Forensic Listening in Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Saydnaya (the missing 19dB)

Abstract

In 2014, Lawrence Abu Hamdan invited me to participate in a day of events he was curating for the Studium Generale at the Rietveld Academie. The wider program, a “conference-festival,” addressed to students and faculty across all fields of art and design, was concerned with voice, but Abu Hamdan’s own focus would be legal, and the day was therefore titled 'The Right to Silence'. The “Miranda-style” warnings made famous by American crime dramas were mentioned only once, however, and only as a point of departure. Abu Hamdan’s concerns were much broader. What interested him, he said, were “the forms of listening that govern and control the voice, how voices are received, and how they’re also si..