Can a lovesong start a revolution?

"Lovesong Revolution" is a live lecture-performance that journeys through personal, anecdotal and political events — both recent and distant — that consider the role of (oppressed) sounds and voices in relation to forms of collectivity, dissidence and belonging. Conceived in the aftermath of the Lebanese and Iraqi October Revolutions of 2019 and the subsequent onset of the global pandemic, the work travels from unprecedented events where bodies and sounds erupted in public space, to moments of imposed silence and (violent) dispersal of bodies. Alternating between personal anecdotes, sound recordings and historical archive material, the piece weaves together various sonic fragments that trace some unlikely, and at times forgotten, alliances and active solidarities across vast geographic locations.

Urok Shirhan (NL/Iraq) is an artist, researcher and DJ working with performance, visual arts and critical theory. Her practice explores the politics and poetics of sound, image and speech in relation to power and affect. Informed by her family history of political struggle and migration. 

Her works combine documentary and sonic (auto) fiction to explore the role of sound––and the voice––in the context of collectivity, dissidence and belonging.

Urok holds an MA (Hons.) in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths University in London and a BFA from the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her works have been presented widely, and she has been in residence at Delfina Foundation (London); BAK, basis voor actuele kunst (Utrecht); NIAS/KNAW (Amsterdam); Jan van Eyck (Maastricht); Ashkal Alwan (Beirut) and most recently at Onassis AiR (Athens). In 2020 and 2021 Urok hosted the monthly live radio show ‘Sound Without Image’ on Radio Alhara,  broadcasting from Bethlehem, Palestine.