Gasworks Gives Earshot a Three-Year Base for Sound-Based Investigations
A London residency is giving Earshot, the non-profit founded by Jordan-born artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan (b. 1985), a more permanent footing for its work at the intersection of sound, evidence, and rights. The organization has been awarded a three-year studio bursary at Gasworks in south London, supported by Spanish patron Mercedes Vilardell. The package includes an annual stipend and monthly rent for a studio space.
For Abu Hamdan, the move marks a shift from what he describes as an “incubation period” with Forensic Architecture to a more independent phase for Earshot. The organization, he says, needs a setting that reflects its hybrid identity: part investigative unit, part research platform, part cultural producer. That mix has already shaped projects tied to legal accountability, scientific rigor, and artistic presentation.
Earshot’s work has focused on sound as evidence and as a form of pressure. Its investigations have informed advocacy efforts for groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, including the latter’s Saydnaya prison campaign. Abu Hamdan has long been associated with work that makes audible the politics of surveillance, from testimony gathered from prisoners tortured at Saydnaya under former Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad to projects examining accent tests used in asylum claims across Europe.
The organization is now developing an earwitness interview tool, designed for people who heard an incident rather than saw it. It is also pursuing research on coral reefs, extending its methods into an environmental register, and will begin a library in residence with Ibraaz in London from early October.
The Gasworks bursary arrives alongside another major London appearance. Abu Hamdan and Earshot will take over the Barbican Centre from September 23-26 with Repercussions, a program of installations, performances, screenings, and live music. One performance in the Barbican cinema will draw on an earwitness investigation into a reported sonic attack during a silent vigil in Belgrade in March 2025. Commissioned by Figura, it will include text by Abu Hamdan, visuals by Earshot’s Hyeongji Yang, and a live score by James Hoff.
Taken together, the two projects suggest a practice that is widening rather than settling: one rooted in research, but increasingly visible in public space, where listening itself becomes a civic act.
