Laetitia El Hakim

Can you hear me now?! (2024) is a durational piece based on content shared on social media linked to the genocide happening in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

It aims to highlight the massive amount of information shared in a time of urgency and of massacre, while also amplifying the inactivity and lack of responsiveness that is accompanying such man-made atrocities.

The artist incessantly dubs and repeats “can you hear me now?" over the stories that she had shared between October 7, 2023, and March 7, 2024, the sentence almost transforming into a prayer. The voice and repetition convey the sense of burn-out the situation has pushed her into, exacerbating feelings of helplessness and despair that parallel the hope that accompanied each shared story, the hope that someone would listen, react, and that something would eventually change.

The work raises the question of political idleness and the efficiency of news-sharing, asking how a voice can be heard when the system is built to work against it.