As part of the publication Continuous City: Mapping, Arab London artist and writer Sophia Al-Maria produced a new sound work for Edgware Road.
Bright Echo presents the listener with a sonic landscape composed of the internal monologues and secrets of the street.
You can download it from here or on shubbak.co.uk.
To mark the launch of Bright Echo, Sophia Al-Maria responded to Alia Farid’s A Stage for Any Revolution by organising Acts of Memory – Tyburnia, a performance of Monica Ross’ original piece Anniversary – an act of memory, which is a collective, multilingual recitation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Acts of Memory – Tyburnia was performed at 3.30pm on 18th July 2015 at Nutford Place.
A collaboration between Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar and the Edgware Road Project at the Serpentine Galleries, Continuous City: Mapping Arab London attempted to map London through its historical and contemporary Arab communities. Continuous City featured work by Sophia Al Maria, Oraib Toukan,Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Inas Halabi, Maan Abu Taleb, Michael Vazquez and Sheyma BuAli among others. The publication was edited by Amal Khalaf and Deena Chalabi. The publication was available for download on iTunes in 2016.
Sophia Al-Maria is a London-based writer. In 2012, her first book, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, received high praise in the United States, from The New York Times to Elle Magazine and was later published in Arabic as Between the Earth and the Sky. In January 2015, Al-Maria was selected for the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriting Lab, where she workshopped her Egyptian revenge thriller, Beretta. Her first solo show, Virgin with a Memory at Manchester’s Cornerhouse, drew on the subject matter of the film and the un-making of it.
Bright Echo was commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries, the British Council and Shubbak.
