Listening Group

The second of three nights curated by writer, researcher, and radio host Nihal El Aasar in response to Nassiri’s new commission.

Chisenhale Gallery presents the second event in a three-part live programme curated by writer, researcher, and DJ Nihal El Aasar, developed in conjunction with Arash Nassiri’s exhibition A Bug’s Life. Across sound, conversation, and performance, the series explores listening as a shared practice, asking how sound operates not as an object but as environment, document, and method across geographies, languages, and temporalities.

For this second event, El Aasar and artist and filmmaker Juline Hadaya host an intimate evening of collective reading, listening, and discussion. Moving from the atmospheres of El Aasar’s opening live performance toward sound as a document, the session focuses on how audio recordings hold and transit memory.

The evening brings together field recordings, film soundtracks, and documentary audio from across Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Listening together to street recordings, sound collages, and fragments drawn from film and archival material, participants are invited to treat listening as a form of collective reading – attending closely to tone, silence, texture, and what exceeds official narratives. El Aasar and Hadaya will enquire into the surplus that escapes a documentary frame and explore the potential for memory to re-emerge through shared listening.

Following El Aasar’s opening performance, this event forms the second chapter in the series, which concludes with a final evening of readings and performances by El Aasar, Sara El Adl, Zein Majali, Bint Mbareh, Alex Quicho and Abbas Zahedi.

Biographies

Nihal El Aasar is an Egyptian independent writer, researcher, political analyst, radio host and DJ. She has written about politics, political economy, culture, literature and music in several publications including Verso, Jacobin, Parapraxis, Art Review, Mundial, The Wire, Protean, Novara Media, Africa is a Country, GQ and others, as well as authoring a book chapter about Egyptian political economy and consulting on related issues. She has also been interviewed about her writing and analysis on several platforms. Since 2022, she has been a regular host at NTS radio based in London, where she hosts her monthly show Nile to Bank, highlighting alternative and left-field music from the Arab region as well as hosting music practitioners from the region to highlight the natural overlap and crossovers of musical influences in the Middle East.

Juline Hadaya is a London-based artist and filmmaker, of Syrian origin, whose interdisciplinary practice spans sound, image, and sculpture. Her work engages with memory regimes, politics of aesthetics and speculative futures within both digital and physical geographies of violence. She recently completed her masters in Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London and released her debut feature length essay-film Shapeshifting التماهي.

Access

This event will be taking place at Chisenhale Gallery. Chisenhale Gallery has flat access with an all-genders, fully accessible toilet. This event will be seated. Earplugs and ear guards are available for visitors to use. This event will be documented for marketing and archival purposes.

We are committed to ensuring our events are accessible for all. Please contact mail@chisenhale.org.uk to discuss your access needs. We will endeavour to meet all requests where possible. Please be advised that requests should be made two weeks in advance of the event.

Image: Arash Nassiri, A Bug’s Life, 2026. Still. Co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London; Fluentum, Berlin; and Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris. Produced by Chisenhale Gallery. Courtesy of the artist.