Behind the walls

Performance, 14 Hours

Saarbrücken, 2021

 

Much of the violence perpetrated in Saydnaya prison, a few kilometers north of Damascus, is acoustic: prisoners are forced to remain silent in pain. But in this prison, all the sounds of torture can be heard through the prison's infrastructure. They circulate in all the rooms through air ducts, water pipes, and through the porous walls. Hearing becomes an instrument of surveillance and torture.

 

Who has the right to speak and who is forced to remain silent? What can be heard and what cannot? 

​

In this performance, I held my self in a small room that is located exactly next to the gallery room during the whole exhibition days. Only one visitor was allowed to be in the room and should stay for exactly 10 minutes, during that time, I was doing  sounds and trying to communicate with them linguistically using the water pipes that is installed to connect the two rooms together.

​

There was no hint that there was a performance or someone is actually there, some have entered and left without knowing.