Earshot

Presented by Earshot, the not-for-profit organisation founded by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ibraaz’s next Library-in-Residence brings sound to the Iqra – not as atmosphere, but as argument. For nine months, it becomes a site of sonic inquiry, where recordings are not simply heard but interrogated, and where listening is both exercise and method. 

As the world’s first non-profit organisation dedicated to the use of sound in the defence of human and environmental rights, Earshot has been developing the field of Sonic Investigations alongside and on behalf of communities affected by corporate, state, and environmental injustice. A practice that refuses to treat sound as a fixed object, Sonic Investigations demands we attend not only to what a sound is, but also to how it is heard, by whom, through what technologies, and within what social, legal and political conditions. The Earshot Library-in-Residence is both a demonstration and an enactment of that practice. 

The Library is organised across four bodies of work, moving between communal immersion and individual inquiry. As you enter the space, From the Field fills the room continuously: a multichannel audio experience drawn from Earshot’s field recordings of eco-acoustic investigations into noise pollution, ecological damage, and ambient recordings submitted for forensic analysis. 

Three listening stations invite self-directed encounter with Earshot’s core investigative methodologies: The Crack and the Boom opens up the audio ballistic analysis of weapons and strikes; Authentic Audio examines the detection of AI-generated voices and audio deepfakes; The Sonic Identikit traces Earshot’s techniques for profiling sounds and soliciting earwitness testimony from those who were there. 

Through a public programme of case launches, workshops, and talks running across the nine months, the residency expands on experiences and understandings of sound not simply as medium, but as evidence, memory and witness.