In conjunction with Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s exhibition Earwitness Theatre, Liquid Architecture and the IMA present a program of talks, a book launch, and a screening addressing the concept of eavesdropping.

Curators Joel Stern and James Parker will discuss their exhibition Eavesdropping, currently on display at City Gallery, Wellington following its showing at Ian Potter Museum of Art in 2018, and launch the new publication, ‘Eavesdropping: A Reader’.

Stern and Parker’s project addresses the capture and control of our sonic world by state and corporate interests, alongside strategies of resistance. It departs from the argument eavesdropping isn’t necessarily malicious. Eavesdropping features work by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Susan Schuppli, Sean Dockray, Joel Spring, Fayen d'Evie, and Jen Bervin, Samson Young, and Manus Recording Project Collective.

Following their talk, Stern and Parker will introduce a screening of Lawrence Abu Hamdan's Rubber Coated Steel (2016), which follows an incident in May 2014, in which Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank (Palestine) shot and killed two teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and Mohamad Abu Daher.

Abu Hamdan’s audio investigation proved that the boys were shot by real bullets and not rubber ones, became the centre of a murder investigation that went through the military courts and international news networks to the US Congress.

Find out more on the IMA website here.