The short version
- Hajra Waheed’s HUM works turn banned and suppressed protest songs into humming, sung with lips closed and played through many speakers.
- HUM III, about dockworkers and port communities, fills the ducal staircase of the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa until November 5, free.
- The first HUM, a 16-channel piece built on eight songs of resistance, plays in a former laundry in Roskilde until November 8, also free.
Hajra Waheed’s HUM works take protest songs and strip out the words. The songs are hummed and voiced “with lips sealed shut,” then played across many speakers so the sound fills a room. The title means “We” in Urdu. The first HUM, shown at Portikus in Frankfurt in 2020, used eight songs of resistance from South, Central and West Asia and Africa, among them poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, songs the gallery says are being taken up again by social movements today. HUM II (2023) turned to women in social movements. HUM III, after three and a half years of research, is about dockworkers and port communities.
Two parts of the trilogy are on now, and both close soon. HUM III: From Port to Port runs down the Scalone Dogale, the grand staircase of the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, until November 5. It is free and open daily from 10 am to 7 pm. The original HUM, a 16-channel installation, is in a former laundry at Sankt Hans in Roskilde as part of The sound of, a group show the Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde runs with Moderna Museet Malmö. That show is free until November 8, Thursday and Friday 2 to 5 pm, weekends 11 am to 5 pm.
Genoa’s page does not say how many speakers HUM III uses.
