Tigris Sound Lab on Dukan Lake

Report Entries (15 - 29 June 2022)

During the project, Sherko sailed to the middle of Dukan lake and the Dokan river, he filmed and recorded some sound samples, and also listened to the pipe attached to the raft that was creating sound from the winds that interact with the pipes. But it was difficult to get underwater sound because of the traffic of the small boats used by the tourists. Therefore, He needs to change our location from Dokan to somewhere else in the North that is less busy. At the same time, Sherko recorded a song that was sung by a young man Mohamad Dukani who is from Dukan.

About Tigris Sound Lab on Duran Lake

Iraqi artist Sherko Abbas is creating a mobile weather station raft, Tigris River Sound Lab on which he will install objects and instruments to record sounds made by the weather such as water, wind and rainfall.  Alongside the collecting of sounds, Abbas will also gather stories, songs and poetry from people who inhabit both sides of the river, starting in Dukan Lake near the Iraqi-Kurdish border in the north and ending in the marshes in the south of Iraq in the Persian Gulf in the south.   His focus is on fictional stories and myths about the water that are orally transmitted from one generation to another,  but are not documented.

The ancient cities of the Sumerian Marshes gave birth to the Mesopotamian Civilization where agriculture first developed and writing was invented around 3500 BC.  Over recent decades, the delicate ecosystem of the Marshes has been severely threatened through rising temperatures, neglect and conflict, with many inhabitants forced to resettle due to Saddam Hussein’s regime redirecting the river and drying out the marshes.

Sherko Abbas

Sherko Abbas is a Kurdish-Iraqi artist. He was born in Iran in 1978, where his family lived as refugees, and returned to Iraq when he was two years old. He studied Fine Art in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq and graduated with a Master in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, the University of London in 2015. He works within various media including video, performance, text, sculpture and sound. His practice is dedicated to collective memory, sonic and visual memory, as well as the geopolitical situation of contemporary Iraq. Through his work, he observes how war has been absorbed into local culture in Iraq through music, film, cartoons and children’s toys.

Commissioned by Ruya Foundation for World Weather Network; part of the weather station in Tigris River & Mesopotamian Marshes, Iraq - find out more here.