This September, ArteEast’s Artist Spotlight series features interviews with artists who collaborated on PORT FICTION, a web-based audiovisual documentary project dealing with the relation of Beirut and Hamburg. Explore the project at www.portfiction.com. PORT FICTION is the work of Myriam Boulos, Moritz Frischkorn, Robin Hinsch, Ibrahim Nehme, Siska, Nour Sokhon and Kolja Warnecke. This fall, the project will be presented as an exhibition and a series of events at Kunsthaus Hamburg and Imagine the City. More info will be published shortly on the project website.
This week, ArteEast is pleased to present an interview with Nour Sokhon as part of this series.
Nour Sokhon is a Lebanese artist based between Beirut and Berlin. Her creative practice is centered around exploring different methods of working with artistic research including interview material, field recordings and recorded material from an organized site specific intervention. The research is then translated into sound/music compositions, performances, interactive installations and moving image work.
In 2014, Nour completed her BFA from the American University in Dubai, and in 2017, she culminated a large scale project; a documentary entitled People on Sound, as part of her Master’s degree in Sound for the Moving Image at the Glasgow School of Art in the UK. In 2019, Nour received the Emerging Artist Prize at the Sursock Museum in Lebanon, for a moving image piece entitled Revisiting: Hold Your Breath.
Nour has exhibited her artwork in Beirut, Dubai, London, Glasgow, Paris, Hamburg, Madrid, Zurich, Hastings, Utrecht, Berlin, Zagreb, Juterbog, Sellasia, Montreal, London, India, Melbourne and Soustons. She has also performed in Frankfurt, Berlin, Beirut, Athens, Hannover, Dubai, Paris, Amsterdam, Athens, Bern, and in various festivals such as the Al Quoz Arts Festival (Dubai, UAE), the Other Worlds Festival (Blackpool, UK), the Network Music Festival 2020 (online), This Is Not Lebanon 2021 (Frankfurt, Germany), Punkt Festival 2023 (Kristiansand, Norway) and Gaudeamus Festival 2023 (Utrecht, Netherlands).
ArteEast: Can you tell us about your work in general and the main themes you return to in your practice?
Nour Sokhon: What drew me to sound/music was the moment I realized that I wasn’t satisfied with the end result of my paintings. Instead, I was charged by the time based process, itself not confined by a frame.
Artistic research through voice, interview material, objects and site specific interventions are the colors that shape the score of my interdisciplinary practice (sound/music compositions, performances, interactive installations and moving image work) with the hope of building an archive of collective memory.
AE: Port Fiction is a web-based audiovisual documentary project dealing with the explosion in the Beirut port in 2020, done collaboratively by a group of artists from Lebanon and Germany. Why was it important for you to take part in this project?
NS: I felt the urgency to take part in it in order to have the opportunity to gather with fellow survivors. Having these conversations together created a space for us to breathe, recollect our thoughts and perhaps, even heal.
AE: Although Port Fiction is a collaborative piece, in what ways does the project enhance your individual work which deals with recorded materials that are translated into sound compositions?
NS: The project enhances my individual work by providing me with the opportunity to add more material to my personal sound archive, which contains interview material and field recordings that I have been building since the start of my practice. My dream is to one day store this material in a data bank that is not directly related to any academic institution in order for people from different walks of life to have access to it. This would make it so that the voices of people would not simply disappear, but instead, live on, and for those who have stayed or immigrated, still be connected to their past.
AE: As part of Port Fiction’s development, the Beirut-based participating artists, in addition to you, traveled to Hamburg, and took part in collective walks and workshops so as to experience for themselves aspects that connected and differentiated the two cities. What was that experience like for you and how do you think it informed your input in the collective project?
NS: The experience of walking through the Hamburg Port was necessary for me as it gave us a moment to look at our research, rethink it and deconstruct it as a collective in a physical space.
AE:What or who are some of your major creative influences, and why?
NS: I am influenced by my ear and where it takes me.
I love to take the time to listen to people’s stories which I interview, not just because of the content, but also because of the way in which they chose to share it. The speed of their speech, the silent moments, the words they chose to repeat or not say, and the tone. I consider myself a vessel which embodies their stories and translates them in different forms depending on the context. For instance, in a performative setting I select segments from my archive, and improvise over it through live vocals and object loops.
When I am not interviewing people about a specific topic I am researching. I am constantly stimulated by the sonic environment around me. Ninety percent of the time when I step out of the house, I end up recording something within my daily environment that grabs me. Examples of this would be sounds of distant or close protests, birds chirping in the early morning, construction sounds in my neighborhood, street musicians, the garbage truck passing by and so on..
When I am home and the window is slightly open I mostly find myself recording ambulance sounds, distant laughter and rain.
My obsession with recording is linked to questions such as: Who is writing our history? How
could we possibly contribute to this narrative? If we could extend a feeling or moment in life is it possible to do this through recorded sound?
AE: What are you currently working on and do you have any new projects or exhibitions upcoming in 2023-2024?
NS: I am working on several projects which are connected to my current research that is linked to immigration and exile.
Revisiting: Resisting Turbulence
I am currently touring Revisiting: Resisting Turbulence, an audiovisual concert commissioned by Henie Onstad. The work uses a selection of Myriam Bolous’s images from What’s Ours as a score to build the auditory landscape of the performance.
The initial project began in 2019, with both of us conducting a series of interviews arbitrarily as we were walking across the streets of our city, our home, Beirut. In a matter of just a few days, after the interviews had been recorded, the Lebanese revolution began. As carriers of intergenerational post war trauma, we are fueled by the notion of infinite possibilities for a reawakening to take place in a city that is burdened by a constant state of restlessness. The interviewees’ willingness to share their personal narratives with meticulous detail shines light upon peoples’ desire to be heard.
Resisting Turbulence morphed into a timeline of people’s state of paralysis before the revolution and awakening after it began. Revisiting: Resisting Turbulence stretches the timeline further as it questions the state of the country after its recent upheavals, being the economic collapse and the Beirut 2020 Port Blast.
Voyaging Through Silent Rumbles
I will be releasing my EP in a few months called Voyaging Through Silent Rumbles. The original work was commissioned by Ensemble Modern and was performed in collaboration with Jaan Bossier, Rumi Ogawa, Jagdish Mistry, Megumi Kasakawa, and Nathan Watts from the Ensemble at This is Not Lebanon.
Voyaging Through Silent Rumbles, is the continuation of Vocal Bodies. The latter is an 8 min soundscape which explores the relationship between abandoned spaces and women’s voices that have been affected by human made catastrophes. Silent screams are a constant active presence which accompany our daily lives in Beirut. One layer at a time Voyaging Through Silent Rumbles is a collaborative improvisation with classical musicians which explores our bodies’ reactions to facing this normalized state of violence in which we are embedded.
Beirut Berlin Birds
Next year I will be revisiting and recomposing my performance Beirut Berlin Birds into an album.
...I’m just afraid I’ll be told that some documents are missing. I can’t take it anymore.”
L’Orient Today / By Zeina ANTONIOS, 22 September 2021
Leaving home or staying has been the constant theme of conversation in the past 2 years in Lebanon. The wave of emigration is repeating itself, similar to what happened during the civil war. Berlin. Paris. Amsterdam. Dubai. Montreal. The list of cities continues to perpetually grow.
When the 17 October revolution began many Lebanese diaspora flew back home to join the protests and others organized demonstrations in the cities they lived in. “Beirut – Berlin – Birds”, is a live improvisation that is composed of field recordings and objects. Throughout the composition, sounds of the bird’s immigration route are recreated live, through the use of copies and samples of the required documents needed for Lebanese people to enter the EU. In addition recordings of birds collected from Beirut and Berlin, from 2019 to today are used to weave the composition together. Fragments of Beirut city ambience, recorded before October 17th 2019 are used to portray the sonic ambience of a Beirut that we once knew. Beirut before the start of this new emigration wave.
NOUR SOKHON ONLINE:
Website: www.noursokhon.com
Instagram: @noursokhon
