In 2014, artist and forensic audio analyst Lawrence Abu Hamdan was asked to examine audio files that recorded the shots that killed Nadeem Nawara and Mohamed Abu Daher in the West Bank of Palestine. Rubber Coated Steel does not preside over the voices of the victims but seeks to amplify their silence, questioning the ways in which rights are being heard today.

Set in a facility designed with one specific function – to fire ammunition and silence the sound of the bullets fired – Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Rubber Coated Steel (2016) is a video work which presents the fictitious trial of an actual murder case. Spectrograms appear where targets usually hang. They move back and forth in a way corresponding to the transcribed testimony of the witness, who testifies in front of a court that is not a court, about a crime that never was publicly acknowledged as a crime. The subtitles are a transcript drawn from a case focusing on an incident in May 2014, in which two unarmed teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and Mohamad Abu Daher, were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank (Palestine). The case never came before a civil court. Instead, it was made public by the human rights organization Defence for Children International. Through Forensic Architecture, a Goldsmiths College-based agency that undertakes advanced architectural and media research, this organization worked with Lawrence Abu Hamdan to publish a report, including detailed audio analysis of the gunshots fired. Which ultimately proved the guilt of the soldiers.

Abu Hamdan presented the video for the first time at Portikus in Frankfurt. The piece acts as a kind of tribunal in absentia for these murders, transforming the exhibition space into a new kind of legal scenography and a form of presentation of the evidence. Entering the space without introduction, visitors found themselves directly in a setting resembling the basic architecture of the shooting range where the video was filmed. Panels hanging from the horizontal beams at various widths show spectrograms of various kinds of ammunition. Panels covered only with foam support [represent] and highlight the idea of silence within Rubber Coated Steel itself, but also support [represent] the acoustic qualities of the Portikus space.

Rubber Coated Steel is a concept-based rather than a theory-based work. Accompanied by the installation, it becomes a kind of physical evidence, transforming the visitor, respectively the viewer into a juror. Emotions, dead bodies, loud sounds, ammunition sounds, and even the voice itself are all removed from the video and therefore from the exhibition. And even though sound is foregrounded, silence dominates the scene. This is a silence that forces us to listen to sound which would be incomprehensible to most visitors, even if they were to hear it. The result is a levelling of the playing field between what is voiced and committed to language, and what is suppressed or willingly silenced.

* A slightly different version of this introduction was originally published in Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s artist book and first publication titled „[inaudible] A Politics of Listening in 4 Acts“ and published by Portikus, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, and Sternberg Press.

Credits

Commissioned by Portikus, Frankfurt

Script, sound and montage by Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Camera by Solo Films

Color and post-production by Rez Visual