Sound plays a crucial role in Bassem Saad’s work. In Havana Sin Drone, Saad presents a cacophony of sounds marked by indeterminate loss or by defiant excess, from the jagged peripheries of the “American century”. Sampling poetry, speech, and film, the listening session and DJ set will traverse disparate and clashing genres, from industrial techno and droney ambient to Iraqi radeh and neoperreo.

The title is a play on the term Havana syndrome, a mysterious medical condition reported by overseas U.S. diplomats and spies which includes vertigo and migraine often associated with an unexplained loud sound.