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“Curating the Nomadic: Film and Video at Ambika P3.”
No full textCURATING THE NOMADIC - Chantal Akerman at Ambika P3
Chantal Akerman was a Brussels-born and Paris based artist and filmmaker and one of the first to move from independent film-making to engage with the gallery space in the mid 1990s expanding her audience and addressing issues of installation and visual art. Akerman’s work was in pursuit of a critical investigation into geography and identity, space and time, borders, itineraries, identity and states of mind.
This presentation will examine the challenges of curating the first exhibition of Akerman’s body of installation work in the UK including a new commission as its centrepiece. How to curate Akerman’s work in a way that was accessible but also discursive and complex that challenged our accepted forms of exhibiting the moving image? How could the exhibition shed new light on the history of artist’s film and video which is still fragmented and undocumented? And how to curate an exhibition which would engage the audience in a nomadic and open trajectory yet retain the specificity of each film and video work
Lost history and the effect of the found image
No full text‘Lost History and the Effect of the Found Image’ refers to the role of the found image in revealing the hidden history of a nation. The paper explores the notions of archive, visual information, memory and history, and their relation to contemporary life today, providing outstanding counter-information in the form of a found image which changed the perception of feminism in post-revolutionary Iran.
‘Lost History and the Effect of the Found Image’ reflects on the Iranian history typically presented by the media during the annual celebration of the Iranian Revolution (1979). The images that appear at this time suggest that the veiled appearance of women in post-revolutionary Iran was a smooth and happy transition, and are arguably designed to keep this idea alive year after year for the new generations.
I in fact discovered this picture was misleading when I came across a photograph by a photojournalist during my research project (2008). The found black and white photo captured a large crowd demonstrating on the streets of Tehran shortly after the Iranian Revolution when the compulsory dress code for women was announced. This found image presented a new narrative in Iranian history. The significant demonstration saw about 100,000 men and women marching spontaneously through the streets to protest against the dress code, and continued for 6 days. It is not surprisingly considered one of the most important movements in the history of feminism in Iran.
‘Lost History and the Effect of the Found Image’ explores in-depth how an archive can be reflected on, investigated and disseminated through artistic research. It investigates the power of the found image in rewriting history while considering the context of artistic research within archival material
Poetic and politic : re-reading of Iranian history after 1979 Revolution
No full textThis paper reflects on Athena Farrokhzad’s recent publication ‘Vitsvit’ to produce a
new reading of Iranian history after the 1979 Revolution. Fatehrad would highlight
individual and domestic responses to the new socio-political conditions to create a
deeper understanding of the registered ‘history’, whilst emphasising the transgeographical
quality of ‘history’ contrary to the more typical linear and regional
belief.
The notions of revolution, war and migration are perceived differently by the different generations, and this is reflected in their collective stories. Events like these naturally mean different things to different people, as family members are forced to adjust to new conditions and adapt to new people in the new landscape of migration
Photography, desire and resistance in the lives of women, following the 1979 revolution in Iran
Get PDFIn my last four years of PhD by practice at the Royal College of Art, I have conducted extensive research on archival photography including materials held at the Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt am Main; the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (IICHS) , Tehran; and the International Institute of Social History (IISH), Amsterdam. My project started with the fortuitous encounter with a photograph taken by Iranian photographer Hengameh Golestan on the morning of March 8, 1979. The photograph shows women marching in the streets of Teheran in protest against the introduction of the compulsory Islamic dress code. In 1936 Reza Shah had decreed a ban on the headscarf as part oh his westernising project. Over forty years later following the 1979 Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini reversed this decision by ordering that women should now cover their hair. This ‘found image’ presented me with a glimpse into the occulted history of my own country and the opportunity to advance towards a deeper learning and understanding of the event of March 8, 1979 a significant date in the history of feminism in Iran. In what follows I revisit the history of Iran since the 1979 revolution with a particular inflexion on the role women played in that history. However, as my project develops , I gradually move away from the socio-historical facts to investigate the legacy of the revolution on the representations of women in photography, film and literature as well as the creation of an imaginary space of self representation. To this end my writing moves constantly between the documentary, the analytical and the personal. In parallel I have made photographs and video works which are explorations of the veil as object of fascination and desire as well as symbol of repression
Boudoir : covered women in Iranian society (1979- present)
Get PDFTaking Çagla Hadimioglu’s concept of the ‘tent’ (‘chadir’ in Turkish), the word that the Persian ‘chador’ is derived from, this paper refers to the ‘mobile home’ around a woman’s body that facilitates her movement around the city and dealings with men. It explores a similar notion to the ‘boudoir’ in French, which Gen Doy notes is a woman’s own space that is safe and embracing and that keeps her away and protected from others. Boudoir: the covered women in Iranian society (1979- present) describes the Islamic conceptualisation of space that is essentially moral and divided into two categories: ‘mahrem’ and ‘namahrem’. It also refers to Henri Lefebvre’s ‘moment of the production of space’ to describe a similar creation of space. Following this line of thinking, this paper concludes that the chador (veil) can be said to be a space that is produced, a space that is lived in by the woman wearing it; at the same time, while the woman is moving around in this private territory and interacting with others, her space is also being perceived and interpreted by others.
On the other hand, Boudoir: the covered women in Iranian society (1979- present) refers to the unbuilt house that Adolf Loos designed in 1928 for Josephine Baker that actuates an unusual system of looking that evokes aspects of this particular gaze upon the covered woman in Iranian society. The water and glass in Loos’ house, just like the veil, function to abstract the view from direct and sustained looking. In Iranian society, women cannot hide from, nor can they return a gaze, which is paradoxically omnipresent and unseen, invisible as in Josephine Baker's hous
Between the Departure and Arrival
No full text‘Between the Departure and Arrival’ is a photographic-poetic meditation on the life of
women in Iran, particularly looking at the acts of covering, uncovering and recovering in the
country’s feminist history. At the heart of the essay lies the creation of an imaginary space of
self-representation that responds, in poetic photographs and writings, to the legacy of the
Iranian Revolution (1979) on the representation of women in photography, literature and film.
The images and texts move adeptly between the documentary, analytical and personal to
create an accessible and theoretically nuanced visual narrative that rewires history and scholarly
possibility.
Accompanying the written content of historical facts and fictions are Fatehrad’s own
photographs, as well as selected works from artists such as Shirin Neshat, Gaëtan Gatian de
Clérambault and Alison Watt.
‘Between the Departure and Arrival’ is the result of interdisciplinary research that overlaps
political science, sociology, representation, photography, moving image and architecture.
The project employs various methodologies including fieldwork, interviews, archival research,
creation and curation, to bring together new insights into the history of feminism in Iran.
The notions of archive, visual information, memory and history, and their relation to life today
are reflected on at ‘Between the Departure and Arrival’ paper, and providing outstanding
counter-information that reveals the perception of feminism in post-revolutionary Iran
Caring for the more-than-human: collaborative networks, archival filmmaking and migrant communities
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