Peace is Not What You Believe

Overview

Urban residents live within ceaseless and ever shifting noise. Just as the city’s streets and structures create fragmented trajectories, so too the urban soundscape breaks up perception and suffocates the senses, separating our bodies from our environment. This profusion of sound deprives us of an intimate experience of the world.

In this installation, visitors are invited on a journey through a soundscape that will affect their senses. In two rooms of an arish (palm leaf) and coral stone house, abstract films will be projected onto screens of linen veils, inspired by the writings of the ninth-century Islamic mystic al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi. A third room contains projections of images that convey the fading world of figures.

The music in Peace is Not What You Believe is intended to create sensory and spatial effects that, in turn, may lead to the creative resurgence of memory and new imaginings. Composed from the sounds of Marrakech – nearby noises and far-off murmurings, voices of workers in the souks, sacred chants, timeless music and contemporary sounds – Peace is not what you believe explores how we hear and understand the world and attempts to open a new space where we can move freely.


2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11

Co-commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, Hamza Serafi and Philippe Lauro-Baranès.