As an Iranian couple in their honeymoon one with blood red hair the other without any, looking for an art center in an industrial zone we must have appeared bizarre to the locals of Eastern Beirut at Jisr-el-Wati next to Beirut River.
October 2010
Walid Sadek and Literary Power of Absence
Right to Fashion, Right to Contemporaneity
1.
I am standing in front of the movie theatre. From the façade, you cannot tell it has been closed for twenty years. I hold my hands next to my face and look inside. What I see does not quench curiosity, it increases it. A sumptuous winding staircase rises to the second floor. Some dusty closed box-office wickets. The rest in darkness. Delicate golden door frames. Everything is a la mode. A la mode de quand?
Silence Is The Blood Whose Flesh Is Singing
Statement for Homa Bazrafshan’s exhibition at Shirin Gallery, titled ‘I Am a Vineyard Myself’.
Fires in Forests
Statement for Melodie Hosseinzadeh’s exhibition titled ‘Storks Won’t Come Back Again’ at Azad Art Gallery, 25-30 Sept. 2009.
Fashion Labyrinth
Statement for Hedieh Ahmadi’s photo installation titled ‘Fashion Network’ at Mohsen Gallery, 19-24 Feb. 2010.
Money on Wall
Asareh Akasheh
Statement for Asareh Akasheh’s painting exhibition at Mohsen Gallery, 23-28 July 2010.
Not Complying with the Fortunate’s Code of Conduct
Statement for Alireza Fani‘s works at Khak Gallery, published in Levantine Review, 31 Aug. 2010
The Dada Disgust: A Medical Profile*
Published in Daily Star, Lebanon, 29 Aug. 2009, under the title ‘Physical Injury Within the Body Politic‘
How Moghul Was Rembrandt?
(A Critique On A Global Laboratory of Infinite Multiplicities)*
Published in Third Text, 1475-5297, Volume 24, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 501 – 504
(The following is just part of the printed article.)
Do We Need Culture?
I confess, I have written the following with the intention of being admired for my wit. Showing some respect in return for its articulation in a format most prone to underestimation is the price to be paid for a clear philosophical text!
Guiding Design Patterns in Qajarid Architecture and Decoration
IQSA 2009 Conference: Architecture in Qajar Persia
IQSA and Institut für Iranistik
Vienna, Austria, 4-5 June
Abstract
The paper provides proof for Gulru Nacipoglu’s hypotheses and findings in her book, The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995). It takes up its claim that architectural plans and decorations in Iran (at least from the Safavid period onwards) followed preconceived design patterns. While Necipoglu pursues this argument on the basis of the analysis of architectural scrolls, the article approaches the question from the other side, showing how systematics of such scrolls can be found in actual buildings of the time. The cases studied are from the second half of the nineteenth century in Shiraz and Isfahan.
Metaphysics of Absence: Martyr’s Museums in Iran
University of London
Goldsmiths College
Department of Visual Cultures
BA Course Museums and Galleries: Framing Art
2 Dec 2008
For my talk today, I have chosen to present a ‘different’ museum to you. Yet, I invite you, as we progress, to go beyond the sublimity of the terror it provokes or the extreme banality of its making and to look at the intended function for which it was built. It was meant to convey to you, as well as to the native viewers, what fails to reach you through other channels. You might recognize the mode of its representation as a desperate attempt to balk at representation per se.
Politics of Opening: Translation as Authorship
(Urbanism and Multi-Layered Translation)
Published in: Pages Magazine, No. 7, The Hage, The Netherlands, March 2009, pp. 72-85.
‘… Let us let be or let us allow to be seen what does without the open embouchure.’
—Jacques Derrida, Truth in Painting
1.
A European friend once wrote to me, ‘I wish your country will open up one day.’ What a strange word, I thought: ‘Open up!’ Is it not what the policeman shouts at the door? Open up to what or who? To modernization? To global market? To capitalism? To penetration? Or less aggressively, to adaptation? Or ultimately to translation? Or is it just opening up a space, some sort of a void?
What are the dangers of opening up? What are the politics of opening up or of translation as such?
Public Spaces and the Politics of State Experience in Iranian Cities
International Conference: The Contemporary Oriental City from a Linguistic, Literary and Cultural Perspective
Dept. of Interdisciplinary Eurasiatic Research of the Institute of Oriental Philology Jagiellonian University
Krakow, Poland
21 May 2009
1. Oriental City: A Post-Colonial Approach
A conference on Oriental city in an occidental city is the inescapable context of the paper I shall be presenting to you. Since it reads my text, I might be allowed to read the context. So I start with the term ‘oriental’.
Time for Your Pill
In this performance, female students of Honar University offered free traditional food to male customers under one condition: they should listen to feminist texts read aloud to them.
Dada Matinée
Dada Matinée was a group performance
with my students at Laleh Park, Tehran. Together with Hadi Nasiri, we succeeded in convincing Honar University to incorporate performance into their curriculum for one semester.
The event, a final term project, focused on performative writing and the ways in which it can be performed. Each student or group of students developed their own idea of composing and interacting with texts in a performative manner.
Art Intervention at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Mint
In the poem, a scene is described in which a woman is holding a glass of destillated mint in her hands. The bottle in the installation also contains destillated mint.