In preview in Turin, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo , in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, presents Air Pressure (A diary of the sky), a new multi-channel audio and video installation by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, winner of the third edition of the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Lebanese, 1985) is an independent audio researcher whose work analyzes the political dimension of sound across a variety of media such as sound recordings, surveillance technologies and archival materials. Born during and in response to the experience of the last two years of lockdown in Lebanon, Air Pressure (A diary of the sky) is an exploration that derives from Abu Hamdan's continuous documentation and analysis of Lebanese airspace.

In particular, this investigation focuses on the episodes in which Israeli aviation crossed the skies of Lebanon, in violation of the agreements between the two nations brokered by the United Nations Security Council. Through a sound and film installation, the work tangibly returns these recurring violations, proposing a reflection on the atmospheric violence that has become part of Lebanese daily life.

To produce this work, Abu Hamdan has collected hundreds of videos over the past two years, shot by community members across Lebanon, who turned their cell phones towards the sky at the moment the acoustic explosions caused by military flights occurred . While some of these videos were recorded by Abu Hamdan himself or by friends and neighbors, most were collected by the artist through social media using the Arabic hashtag #حربي_بالجوواء (which translates to #warintheatmosphere). In the commissioned work, the footage of these forays into the sky is associated with the soundtrack formed by their violent explosions, offering an audiovisual diary of air and sound encroachments.