Sound as evidence: Turner winner Lawrence Abu Hamdan investigates human rights abuses by listening
Turner prize winner Lawrence Abu Hamdan leads the NGO Earshot, which uses sound analysis to investigate human rights abuses, including a suspected sonic weapon in Belgrade and killings in Gaza. His art and investigative reports feed into one another, forming a distinctive approach to evidence-gathering.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, who jointly won the Turner prize in 2019, also directs Earshot, an NGO he founded in 2023 that investigates human rights abuses through sound evidence — from analysing bullet trajectories to establishing whether sonic weapons were used against crowds.
His work in this field began in 2016, when he worked with the research agency Forensic Architecture for Amnesty International, interviewing survivors of Syria's Sednaya prison. Held in total darkness and forced silence, prisoners relied on memories of sounds — screams, keys turning, bread being dropped — which later helped reconstruct the prison's layout and conditions, years before it was opened up following the fall of the Assad regime.
Earshot's team, largely made up of architecture graduates, combines open-source data, earwitness testimony and audio recordings. One of its major cases involved a March 2025 silent vigil in Belgrade attended by up to 300,000 people, during which a loud, disorienting noise erupted. Earshot concluded the sound was likely produced by a US-made LRAD 450XL device, though the Serbian government has denied using a sonic weapon.
Another significant investigation examined an Israeli military attack on ambulance workers in Tel Al-Sultan, near Rafah, on 23 March 2025. Earshot's analysis found that at least 910 rounds were fired, with at least 789 aimed directly at aid workers.
Abu Hamdan's investigative work is closely tied to his art practice — some cases produce formal reports, others inspire artworks. The Belgrade case became the basis for '450XL: The Story of a Fugitive Sound', currently on show at the Venice Biennale and set to appear at London's Barbican in September. Another work, 'Zifzafa', explores noise pollution from wind turbines and is on view in Glasgow until 17 October.
