Oct 14, 2022 | 06:00 pm
Impulse I
"Natq" a live audiovisual essay on the politics and possibilities of reincarnation

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a Private Ear or independent audio investigator. He has testified as an expert witness  at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. His investigative work has contributed to high impact advocacy campaigns, most notably conducting the earwitness interviews of detainees of Saydnaya Prison for Amnesty International’s Human Slaughterhouse report. 

Abu Hamdan received his PhD in 2017 from Goldsmiths College University of London and in 2021 completed professorships at University of Chicago and at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz where he developed his research AirPressure.info 

Abu Hamdan has exhibited his work at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, the 58th Venice Biennale, the 11th Gwanju Biennale, the 13th and 14th Sharjah Biennial, Witte De With, Rotterdam, Tate Modern Tanks,  Chisenhale Gallery,  Hammer Museum L.A and the Portikus Frankfurt. His works are part of collections at MoMA, Guggenheim, Van AbbeMuseum, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. Abu Hamdan’s work has been awarded the 2019  Edvard Munch Art Award, the 2016 Nam June Paik Award for new media and in 2017 his film Rubber Coated Steel won the Tiger short film award at the Rotterdam International Film festival.  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. 

Abstract
"Natq" a live audiovisual essay on the politics and possibilities of reincarnation. Through listening closely to “xenoglossy” (the impossible speech of reincarnated subjects), this performance explores a collectivity of lives who use reincarnation to negotiate their condition at the threshold of the law—people for whom injustices and violence have escaped the historical record due to colonial subjugation, corruption, rural lawlessness, and legal amnesty. In the piece, reincarnation is not a question of belief but a proposal for a new category of witness.

Moderated by:

Alia Hamdan is a performance practitioner and a researcher in esthetic politics and dance and performance theory. Her research interests gravitate around the Deleuzian semiotics of the image, choreographic modes of thinking and politics. Since 2013, she has taught art theory and art history courses in universities such as ALBA (Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts), LAU (Lebanese American University) and USJ (Université Saint-Joseph) and has punctually produced performance projects such as Someday (BIPOD, Beirut, 2012). This year, she was in residency at The Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), and soon will be in residency at Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany) for researching and writing.