Audio essay in Dubai turns up volume of Syrian Jawlani community's opposition to Israeli project

Lawrence Abu Hamdan's latest live show aims to highlight controversial wind turbine plan that has left a Golan Heights community feeling threatened

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Zifzafa, 2024. Still from the video game simulation showing how the Israeli turbines will impact the everyday life of the Syrian Jawlani community in the Golan Heights. Photo: LawShow more

A controversial Israeli wind turbine project in the Golan Heights that is being opposed by the Syrian Jawlani community is the subject of a live audio essay to be delivered by Lawrence Abu Hamdan in Dubai.

The piece is entitled Zifzafa, an Arabic word denoting wind that blows strong enough to shake objects in its course. It will be performed at Alserkal Avenue’s Warehouse 50, Project Space on Saturday. Zifzafa will comprise music, field recordings, a video game and spoken text to highlight the controversial issue in the Golan Heights.

Residents of the Jawlani community have been campaigning against plans to erect the 31 wind turbines, insisting that they would disrupt everyday life.

Members of the local community have told the Associated Press that the turbines would be 200 metres tall and that some would be positioned as close as 35 meters to Jawlani residences.

Some community members are also concerned about noise pollution. The Syrian Jawlani community have rallied against the project for years. Thousands protested in June 2023, and Israeli security forces responded by firing rubber bullets and gas canisters. Israeli politicians, notably Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, have been adamant that the project will continue despite the opposition.

There are many strands to the issue, but Abu Hamdan has chosen to highlight the potential noise pollution. “No one can live in underneath one of those things,” he says. “Not only do they create a kind of sonic border – a kind of sonic annexation of the last bit of land that is available to the Jawlanis – it's the last bit of area they can they can grow into. It's the future for them and their community. The connection between them will not be possible because of this project.”

For the past year, Abu Hamdan and Earshot, a non-governmental audio research organisation, have been working on documenting the community's everyday sounds. .

Zifzafa will feature a video game that will include the field recordings, presenting the sounds of the area as they currently exist. The turbines have already been constructed in this rendering of the Golan Heights, and players will have the power to turn them off or on at will.

The sound of the turbines was created in-game by recordings of similar towers in Germany.

The further players walk away from a turbine, the more its sound diminishes. However, spheres of sound often overlap between the 31 turbines.

The simulation will be a core part of Saturday’s performance, “an instrument” of sorts, Abu Hamdan says, that will be projected on to a large backdrop. A member of the Earshot team will be navigating the terrain, its sounds and the testimonies by Syrian Jawlanis who speak about how the project would impact their community.

Two screens on either side, meanwhile, will be dedicated to Busher Kanj Abu Saleh and saxophonist Amr Mdah as they perform music to accompany the piece. Abu Hamdan himself will be centre stage, reading a piece that explains the implications of the project.

The video game aspect of Zifzafa will be going online in the coming weeks. “It is a place where people will still be able to hear those sounds in the future,” Abu Hamdan says. “Sound is not just effectively sound. We're talking about the relations between people. What connects people over. What holds communities together. It is the character of that place.”

Saturday’s performance at Alserkal Avenue will be the first presentation of the live audio essay.

“There's something interesting about doing it here in Dubai and making these connections,” Abu Hamdan says. “Many people, maybe they're from Palestine or Lebanon, can’t go there. We've lived through so many successive acts of dispossession and division that I think it's also about thinking about ways that sound kind of connects us. You can use sound as a kind of connective tissue to pierce the border.”

With the support of the Alserkal Arts Foundation, Zifzafa will be presented as a live performance at the Festival d’Automne in Paris in October. It is also set to feature in Tunis next year.

Zifzafa will be performed at Alserkal Avenue’s Warehouse 50, Project Space on Saturday at 5pm and 7pm