Rectification Of The Wretched - Nour Sokhon by Nour Sokhon

Lebanese artist Nour Sokhon reimagines capacities of the human protest and the human desire as a radical electronic collage absorbing stories of the ‘ordinary people’, the underrepresented in the community that surround her while working from her home studio space. Growing up as an Arab woman, she blatantly describes the confining reality of living with various restrictions to her individual and collective sense of freedom, fuelling her work with film, sound and advocacy. Intergenerational post-war hauntings, awakenings and the struggle for hope both at the worldly and the personal level are the prevalent themes found in her work.

The ongoing Lebanese civil protests and revolution following the pandemic adds to her and her people’s emotional and collective strife, that she seeks to evoke as sonic matter:

On October 17, 2019 the process of rediscovery through listening magnified more than ever, in the streets of Lebanon, where a sea of rage swept the country. The country’s lock-out of spaces has been a norm since then. Isolation, social anxiety, frequent cutbacks in electricity at odd hours of the day, items disappearing from store shelves, people unable to go into social environments and participate in human contact is nothing new. Poverty has taken over, hunger is in the eyes of the people everywhere you walk. The conversations that take place in the local supermarkets, in the shared cabs, and on the streets all carry one common theme: anger. Anger about the prices soaring, anger about the lack of proper infrastructure, anger about lack of basic public services and anger about the root cause of it all: the government’s extreme level of corruption.

Sokhon’s association with sound emphasizes its political and social possibilities; she uses field recordings and samples to write up the lives of people who are oppressed and subjugated.

My desire is to sincerely translate the frailing energies of human and civilian struggle flowing through the veins of my country Lebanon in recent months at the hands of time tested injustice, leading to perhaps an imminent economic and cultural collapse.

Rectification of the Wretched is composed to remind her people that there are still dreams that they can seek.

I am with the people, and seek reformation. Before the start of quarantine I used to find myself in the streets. At the moment I have lost hope, yet I find it necessary to not succumb to the dark pit of despair. My personal sense of empowerment, my weapon, rises and awakens through sound amidst all the chaos. I would like to rediscover the current turbulence we open our eyes to every morning by amplifying the silenced voices of the people. I would like to create a figment of hope through the power of imagination by asking locals one question. What do they dream of?

The resulting soundscape is a narration of twelve different voices. Conducted through Whatsapp, the interviewees responded to the same question posed: What do they dream of?

Editorial edit by Alifiyah Imani
Full essay is published here: https://spatialsoundinstitute.com/P_Composing-Sonic-Futures