In 2016, Abu Hamdan started working with Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture on an acoustic investigation into the Assad-regime prison of Saydnaya, located twenty-five kilometres north of Damascus. Following the outbreak of protests and the subsequent uprising in Syria in 2011, more than thirteen thousand people were tortured and executed in the military prison. 

The prison was inaccessible to independent observers. No journalists or monitoring organisations were permitted to enter, and no images of Saydnaya were publicly available. In the absence of visual or material evidence, the memories of the few released detainees became the only means of documenting the violations that had taken place there. Working with survivors’ earwitness testimonies, Abu Hamdan used architectural and acoustic modelling to reconstruct the prison and gain insight into the experiences of detention.

Inside Saydnaya, vision was deliberately restricted. Prisoners were kept in darkness, blindfolded or forced to cover their eyes, developing an acute sensitivity to sound. Former detainees recalled cells, stairwells, corridors, doors and windows, as well as objects ranging from torture instruments to blankets and furniture. As the acoustic model developed, these sonic recollections prompted further memories, allowing the prison’s configuration to take shape.

Saydnaya (the missing 19db) is an audio essay centred on a striking detail that emerged from the investigation: after the 2011 protests, the volume at which detainees could whisper had dropped by 19 decibels. This reduction became a measure of Saydnaya's transformation and repression “from a prison into a death camp”. Within these 19 decibels, Abu Hamdan locates both the disappearance of voice and the voices of the disappeared. 

The work examines how sound becomes sight and sight becomes sound – in other words, what happens when sound becomes a means of seeing, remembering and bearing witness. By tracing how sound was experienced in Saydnaya, encoded in memory and deployed as a weapon, Abu Hamdan asks how listening might reveal forms of violence that cannot be seen, and how testimony can hold the imprint of war crimes.

Note: The Saydnaya project formed part of a wider campaign led by Amnesty International calling on the Syrian government to allow independent monitors into its detention centres. 

Sources

EARSHOT

forensic-architecture

SAYDNAYA

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Lawrence Abu Hamdan (1985, Amman, Jordan) is an independent investigator or "Private Ear," with a PhD from the University of London on the role of sound in legal investigations. In 2023, he founded Earshot, the world’s first not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the study of audio for human rights and environmental advocacy. His work has been presented in the form of forensic reports, lectures, live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions at institutions such as: Munch Museum, Oslo; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Biennale Arte 2019, Venice; Sharjah Biennial 14; and the 12th Berlin Biennale. Abu Hamdan’s work has been widely recognised internationally with awards such as the Grand Prize at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (2022), and the Audience Award at the Toronto Biennial (2020), among others. For the 2019 Turner Prize, Abu Hamdan formed a temporary collective with fellow nominated artists Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo, and Tai Shani in order to receive the award jointly.