Lawrence Abu Hamdan: This whole time there were no landmines

About

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a Turner Prize winning artist based in Beirut whose work looks into the political effects of listening, using various kinds of audio to explore its effects on human rights and law. Recently acquired by Towner, This whole time there were no landmines (2017) is an eight-monitor installation with sound, that uses collected cell-phone-video footage from 2011 to document a ‘shouting valley’ that lies in the contested area of the Golan Heights, Syria. This stretch of land became annexed by Israel from Syria following a ceasefire in 1967 and is dubbed ‘the shouting valley’, as the areas topography allows for an acoustic leak across the border. Subsequently, separated families have gathered on either side of the border in order to shout across the divide to each other and remain in contact.