Disputed Utterance, 2019

Disputed Utterance uses the technique of palatography, that prints specific shapes onto the roof of one’s mouth by putting a mixture of charcoal and olive oil on a tongue and pronouncing a word. This technique is used by linguists, language preservationists and speech therapists who, by learning to read these charcoal forms, can see exactly how their subject is pronouncing words. Abu Hamdan uses this technique to tell 7 stories of what is legally known as cases of Disputed Utterance: a trial where someone’s culpability or innocence is hinged upon conflicted claims over a recorded word or phrase. Each of these brief moments of critical misunderstandings and misinterpretations are rendered as 14 mouth-sized palatographic dioramas that amplify how a moment of utterance becomes a crime scene.