and by Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden.

We look forward to welcoming you for the opening on the evening of November 7th at PYLON-Lab.

Turner Prize Nomination

Walled Unwalled (2018)

In the year 2000 there was a total of fifteen fortified border walls and fences between sovereign nations. Today, physical barriers at sixty-three borders divide nations across four continents. As these walls were being constructed, millions and millions of invisible cosmic particles called muons descended into the earths atmosphere and penetrated metres deep, through layers of concrete, soil and rock. Scientists realised that these deep penetrating particles could be harvested, and a technology could be developed to use their peculiar physical capacities to pass through surfaces previously impervious to x rays. Muons allowed us to see for the first time the contraband hidden in lead lined shipping containers and secret chambers buried inside the stone walls of the pyramids. Now no wall on earth is impermeable. Today, we're all wall, and no wall at all.

Walled Unwalled is a single channel 20 minute performance-video installation. The performance comprises of an interlinking series of narratives derived from legal cases that revolved around evidence that was heard or experienced through walls. It consists of a series of performances reenactments and a monologue staged inside a trio of sound effects studios in the Funkhaus, East Berlin.

The movable walls and different surface materials of the historical sound effect studios form the appropriate setting for Abu Hamdan's essayistic analysis of sound absorption and reflection as well as the (sound) permeability of walls on the basis of various political case studies: The case Danny Lee Kyllo against the United States, the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius in South Africa and Abu Hamdan's research results on the fall of the Syrian prison Saydnaya are mentioned, as well as the role of the American radio station Radio Free Europe, which during the Cold War addressed listeners from Munich beyond the Iron Curtain.