Sound Walk With “Lisan”

by Sophie She

Sound Walk With “Lisan”

13 Feb 2024

The so-called “audio promenades” are an amazing part of the sound performance genre.

Bringing a spectator to a usual, ordinary space, and once the play button was hit, this casual place turns into a completely new being, a theatrical scene in a play.

The so-called “sound walks” are also essential representatives of the sound performance genre. They encourage you to listen to the world around you and contemplate the existence of everything — birds, cars, water, even rocks.

Both of the artistic performances unite art, mind, and the surrounding reality.

One such experience, called "Lisan", was featured at Jameel Arts Centre on February 10th. We fully engaged with it and are now eager to share our impressions.

What and why?

”Lisan” is an auditory journey starting at the Jameel Arts Centre, meandering along the Dubai Creek on the Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park.

Narrated by a twelve-year-old girl, the experience immerses audiences in contrasting natural and urban landscapes, unveiling the diverse lives of the creek and the stories of both its human and more-than-human inhabitants.

The term “Lisan”, an Arabic word for “Tongue”, serves as a symbolic exploration of the interconnectedness between the human body and the living earth, blurring the distinction between the human tongue and the creek as a flowing entity.

Source: jameelartscentre.org

Who?

This project, conceived by Palestinian-Jordanian artist Naser Al Sughaiyer, serves as a meditation on ecological care, encouraging listeners to engage with the sensory overload prevalent in contemporary living. Naser's art-life practices explore interspecies intimacy, emphasising the potential for humans to deepen their connections with the earth through various rituals, including walking, storytelling, planting, and more.

Commissioned by the Jameel Arts Centre and curated by Nadine El khoury, “Lisan” features performances by Aikaterini Bikou, sound design by Joe Najm, and collaborative contributions from the natural elements of Al Jaddaf Waterfront, including the creek, birds, fish, feet, bridges, cars, aeroplanes, and various more-than-human kin.

What to improve?

Looking back at this touching experience, a true lover of audio promenades and sound walks would say that it was a very nice and touching experience for the launch of this wonderful genre in our local art scene.

The chosen theme is essential for the everyday of all people, especially in big cities like Dubai. Just like Simmel described in The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) it is important for all city inhabitants to remember about the dozens of signals we have in everyday life and in order to cope with all this it is essential to limit them as much as possible and take care of our psyche by having some “time off” — read as “offline”, “alone”, ”in silence”, “in the nature”, “noticing nature around”. This is what “Lisan” is trying to achieve.

While it does a good job, there is definitely room for improvement, meaning artists can surely go further and make such experiences longer, more complex, interactive, with complicated scripts, themes and characters. It would be great to speak about the chosen theme through more engaging storytelling. Surely people will respond to such unusual and curious experiments and the new chapter will be opened for a life of the sound performances in Dubai.

by Sophie She