Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Saâdane Afif at mor charpentier

Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Saâdane Afif

Exhibition title: Sound Eclipse

Venue: mor charpentier, Paris, France

Date: March 7 – May 9, 2020

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and mor charpentier, Paris

What happens when sound vanishes? When the noise stops? Can we ‘listen through our eyes’, as René Block proposed in 1980 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Listening to sounds, noise or music is not simply determined by a physical ability but can also be determined by a combination of cultural, social, linguistic or political factors. Sound Eclipse proposes to draw our attention to the artistic practice of Lawrence Abu Hamdan (1985, Amman, Jordan) and Saâdane Afif (1970, Vendôme, France), two artists whose work is intrinsically linked to sound and musical experimentation.

The exhibition opens with Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Earwitness Inventory, an installation initially comprised of 95 sourced and custom designed objects and instruments, each of which recreates the sound effect described by earwitness testimony from legal case or historical disaster around the world. Could we imagine that behind each object is expressed the memory of a witness? After years of investigating the perception of language, sound and listening policy, Lawrence Abu Hamdan focuses this time on the communicational limits and the reliability of our acoustic memory. If the objects remain silent, asking the visitor to imagine their acoustic potentials from a personal experimentation, an animated text allows us to apprehend the set of narratives staged in the exhibition space. Each experiment reveals gradually the complexity of the reconstitution process. If the technology allows more precision, it’s the auditory memory recording (often incomplete or affected by a specific context) that causes trouble.

Earwitness Inventory highlights Abu Hamdan’s interest for the evanescence and the leakage of sound, as already mentioned in earlier works as ‘This whole time there were no landmines’ (2017) or ‘Walled Unwalled’ (2018); and questions the fragility of the legal and politic status of human being in this grey area where the sound fails.

A selection of Saâdane Afif’s works illustrates his creative process since 2004. He decides to accompany his artistic production with lyrics, which he commissions from an author according to a precise protocol. Each text bears the same title as the work related to as well as the name of the lyricist. This first step duplicates the work before its multiplication in a countless number of variations: from the lyrics are born their musical creations, from which new plastic versions are created and so on. The performative act gives rise to a new transcription: the poster, a synthetic and graphic form of the factual information of the events and concerts. The simultaneous presentation of the poster breaks down the boundary between the work and its mediating tool and demonstrates once again the self-reflexive potential of an art that only reveals itself through constant change.

Even though silent, each piece conveys music, voices, instruments or concerts. L’S Bells – The Tool of Busker of the Gray Line and Room 11 of the exhibition Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time, IAC (2013) use the showcase to highlight two objects, two relics that have captured a group of lyrics and their musical variations. On one side, Mount Moon’s guitar symbolizing his street music, and on the other, a ceramic designed by the craftsman, Antonio Frias Ornelas, who literally incorporated in the material the words spoken simultaneously by the artist. The lanterns of Three Tokyo Sessions open with another sound introduced by the translation of a selection of Japanese lyrics. Finally, L’Eternité was conceived first as music, then as an element of stage decor before being exploited as fragments. The fragments are arranged like the sun’s rays on the turbulent sea views and resonate with the verses of Rimbaud’s eponymous poem. The cliché of the sunset, the sea and its waves as well as the title deafly proclaims the inexorable flow of time and the precariousness of the moment that the artist never ceases to thwart in a work in perpetual metamorphosis.

Exhibition view, Sound Eclipse, mor charpentier, Paris, 2020 – Upper floor : works by Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Exhibition view, Sound Eclipse, mor charpentier, Paris, 2020 – Lower ground : works by Saâdane Afif

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Earwitness Inventory, 2018 – 2019, Installation composed of 95 sourced and custom designed objects/instruments, and a video on screen, Dimensions variable

Exhibition view, Sound Eclipse, mor charpentier, Paris, 2020 – Upper floor : works by Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Earwitness Inventory (Car Door Instrument), 2018, Car door, wooden crate, battery, 130 x 50 x 130 cm

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Earwitness Inventory (Metal Door Instrument), 2018, Metal door with fold-out scissor slide feature, 80 x 30 x 77 cm

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Earwitness Inventory (Wooden Door Instrument), 2018, Wooden door, various metal locks, 50 x 84 x 74 cm

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Earwitness Inventory (Stairs Instrument), 2018, Wooden stairs with carpet, 81 x 60 x 50 cm

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Earwitness Inventory (Animated Text), 2018, Video, black and white, mute, 26 minutes, loop

Saâdane Afif, A Lecture, a Recording & a Few Witnesses, 2010, Installation composed of a display case containing a ceramic vase, lyrics, and a framed poster, Vase : 15 x 40 cm, Poster : 137 x 101 cm (framed)

Saâdane Afif, Reading BU1.1 (Blue Time, 2004), 2010, Clay, painted enamel, display case in wood and plexiglas, Vase : 15 x 40 cm, Display case : 57 x 57 x 160 cm

Saâdane Afif, L’S Bells – The Busker of the Gray Line, 2012, Installation composed of a display case containing a guitar, 9 lyrics, and a framed poster, Guitar : 75 x 28 x 7 cm, Poster : 146 x 106 cm (framed)

Saâdane Afif, L’S Bells – The Tool of the Busker of the Gray Line, 2012, Hand-painted accoustic guitar , display case in wood and plexiglas, Guitar : 75 x 28 x 7 cm, Display case : 52 x 72 x 193 cm

Exhibition view, Sound Eclipse, mor charpentier, Paris, 2020 – Lower ground : works by Saâdane Afif