Mr Mohamad Safa
I am a researcher, architect and composer based between London and Beirut. I was a fellow at Ashkal Alwan HWP program in 2018. A graduate from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University in 2019. Currently, I am a PhD candidate in International Law at Westminster University, investigating the acoustics of armed conflict and its intersection with collateral damage. I was part of multiple publications and music compilations. I had shown individual and collaborative artwork and performances at Goethe Institute, Arab Center for Architecture, Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, Sharjah Architecture Triennial among others. My work revolves around the critique of contemporary spatiality and its sonic ramifications within environments of armed conflict and political violence. By attending to architectural tectonics and its logistical organisation, I proceed to unearth the auditory makeup of physical space through a meticulous and multi-scalar study of spatial detail.
My thesis delineates the material conditions where the audibility of aerial strikes is comprised within the collateral effects of warfare. By elucidating the psychopathological by-products of extreme acoustics witnesses, I negotiate the legal potentials and failures to encompass it in the guiding principles of the International Humanitarian Law.