How do we hold on? 2022, sound composition, commissioned for the The Common Guild Roundtable Conversation in response to Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s exhibition May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth.

Field recordings from Marseille’s Noailles neighbourhood provide a fragmented sonic foundation for exploring connections between self, community, and historical migration routes.

The composition unfolds in a diary-like form, leaning into diasporic experience and highlighting the tension between distance and familiarity within the urban environment.

Elongated murmurs, fragments of sidewalk hustling, and live busking are stitched together and overlaid with spoken prose. Delivered in English, the text acknowledges the varied degrees of diasporic experience and displacement, forming a polyphonic gesture towards fractured individuals and communities.