Leenah

Leenah is a Libyan archivist, radio producer, and open-source investigator. Her research lies at the intersection of subversive radio histories, surveillance, and Islamic dream theory. Leenah’s doctoral project centers on the sonic cultures of the Algerian anti-colonial struggle; here, she traces the routes of smuggled sound through the radio and vinyl record. Her work involves listening for and locating the emergent grammars and vernaculars of resistance that remained largely illegible and opaque to colonial forces. Leenah looks at how the collective’s performance of listening transformed the vinyl’s etched recordings and the radio’s ephemeral frequencies into an anti-surveillant vernacular— or sonic contraband. As an archivist, Leenah’s work shifts away from producing, yet another, record of Arab death; instead this undertaking is about creating an archive of Arab vitality.