The rise of archiving and electronic music production is reshaping cultural and protest movements from the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region as it faces cultural ruptures through political destruction. Music practices serve as powerful interventions for preserving cultural memory, communicating resistance, celebrating heritage, empowering community voices, healing, and reimaging futures.

Sounds of Resistance is an event series curated by Attia Shiraz in which music archivists and DJs take part in communal listening sessions to share cultural memories through sound and visual projections of their chosen music and contexts of music resistance.

The events respond to The Showroom’s current exhibition inspired by punk – Slits Are Girls by Ângela Ferreira and Mandy El-Sayegh’s mural commission – This is a Sign: Notes on Assembly, which is centred on modes of social justice and resistance.

Session # 1 The Palestinian Sound Archive

This session will explore archival practice as a decolonial methodology and act of resistance, through sharing archival sounds and images that preserve and document Palestinian heritage, culture, celebration, dance and resistance.

The Palestinian Sound Archive is determined to preserve Palestinian audio history through different media: by re-releasing music/sound recordings (in physical and digital formats), through club nights and radio sets, through audio-visual installations, live performances and storytelling sessions; situating the music in its cultural, social and political contexts.

As well as safeguarding sound, the histories and experiences of the musicians who made them are also shared through live performance. Stories of musical production and distribution in the face of displacement, censorship, exile, persecution, arrests and the First and Second Intifadas, all form part of the broader Palestinian story.

The Palestinian Sound Archive was founded by Mo’min Swaitat in 2019 and is comprised of and supported by freelance visual and sound artists, musicians, DJs, curators, organisers and researchers, without whom the work would not be possible.