A Prophet in the City

Lamia Gouda's geotagged audio-performance 'A Prophet in the City' is a sound monument to the history of Arab poets and visual artists in New York at the turn of the 20th century. Working against erasure, her voice invokes the sense of lost beauty, amplified by the ghostly impact of the sound maps.

Then a mason came forth and said, Speak to us of Houses. And he answered and said: Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone. Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for a grove or hill-top? Performed by Lamia Gouda, Music by Mostafa Sobhy. Commissioned by RASEEF, curated by Adam Kucharski for New York Arab Festival

Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain? Tell me, have you these in your houses? Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master? Project by Lamia Gouda Music by Mostafa Sobhy Commissioned for New York Arab Festival, by RASEEF Program. Raseef is curated by Adam Kucharski. NYAF is curated by Adham Hafez