Farah Azrak & Dima Mabsout – Call For Humbaba – for radio.
Thursday, 10 September⋅10:40 – 11:00pm
At 10:40pm we have a radio incantation summoning the lost guardian of the Cedar Forest courtesy of Syrian polyvocal artist, Farah Azrak, and Lebanese multidisciplinary artist, Dima Mabsout in ‘Call for Humbaba’…
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Humbaba is slain and the sacred forest felled to build the gates of Uruk—an early myth of extraction and ecological violence. Five millennia later, Lebanon’s cedars, once vast and revered across ancient texts, survive only in fragmented reserves and are increasingly endangered by accelerating changing climate. This broadcast transmits a call across time. Drawing from Tablet V, which vividly describes the forest’s ancient soundscape, the work reconstructs an acoustic cedar grove through layered samples, field recordings, and archival readings in Sumerian, evoking echoes of a landscape that no longer exists. By sending this signal into the airwaves, the piece asks whether sound can find and reawaken the guardian spirit, Humbaba, for it to return and guide us through the thicket of our times.