Lawrence Abu Hamdan The Sonic Image
How does one make visible the stories that exist outside of the human field of vision? Can rendering and imagining the frequencies, simulations and stimulations of sound reveal narratives concealed from history? Artist and ‘Private Ear’ Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s projects express how the experience of listening—the nuances of a cyclic stutter or how the incongruency of an anxious murmur can reveal intricate details of the contested social, political and economic spheres in which we live. In the multi-sensory exhibition, The Sonic Image, the Turner Prize winning artist Abu Hamdan presents various studies of splintered aural leaks. Through research and analysis, the artist crafts a new form of image-making—a new aesthetic politics. ‘What does it mean to sonify images?’, asks Abu Hamdan. Here, the artist perceives of an image that behaves akin to sound itself—a picture that fluctuates between the ear and the eye—that may only exist through the accumulation of both senses.
