Rubber Coated Steel
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Free admission
Set in a facility designed to fire ammunition and silence the sound of the bullets being fired, Rubber Coated Steel (2016) is a video work that presents the fictitious trial of an actual murder case. 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 organisation Defence for Children International. Through Forensic Architecture, an agency that undertakes advanced architectural and media research, this organisation worked with Lawrence Abu Hamdan to publish a report, including detailed audio analysis of the gunshots fired. This ultimately proved the guilt of the soldiers. The piece acts as a kind of tribunal in absentia for these murders, and the film as a new kind of legal scenography, transforming the visitor into a juror.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Lawrence Abu Hamdan calls himself a Private Ear, listening to, with and on behalf of people affected by corporate, state, and environmental violence. He is based in Beirut, Lebanon. His work reflects on the political and cultural context of sound and listening, and is presented in the form of forensic reports, lectures and live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions.
Abu Hamdan’s audio investigations have been used as evidence in asylum cases and as part of international NGO advocacy campaigns. His work is in the collections of the Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain), MoMA (New York, USA), Guggenheim (New York, USA), Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) and Tate Modern (London, UK) and was exhibited at the 2019 Venice Biennale (Italy). His film Rubber Coated Steel (2017) was awarded at the Rotterdam International Film festival (Netherlands). In 2019, Abu Hamdan shared the Turner Prize with Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani, for their work on contemporary social and political issues.
