Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a researcher, filmmaker, artist, and activist, or as he puts it, a ‘Private Ear’. He has over a decade of experience investigating audio and a doctorate from the University of London on the role of sound in legal investigations and political discourse. In 2023, he founded Earshot, the world’s first not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the study of audio for human rights and environmental advocacy.
His work has been presented in various forms, including forensic reports, lectures, live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions, all over the world. His investigative work has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and in a formal request to the International Criminal Court. His research has played a central role in advocacy campaigns for organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Forensic Architecture. With Zifzafa, Lawrence Abu Hamdan is taking part in Dream City for the second time. In 2022, he presented Daght Jawi at the Cité des Sciences in Tunis, then in Brussels in 2024 as part of Dream City x KANAL. This year, the festival is supporting and co-producing his new creation.
Zifzafa
Performance
Zifzafa — an Arabic word for a wind that shakes everything in its path — gives its name to a performance by Lawrence Abu Hamdan that blends sound, spoken word, and game engine simulation into a sonic journey of resistance. Set in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, it confronts a looming storm: the installation of massive wind turbines and the noise-driven displacement they threaten. As wind reshapes climate, land, and politics, Zifzafa listens for ancient ways of coexisting with air and sound — now fractured. Composed by Busher Kanj Abu Saleh and performed with Amr Mdah, this live audio essay captures wind as both an agent of erasure and a force of resistance. Here, sound becomes memory, archive, and frontline.
Lara Tabet
Lara Tabet is a medical doctor and trans-disciplinary artist working at the intersection of art, ecology, biomedical science, and politics. She works across multiple formats, including experimental photography, installation, video, and bio-art. Her recent work blends research science with fiction and autobiography in relation to water, toxicity, and the multiscalar entanglements between microscopic exchanges and global flow.
In 2012, after finishing her specialization in Clinical Pathology at the American University of Beirut, Tabet graduated from the International Center of Photography in New York and was the recipient of the Lisette Model scholarship. Her work has been shown throughout the Arab world, Europe, and the U.S.A. Tabet received grants from STARTS, DRAC, CNAP, AFAC, and Al-Mawred. She was the recipient of the Arte East fellowship in 2016 and was awarded the Sursock Museum Prize in 2018.
She was an artist in residence at Musee Nicephore Niepce, La Cité internationale des arts in Paris, the National Center of Biotechnology in Madrid, La Becque in Switzerland, Tara scientific boat, and the Camargo Fondation. In 2022, she was awarded the Prince Claus mentorship award for cultural and artistic response to environmental change. Tabet has taught photography at the American University of Beirut and at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg.
Resilience Overflow
Video Installation
Resilience Overflow is a multifaceted project based on the construction of a genetically modified bacterial strain in collaboration with the molecular environmental microbiology laboratory at the National Center of Biotechnology in Madrid. The bacterium, isolated from the artist’s gut, is genetically engineered to incorporate and produce the Human Neuropeptide Y, a gene linked to human resilience, thus becoming a microscopic drug-producing factory. The project envisions the release of this strain into Tunis’s water system, challenging the notion of resilience as a political pretext, while questioning both the role of the individual in the absence of the state and the possible forms of alliance between the human and microbiological worlds
Public Works Studio
Public Works Studio is a Lebanon-based action research organization that uses a multidisciplinary approach to spatial justice. It addresses, mobilizes around, and actively responds to the chronic challenges facing just cities, inclusive urban governance, and equitable development in Lebanon.
Création 2025
Installation
Public Works documents the impact of the attacks and opens processes that question the urban justice to come. The exhibition reveals how the occupation aimed to erase not only structures but also places, their symbols, and their narratives. Three axes run through it: To Gather, bring together residents and stories in spaces of collective memory; To Return, map the razed villages and explore forms of resistance against scorched earth policies; To Repair, think of repair as a social and environmental act, beyond material reconstruction, through community initiatives and innovations accessible to all.
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige work in photography, installation, video, documentary, and fiction cinema. Their practice explores storytelling, the fabrication of images and representations, the construction of imaginaries, and the writing of history. Their acclaimed films include Memory Box, The Lebanese Rocket Society, Je Veux Voir, and A Perfect Day. Their work has been widely exhibited, and their artworks are part of private and public collections.
They received the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2017 for Unconformities. They are co-founders of Abbout Productions and are actively involved in Metropolis, Cinematheque Beirut. Born in Beirut, they live and work between Paris and Beirut.
The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia
Performance
This story unfolds in the north of Lebanon, at Nahr el Bared, in a refugee camp hastily set up to shelter Palestinian families fleeing the Nakba of 1948. In 2007, civil war broke out leading to the destruction of part of the camp. It was at that moment that the first traces appeared of Orthosia, an ancient Roman city, which vanished after being overwhelmed by a tsunami in 551 AD. Major discovery, but excavations would mean a ‘second displacement’ for the refugees. The filmmakers and artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige work between photography, installations, video and cinema to question the construction of imaginaries and the writing of forgotten stories. Through this performance, they draw us into a palimpsest of constant cycles of construction and destruction, uncovering possible narratives of the underground worlds. A dizzying performance, full of (dis)continuities, upheavals and regeneration, which plunges us into a past that feels particularly close to the present.
Chokri Ben Chikha
Chokri Ben Chikha is an actor, director, choreographer, performer, and writer. He is the artistic director of the international performance company Action Zoo Humain and teaches and researches at KASK in Ghent, where he received his PhD in Arts in 2013. In his work, Chokri questions the tension between ethics, identity, and neoliberalism—identifying these concepts as three of the main challenges of the 21st century.
With Dignity, Chokri Ben Chikha is invited to Dream City for the first time. The project has been supported and produced by the festival since 2023.
Dignity
Theatre
In this thought-provoking production, Ben Chikha dismantles dominant global narratives and asks uncomfortable questions. Drawing on the historical concept of the zoo humain, he opens up a space for dialogue between past and present, where individual stories and trans-generational legacies intersect. What are the manifestations of the zoo humain today? How has this colonial legacy shaped political, social, and cultural systems over the decades? By confronting this colonial legacy with the urgency of the present, Ben Chikha has created a powerful work that offers a prism through which to examine contemporary forms of exclusion and attacks on dignity. On stage, witnesses and audiences speak through word, image, and movement. Past and present collide, leading to a compelling blend of art, activism, and urgent conversation.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a researcher, filmmaker, artist, and activist, or as he puts it, a ‘Private Ear’. He has over a decade of experience investigating audio and a doctorate from the University of London on the role of sound in legal investigations and political discourse. In 2023, he founded Earshot, the world’s first not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the study of audio for human rights and environmental advocacy.
His work has been presented in various forms, including forensic reports, lectures, live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions, all over the world. His investigative work has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and in a formal request to the International Criminal Court. His research has played a central role in advocacy campaigns for organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Forensic Architecture. With Zifzafa, Lawrence Abu Hamdan is taking part in Dream City for the second time. In 2022, he presented Daght Jawi at the Cité des Sciences in Tunis, then in Brussels in 2024 as part of Dream City x KANAL. This year, the festival is supporting and co-producing his new creation.
Zifzafa
Performance
Zifzafa — an Arabic word for a wind that shakes everything in its path — gives its name to a performance by Lawrence Abu Hamdan that blends sound, spoken word, and game engine simulation into a sonic journey of resistance. Set in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, it confronts a looming storm: the installation of massive wind turbines and the noise-driven displacement they threaten. As wind reshapes climate, land, and politics, Zifzafa listens for ancient ways of coexisting with air and sound — now fractured. Composed by Busher Kanj Abu Saleh and performed with Amr Mdah, this live audio essay captures wind as both an agent of erasure and a force of resistance. Here, sound becomes memory, archive, and frontline.
Lara Tabet
Lara Tabet is a medical doctor and trans-disciplinary artist working at the intersection of art, ecology, biomedical science, and politics. She works across multiple formats, including experimental photography, installation, video, and bio-art. Her recent work blends research science with fiction and autobiography in relation to water, toxicity, and the multiscalar entanglements between microscopic exchanges and global flow.
In 2012, after finishing her specialization in Clinical Pathology at the American University of Beirut, Tabet graduated from the International Center of Photography in New York and was the recipient of the Lisette Model scholarship. Her work has been shown throughout the Arab world, Europe, and the U.S.A. Tabet received grants from STARTS, DRAC, CNAP, AFAC, and Al-Mawred. She was the recipient of the Arte East fellowship in 2016 and was awarded the Sursock Museum Prize in 2018.
She was an artist in residence at Musee Nicephore Niepce, La Cité internationale des arts in Paris, the National Center of Biotechnology in Madrid, La Becque in Switzerland, Tara scientific boat, and the Camargo Fondation. In 2022, she was awarded the Prince Claus mentorship award for cultural and artistic response to environmental change. Tabet has taught photography at the American University of Beirut and at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg.
Resilience Overflow
Video Installation
Resilience Overflow is a multifaceted project based on the construction of a genetically modified bacterial strain in collaboration with the molecular environmental microbiology laboratory at the National Center of Biotechnology in Madrid. The bacterium, isolated from the artist’s gut, is genetically engineered to incorporate and produce the Human Neuropeptide Y, a gene linked to human resilience, thus becoming a microscopic drug-producing factory. The project envisions the release of this strain into Tunis’s water system, challenging the notion of resilience as a political pretext, while questioning both the role of the individual in the absence of the state and the possible forms of alliance between the human and microbiological worlds
Public Works Studio
Public Works Studio is a Lebanon-based action research organization that uses a multidisciplinary approach to spatial justice. It addresses, mobilizes around, and actively responds to the chronic challenges facing just cities, inclusive urban governance, and equitable development in Lebanon.
Création 2025
Installation
Public Works documents the impact of the attacks and opens processes that question the urban justice to come. The exhibition reveals how the occupation aimed to erase not only structures but also places, their symbols, and their narratives. Three axes run through it: To Gather, bring together residents and stories in spaces of collective memory; To Return, map the razed villages and explore forms of resistance against scorched earth policies; To Repair, think of repair as a social and environmental act, beyond material reconstruction, through community initiatives and innovations accessible to all.
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige work in photography, installation, video, documentary, and fiction cinema. Their practice explores storytelling, the fabrication of images and representations, the construction of imaginaries, and the writing of history. Their acclaimed films include Memory Box, The Lebanese Rocket Society, Je Veux Voir, and A Perfect Day. Their work has been widely exhibited, and their artworks are part of private and public collections.
They received the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2017 for Unconformities. They are co-founders of Abbout Productions and are actively involved in Metropolis, Cinematheque Beirut. Born in Beirut, they live and work between Paris and Beirut.
The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia
Performance
This story unfolds in the north of Lebanon, at Nahr el Bared, in a refugee camp hastily set up to shelter Palestinian families fleeing the Nakba of 1948. In 2007, civil war broke out leading to the destruction of part of the camp. It was at that moment that the first traces appeared of Orthosia, an ancient Roman city, which vanished after being overwhelmed by a tsunami in 551 AD. Major discovery, but excavations would mean a ‘second displacement’ for the refugees. The filmmakers and artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige work between photography, installations, video and cinema to question the construction of imaginaries and the writing of forgotten stories. Through this performance, they draw us into a palimpsest of constant cycles of construction and destruction, uncovering possible narratives of the underground worlds. A dizzying performance, full of (dis)continuities, upheavals and regeneration, which plunges us into a past that feels particularly close to the present.
Chokri Ben Chikha
Chokri Ben Chikha is an actor, director, choreographer, performer, and writer. He is the artistic director of the international performance company Action Zoo Humain and teaches and researches at KASK in Ghent, where he received his PhD in Arts in 2013. In his work, Chokri questions the tension between ethics, identity, and neoliberalism—identifying these concepts as three of the main challenges of the 21st century.
With Dignity, Chokri Ben Chikha is invited to Dream City for the first time. The project has been supported and produced by the festival since 2023.
Dignity
Theatre
In this thought-provoking production, Ben Chikha dismantles dominant global narratives and asks uncomfortable questions. Drawing on the historical concept of the zoo humain, he opens up a space for dialogue between past and present, where individual stories and trans-generational legacies intersect. What are the manifestations of the zoo humain today? How has this colonial legacy shaped political, social, and cultural systems over the decades? By confronting this colonial legacy with the urgency of the present, Ben Chikha has created a powerful work that offers a prism through which to examine contemporary forms of exclusion and attacks on dignity. On stage, witnesses and audiences speak through word, image, and movement. Past and present collide, leading to a compelling blend of art, activism, and urgent conversation.
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Center for Human Rights and the Arts
Barringer House, Bard College
30 Campus Road
Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504 -
