photos: Stefan Jäggi © Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen . + Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Abu Hamdan’s work incorporates a wider range of strategies to lay bare the fact, that although freedom of speech may persist, the conventions of listening have certainly shifted. The all-hearing state apparatus, which forms the basis of Abu Hamdan’s deliberations, promotes a policy of total transparency which perceives secrecy as the greatest threat to democracy. While radical freedom of speech has come to be a guarantee of a just society, individuals seem to be permanently urged to confess themselves and to bear witness. Between the right to speak and claim for silence Abu Hamdan examines a policy of audibility which increasingly demands new concepts of speech.
Kunsthalle St Gallen
