Rumi’s ‘The Elephant in the Dark’

or

‘Disagreeing over the Description and Shape of the Elephant’

An elephant was in a darkened hall –

            Hindus had brought it as a spectacle.

Into that darkness everybody passed

            to have a look at it, so many people.

Since seeing with the eye was not permitted,

            they felt it in the darkness with their hands.

The hand of one fell on the elephant’s trunk.

            This someone said, ‘This structure’s like a drainpipe’.

The hand of one reached to the creature’s ear –

            It seemed to him as though it were a fan.

When one hand felt its leg the person said,

            ‘To me the elephant’s shape is like a pillar!’

And one who put his hand upon its back

            remarked, ‘This elephant’s just like a sofa!’

Just as each one had touched whatever part,

            so people formed their view from what they’d heard.

Their statements differed as their point of view –

            one man would call it ‘chalk’, another ‘cheese’.

If each had held a candle in his hand,

            the disputes would have vanished from their speech.

The sensual eye is like the hand, that’s all –

            a hand can’t grasp an elephant entirely.

The Ocean’s eye is one thing, spray’s another.

            Give up the spray! Look with the Ocean’s eye.

Spray leaping from the Ocean day and night,

            you see the spray not Ocean – how surprising!

Translated by Alan Williams from the third book of Rumi’s Masnavi, ed. R.A. Nicholson III.1259-1271, (ed. M. Este‘lami III. 1260-1272).

Alan Williams is Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester, England, and the author of Rumi Spiritual Verses: The First Book of the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, London and New York: Penguin Classics, 2006 and an audiobook, The Spiritual Verses, read by Anton Lesser, translated and abridged by Alan Williams, London: Naxos, 2007.

Magical Gallows Humour in Tehran

Expectations have been enormous for the follow-up to Persepolis. Would it be a new masterwork full of rebellion and subversion? Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud have instead taken a completely different trajectory with their new film "Chicken with plums." The result is a wonderful, surreal melodrama.

Scene from Marjane Satrapi's ''Chicken with Plums''

By Susan Vahabzadeh, Qantara.de

One thing has to be made clear from the start – food is a big deal for your average Persian. If you can't shake someone out of a gloomy mood with their favourite dish, it can only mean that they are desperately unhappy. Nasser Ali Khan (Mathieu Amalric), the mournful hero of the new film by Marjane Satrapi, the creator of "Persepolis" (once again in collaboration with Vincent Paronnaud), sees no meaning in life after the loss of his violin.

At first, he attempts to find a comparable instrument as a replacement, but when he does not succeed in his quest, his reaction appears quite drastic. He decides to die. That is the opening premise of "Chicken with Plums," and the rest of the film is an exploration of misfortune and melancholy, as well as a fabulous explanation of why some people simply have had enough of life.

Angels of death and a good dose of black humour

"Chicken with Plums" takes us on a journey to Tehran during the era of the Shah. The film actually has the look and feel of the cinema of that time. It is as if Douglas Sirk filmed a melodrama in Persian, yet, with a surreal touch and featuring mysterious antique dealers, angels of death, and a good dose of black humour.

Missing

Agahi (‘Missing’), a poem by Shafi’i Kadkani
Translated from Persian by Alan Williams

A child called Happiness has recently gone missing 

bright sparkling eyes

with flowing tresses and high hopes.

If anyone catches sight of her 

inform us 

this is our address:

Between the Persian Gulf 

and the Caspian Sea

Iran Onscreen: Truth through the Prism

‘Sometimes self-censorship or social censorship is worse than actual censorship, so when I make a film I don't think about what is allowed and not allowed.’ 

– Jafar Panahi

by Dan Geist in Berlin, Tehran Bureau

Can a movie tell a story set in contemporary Iran without being seen as a "portrait of Iranian society"?

In re A Separation's Oscar dreams, should the Academy Awards be considered an arm of the U.S. State Department?

If cinema is dead, why do Iranian censors continue to pay it so much damned attention?

A few of the questions that linger from the conference "Cinema in Iran: Circulation, Censorship, and Cultural Production," held this past week in Berlin under the aegis of the Annenberg School for Communication's Iran Media Program. The two-day event drew scholars -- many of Iranian birth or heritage, many young and in midpursuit of doctorates -- based around the United States and Europe, as well as Israel, India, Australia, and Brazil.

By the very nature of its national focus, such a conference promotes readings of an ethnographic bent, but several presentations made clear the risks in taking individual films primarily as social portraiture, as Iranian movies often appear to be received in the West -- and, among films aimed at the foreign festival and arthouse market, often seem intended for such reception. Norma Claire Moruzzi of the University of Illinois at Chicago warned of what she called the "romanticization of Iran as a dystopia," routine in such internationally intended pictures. An apt caveat, though time pressures thwarted an exploration of the particular strokes employed in that sort of portraiture -- an important consideration, as regular festival attendance could similarly convince a credulous film lover that London is the lake of fire and Paris, perdition.

What of films that focus on a very specific aspect of the society in which they are set? Baharak Darougari of the University of Strasbourg looked at the different narrative strategies employed by three films -- Leila, directed by Dariush Mehrjui; Shokaran, directed by Behruz Afkhami; and Chaharshanbe-soori, directed by Asghar Farhadi -- to problematize the conventional treatment of polygamy. But whether arthouse or mainstream, like the films to which this trio stand less or more in opposition, can films consciously concerned with a sharply defined social problem do much to honestly inform the viewer about a culture when their topical program tends to flatten the social context?

One Born

Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,
‘a mighty fortress is our God’,
But Christmas comes too often.
There’s not a single year forgotten
but that I think ‘Please fortify
my brain
with this campaign’.

I now announce
(in Christian spirit)
that Christmas comes too frequently,
theologically too plural!
I once was a duophysite
– two years between each one might well be fine –
but for a Trinitarian, three years is more divine.

Design the Church’s calendar
(society’s as well),
then once in three years
hit the pages with the news that Christ is born,
and fit to govern for a thousand more!
On Christly love and ethics,
the people all agree.

Our campaign slogan’s ‘One in Three!’ not ‘Three in One’.
Invent a reason,
colleagues, friends and retailers,
and manufacturers?
But no, it will not work.
For ‘Christmas is a yearly feast. We need it now. Beginning early.
In the autumn. Rejoice, then, now and later.’

But didn’t Meister Eckhart say
once, ‘Christ is born each minute
in my soul’?
So constant Christmases are more the thing
The laughter, giggles, whispering
And mysteries stored
Divinely in the word.

© Alan Williams 2011

Andrei Rublev, Trinity, 1411 or 1425-27, Tempera, 142 cm × 114 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Image courtesy Wikipedia 

Possibilities, Paradoxes, and Our Moment of Painting

by Houman Harouni, Tehran Bureau

It's a good time for painting in Iran. In my visits, I make sure to go to the galleries in Tehran as often as I can. And I prefer to visit the ones that exhibit young artists most often, the galleries that are not geared for sales, but for the advancement of lesser-known painters. A great deal of energy is channeled into painting these days.

There are ways of measuring the impact of these artistic efforts. Some will measure them by their originality (whose measuring rod is almost exclusively not local), some by their relevance. And of course they will also be measured by the art market: how many paintings make it to international auctions, how much certain painters sell, at what prices, who is doing the buying. I am, however, more interested in what these channeled energies are expressing. For now, at least, I'm interested in what they reflect.

If there are more paintings being produced, it is partly because more paintings are being bought. It's a function of the growing stability of a wealthy class in North Tehran, willing to invest in the arts, and painting is the most investible art form. To that end, the inexplicably active art market in neighboring Dubai has also helped. There is also the relative reopening of Iran's actual and virtual borders: more artists can travel to the West, and, since the Internet, we do not have to wait for smuggled, expensive art books and catalogues to see the new trends. There are plenty of styles out there waiting to be applied to Iranian subjects, and there are plenty of painters willing to apply them.

Art Embargo: IRANIAN ART & THE SANCTIONS

With a range of global sanctions against Iran, how does one buy Iranian art?

by Daniel Grant, Artnet

In March 2011, the Leila Heller Gallery in New York City held an exhibition of 38-year-old artist Shirin Fakhim’s provocative found-object sculptures of Tehran streetwalkers, her first solo show in Manhattan. A number of works were sold, for around $10,000 apiece.

But Fakhim lives in Iran, which has been targeted with a range of economic sanctions by the U.S. and other countries around the world. Most of the Iranian artists Leila Heller represents live and work outside of Iran, but not Fakhim, who resides in Tehran. Getting her artwork out of Iran and paying the artist for sales of her work in New York can be tricky.

According to regulations first established by the U.S. Department of the Treasury following Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, “goods and services of Iranian origin may not be imported into the United States, either directly or through third countries.” A ban on “any brokering function from the United States or by U.S. persons, wherever located” is also in place. Banks in the U.S. cannot transfer money to Iranian banks.

So how is an art gallery devoted to showing contemporary Iranian art supposed to operate?

Iranian film industry thrives amid continuing censorship

Pirated versions of Iranian films sold on the streets of Tehran. Photographer: kamshots

By Sakina Shakil, The International

Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s film industry has been thriving amid the turbulent political scene and in spite of strict censorship laws. The relationship between politics and film has been especially pronounced when Iran’s controversial presidential elections coincided with a burgeoning international recognition of the country’s film industry. Many Iranian films have competed in international film festivals and several were awarded prestigious prizes. Mr. Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly won numerous awards including Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival award and the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009. Ms. Shirin Neshat won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival for Women Without Men.

Moreover, many of the latest Iranian films—many made by women—discuss women’s roles in Iran and how they have been developing in a country where politics, religion, and culture are deeply intertwined. Indeed, creativity often feeds off censorship. As Ms. Negar Mottahedeh, an associate professor of Literature and Women’s Studies at Duke University and author of Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema, told CNN, "film cultures have flourished oftentimes when they have been under restrictions."

Nostalgia for the Past I Have Never Had

This article was originally written in Persian and published on Mardomak website. Read the original article in Persian here.

by Gelare Khoshgozaran

The YouTube video of Shirin Neshat’s TED Talk has by now been shared numerous times by a large number of Iranian Facebook users.

Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat explores the paradox of being an artist in exile: a voice for her people, but unable to go home. In her work, she explores Iran pre- and post-Islamic Revolution, tracing political and societal change through powerful images of women.

Shortly after the video was released on Youtube, a similar video of a TEDx Talk by another Iranian woman artist, Morehshin Allahyari, became available. The latter, though obviously not getting anywhere near as many hits as Neshat’s, was soon shared by users on social media websites and became very popular amongst the similar Facebook users or TED Talks fans.

Art activist Morehshin Allahyari teams artists from the US and Iran in a creative exchange designed to build bridges between the countries. She urges us to take action and think about how we can use our own talents to extend what collaboration can look like.

Iran via Video Current

Thomas Erben Gallery presents Iran via Video Current, A project of OtherIS – a curatorial initiative conceived to address cultural production and exchange with countries under international sanctions, curated by Amirali Ghasemi (Tehran) and Sandra Skurvida (New York)

Week-long screening of current video art from and in relation to Iran, until17 December 2011

The main question in transnational art production is who represents whom and for whom? This project engages the problem of representation via an ongoing exchange among participants in Iran and elsewhere, as conveyed in the two distinct, yet co-related video programs focused on Iran — one by Tehran-based artist and curator Amirali Ghasemi and another by New York-based curator and scholar Sandra Skurvida. Both curators started their research from their respective locales, yet both programs include artists who live in Iran and elsewhere around the world.

In her program entitled 1979/1357-, Skurvida revisits the sightlines of the most prominent, controversial Western observer of the Iranian Revolution, Michel Foucault. Both his advocacy and the ensuing critique of it reverberate in the appraisals of the recent and current events. The year denoted equally as “1979” and “1357” signifies the difference in time borne out of the societal spaces that are not the same. This negotiation unfolds in the works by Abbas Akhavan, Morehshin Allahyari, Amir Bastan, Bahar Behbahani, Kaya Behkalam & Azin Feizabadi, Barbad Golshiri, Arash Fayez, Mirak Jamal, Farhad Kalantary, Sohrab Kashani, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Amitis Motevalli, Nosrat Nosratian, Anahita Razmi, Jinoos Taghizadeh, Negar Tahsili, and Katayoun Vaziri.

Flying Fingers

 There are very good reasons why Mohammad Reza Mortazavi is known as the drummer with the "fastest hands in the world"; listening to him perform, one gets the impression that one is listening to an ensemble of drummers playing a variety of instruments. Marian Brehmer reports

 Iranian Tombak Virtuoso Mohammad Reza Mortazavi

By Marian Brehmer, Qantara.de

It is not exactly the most likely of settings for an Iranian solo drummer. The trendy "Lido" club in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin is the type of venue that is more usually frequented by indie or electro bands. With no seats for the audience, it is standing room only.

On the stage are four drums – two Iranian frame drums, or dafs, and two tombak hand drums – silently awaiting the animating touch that will give them life. The daf is the rhythmic heart of traditional Sufi music and is also used to accompany prayer and chanting in many Muslim countries, while the goblet-shaped tombak is the most important percussion instrument in traditional Persian music.

There is tension in the air; the concert is late in starting. The "Lido" is packed, the atmosphere stuffy, and the sense of expectation almost palpable. It is amazing how many young people have come along. This is a very different gathering from the usual Iranian exiles that so often make up the lion's share of listeners at a concert of Persian music.

A ripple of applause suddenly greets the appearance on stage of a slim, almost inconspicuous man. When he says a few words into the microphone, Mohammad Reza Mortazavi seems shy, perhaps even too shy for the stage. Once he has a drum in his hand, however, a transformation takes place and he begins to work his magic, mesmerising his audience. 

Clandestine Trade

By Melik Kaylan, WSJ

Two utterly disparate artworks now on view in Manhattan—a centuries-old masterpiece and a modernist grotesque of immense price—are linked by a history that has remained largely in the shadows. At the Metropolitan Museum's newly reopened Islamic galleries you can see the first, the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, or parts of it at least. A gloriously illuminated manuscript from the 16th century, generally considered one of Muslim civilization's foremost artistic expressions, it came to be known as the "Houghton" Shahnama. Why it is no longer called that, why the Met has some 78 of the initial 258 pictorial folios, and how and why the remainder of the original volume went back to Iran in a clandestine swap for the second artwork are all part of the story.

You can see that second work, simply known as "Woman III," at the Museum of Modern Art until Jan. 9 as part of "de Kooning: A Retrospective." Willem de Kooning's prominent place in modernist art needs no expounding here. Suffice to say the painting last changed hands, into the possession of hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, in 2006 for $137.5 million. Mr. Cohen purchased "Woman III" from entertainment magnate David Geffen, who had acquired it from the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1994 via a Swiss dealer. "Woman III" originally went to Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art in the 1970s during the last shah's time and had remained there since.

Up until 1994, the Shahnama's owner was Arthur Houghton Jr. of the Corning Glass Houghtons. He gave Harvard its Houghton Library and presided for many years as chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Philharmonic. Four years after Houghton's death in 1990, "Woman III" was exchanged for what remained intact of the Shahnama (118 paintings with 500 pages of calligraphy plus exquisite binding). That much is on the public record. And when the intricate deal was done and "Woman III" sold off, some $9.5 million went to the Houghton family trust. Virtually unknown, however, is the role of Arthur Houghton III in the stealthy deal—one that required steely nerves, considering his job at the time. A longtime foreign-service officer, he worked in an office of the White House, advising on international strategies in the war on drugs while Iran was still under an official U.S. embargo dating from the 1979-81 hostage crisis. Then, as now, relations between the countries were icy. The younger Mr. Houghton remembers the mood as "extreme hostility bordering on paranoia."

Poet, Activist Remembers Life in Iran Pre-Revolution

"At that time, nobody paid attention to what girls did when they got together." 

Q&A | by Rasheed Abou-Alsamh in Brasília

Saghi Ghahraman is an Iranian lesbian poet and gay rights activist who lives in Toronto. Born in 1957 in the holy city of Mashhad, she studied classic and contemporary Persian literature at Azarabadegan University in Tabriz. She left Iran in 1982 after attacks on the women's organization she worked at, and was a refugee in Turkey until 1987 when she emigrated to Canada.

She now works with PEN Canada's Exiled Writer program, and is on the editorial board of the literary magazine Descan. She has published three collections of poetry and one collection of short stories. She also serves on the board of the Iranian Queer Organization.

Ghahraman recently spoke about what life was like for her growing up as a lesbian during the Shah's regime and just after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

***

Lesbians in Iran do not get much attention internationally. Is this because the Iranian authorities pay less attention to them than to gay men? Are some of them also arrested and charged with being homosexual?

The gay movement in Iran started right before the Revolution, and then picked up again around 1990, with gay men leading the fight without any lesbian involvement for a very long time. Lesbians appeared very slowly and reluctantly around 2005 or 2006, and without much fuss or pretense in making their presence felt as part of a social movement. So the attention is rightly given to gay men.

Iranian lesbians were heavily oppressed by the Iranian women's movement and its concerns. Lesbians were told to be quiet so as to prevent any labeling of the movement by the regime. They argued that all activities in the women's movement should deal only with Muslim women's requirements, lest the movement [be] attacked by the regime with allegations of Westernization of the movement.

Parergon

Babak Golkar explores shifting meanings through picture frames

  Blue Mosque, 2011, by Babak Golkar, who uses echoes of form in picture frames to explore fluidity in meaning. Courtesy the artist / Third Line

by Christopher Lord , The National

When we look at a painting, the ornate frame around it could almost disappear into the wall. It is separate from or subordinate to what we want to see.

But if we then concentrate on the wall around the painting, the frame becomes, in our eyes, part of the artwork. The question arises: what is the frame there for at all?

Conundrums like this are prime fodder for the conceptual kiln that fires Babak Golkar's art. To these questions, the Vancouver-based Iranian artist brings architectural sense and a head for complicated lines of inquiry. Parergon, Golkar's latest exhibition at The Third Line in Dubai, satisfies all these sides of his practice.

Golkar has produced a solo show that focuses entirely on the frame itself. He's created eight hollow wooden frames, painted in a single bold colour using acrylic. The ornate ridges on the surface have been built to evoke the outline of several architectural wonders from around the region. At points, the continuity of the frame breaks, and these ridges cast a perfect silhouette of the building on to the gallery wall.

The idea came from the essay Parergon in the French philosopher Jaques Derrida's 1987 book, The Truth In Painting. In it, Derrida discusses the way that a frame's relationship with the art it surrounds comes and goes, depending on where we focus - the wall or the image. Golkar talks about the frame "melting" between these points, and this process sparked Golkar's imagination.

Forbidden Love Scenes in the Pious Dinosaur Nation

Tough rulings against Iranian filmmakers and the harsh treatment of female actors are causing despair in the film industry. But it wasn't always like this. Amir Hassan Cheheltan outlines the history of Iranian cinema, which is richer and more complex than the outside world realises

by Amir Hassan Cheheltan

Courts in Iran recently handed down prison sentences to two Iranian filmmakers, Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof. The court of appeal found them guilty of acting against national security and creating anti-regime propaganda.

A few years ago, a young female actor who appeared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in a Hollywood film was arrested and maltreated; she felt she had no choice but to leave the country.

Another even more recent case concerns another female actor. She was sentenced to a year in prison and 90 lashes for appearing in a film that had been approved by Iran's cultural authorities. Her colleagues protested against the decision in an open letter, saying that the Iranian film industry was simply not strong enough to bear a punishment such as this.

Contravention of Sharia law

In this film, the female actor in question plays the part of a young woman conducting an extramarital affair with a young man. They attend parties together outside the city. It goes without saying that no love scenes are shown in the film, and the party scenes are set in a dark location so full of cigarette smoke that it's difficult to make anything out clearly. But the main point is this: the woman appears before the camera without a headscarf, as her head is shaved totally bald. Sharia law dictates that the hair on the head must be covered up. A head with no hair, however, does not need to be covered up.

In an interview, the director of the film raises the question as to whether an actor can be held responsible for a crime committed in a film. Other colleagues of the actress point out that the world of film is fictional, not reality.

The Art of Stepping Through Time

Iranian poet H.E. Sayeh (né Houshang Ebtehaj) was born February 25, 1928 in Rasht, Iran. Unlike many other literary figures during Shah Reza Pahlavi's reign, Sayeh refrained from being involved in politics and left-leaning activities, while staying true to his social and political consciousness. However, after the 1979 Iranian revolution, he did not refrain from expressing the deep sorrow felt by a nation whose social revolution was kidnapped by an Islamic and repressive regime. He was arrested in 1981 and spent a year in jail. Many other poets in his circle were also imprisoned and some were executed. In "Black and White", a poem he wrote in 1991, Sayeh laments:

I don't know who sold our loyalty
What he earned or bought with the money
But I see that black hand above the bar
Pouring poison in the people's wine
In 1987, he moved to Germany.

A slim volume of his selected poems is being published in English translation in November 2011 under the title The Art of Stepping through Time.  

***

The Art of Stepping Through Time
by H. E. Sayeh
translated by Chad Sweeney and Mojdeh Marashi

The world does not begin or end today
Sad and happy hide behind one curtain
If you're on the path don't despair of the distance
Arrival is the art of stepping through time
A seasoned traveler on the road to love's door
Your blood leaves its mark on every step
Still water soon sinks into the earth
But the river rolling grows into a sea
Let's hope that one reaches the target
So many arrows have flown from this old bow
Time taught me to fall out of love with your face
That's why these tears are tinted with blood
Pity this long game of decades
Plays the human heart as a toy
A caravan of tulips crossing this meadow
Was crushed under-hoof by the riders of autumn
The day that sets spring's breath in motion
Will birth flowers and grasses from shore to shore
Mountain, you heard my cry today
The pain in this chest was born with the world
All praised brotherhood but did not live it
God, how many miles from tongue to hand?
Blood trickles my eyes in this corner of enduring
The patience I practice is squeezing my life
Come on, Sayeh, don't swerve from the path
A jewel is buried beneath every step

Canary in a Coal Mine

An upcoming exhibition of the works of Farhad Ahrarnia

Rose Issa Projects, London

18 January – 25 February 2012

Until the 1980s, British coal miners would take a caged canary with them underground. Because the bird sings most of the time, if the oxygen level dropped or any dangerous gases were emitted, its death was an early warning system. 

The phrase “canary in a coal mine” refers to someone who can detect signs of trouble and danger, whose sensitivity makes them vulnerable. The sentiment is an appropriate title for Farhad Ahrarnia’s work: the idea of the caged canary, singing in the depths of the ground, while shovels unearth treasure, digging into the fabric of life. 

This is Ahrarnia’s second solo show with Rose Issa Projects, and has some echoes of the first, Stitched (2008), in that it explores the idea of being “stitched up”. For Canary in a Coal Mine he has created larger-format works that combine embroidery, digital photography, sewing needles, silver-bronze shovels and dustpans. 

Maps that defy borders

The child-like works of Iranian artist Ghazel have deeper resonances in the issues of identity, displacement and alienation

Ghazel uses ballpoint pens to draw universally understood symbols — such as the sun, trees, houses, hearts and suitcases — on world maps

By Jyoti Kalsi, Special to Weekend Review  

Iranian artist Ghazel's work is defined by her nomadic existence. She was 19 years old when she left Iran to study art in France. Since then, she has lived in various cities around the world and at present divides her time between Iran and Europe. She channels her personal experiences of being an exile, who has homes in many places but cannot feel at home anywhere, to explore universal themes of displacement, identity and alienation. Although she deals with serious and complex subjects, Ghazel's style is simple, direct and full of humour.

The artist is well known for her performance videos and installations. But for her first exhibition in Dubai she has chosen to display for the first time a series of drawings along with three videos. Titled Geo-politics of Roots — No Man's Land, the show comments on the human longing and need for roots and the socio-political forces that uproot people from the place where their heart belongs.

Ghazel uses ballpoint pens to create her child-like drawings of universally understood symbols such the sun, trees, houses, hearts and suitcases. But what is really interesting is that each of the drawings has been done on a map of the world. Through these drawings she makes the entire world her own. The roots and branches of her trees spread across countries, unhindered by any borders. And she builds her houses where she pleases, with no worries about immigration rules or discrimination on the basis of race or nationality. The houses are perched on top of the trees or sprout roots of their own in an attempt to find stability, permanence and belonging.

Cinema in Iran

Circulation, Censorship and Cultural Production 

A Conference at ICI Berlin, 
Dec 16-17

Iran is undergoing a period of socio-political transformation joined to a cultural space that despite binding censorship regulations, circumnavigates restrictive bans and, in the world of film, generates award winning, critically acclaimed masterpieces. 
In the course of this two-day conference, participants will investigate cinema in Iran as part of Iran’s rich media and cultural ecology. The conference brings together international scholars on topics, which explore:

• The contemporary political and industrial context in which films are produced, distributed, and consumed in Iran and the ways in which formal and informal censorship structures and practices impact the industry;
• Film as both a formal and informal information conduit in closed or censored societies;
• Cinematic circulation and flows among and between the Iranian Diaspora and Iranians in Iran;
• The role of Iranian cinema as public diplomacy and public debate surrounding film in Iran;
• The political economy of film in Iran, including piracy and do-it-yourself (DIY) cinematic production such as YouTube;
• The role of cinema vis à vis television: subject migration, professional migration, content regulation

Reality of illusions

Art assumes a new form when artists from across the globe interpret Pablo Neruda’s poem on illusion for a multi-media show, discovers Poonam Goel

Iranian artist Malekeh Nayiny’s homecoming wasn’t an easy one. The revolution in Iran kept her away from home while she was still studying in the US. After a decade and a half, when she did fly back to Tehran to visit her ailing mother, she could never make it in time to hold her dying mother’s hand. What remained were a few personal belongings of her mother, a lonely father and a host of memories. “Two years later, my father died as well. All that was left for me were traces of their lives: Their objects, their letters and abandoned pictures from the past, evidences of their one-time presence in this world. I could not help but feel haunted by these symbols of the past and it became clear to me that they would always remain inside me. And, even though I fought to erase them from my mind, I realise how deeply I still cherish these traces that tangibly connect me to my past, each one telling me a different story of a time gone by,” says Nayiny. And that explains her photographic diptych titled ‘Traces’, with which one comes face to face in an ongoing show aptly titled ‘In You is the Illusion of Each Day’ at Latitude 28 in New Delhi.

Curated by Maya Kóvskaya, the show draws its title and thematics from the lines of the poem, Your Breast Is Enough, by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who understood our deep human need to feel intimately and inextricably connected to the world outside each of us. In an evocative essay to the show, Kóvskaya writes: “No longer were Malekeh’s illusions of self and family in sync with the world she had left behind. The rain of old family photos and the pile at her feet in the work came to represent the passage of time as well as lost time and lost people. The presence of the absent in the traces they left behind serves to underscore the ways in which the world can become a different place through the reordering of the dominant principles that gave coherence and meaning to what would otherwise simply be a mountain of meaningless matter. It is the power of illusion that enables us to tie these disparate things together into something called life.”

Hence, in each of the works in the exhibition, presented by some of the most cutting-edge artists from across the globe, illusions and their place and function in our lives serve as the dominant concept.

In Dilip Chobisa’s two untitled mixed media works that make a fine demarcation between the inside and the outside, one can find three-dimensional visual language being used to create an illusory effect. “In both works, a room in our foreground is separated from the outside by an archway that is fenced off with a length of barbed wire. In one work, a tumultuous cloudscape broods on the horizon, in the other a walkway leads to a tree that is growing in the shape of a man’s head. Inside and outside interpenetrate and bleed over the symbolically policed boundaries, placed at the gateway between worlds,” explains the curator.

How I Learned to Stop Fearing and Love Exotic Art

JAMM, an independent art advisory, will host its inaugural exhibition in Kuwait of 40 artworks by Contemporary Arab and Iranian artists at the Contemporary Art Platform (CAP) warehouse located next door to the Life Center in industrial Shuwaikh (block 2, street 28). Curated by Ali Bakhtiari, the exhibition, entitled How I Learned to Stop Fearing and Love Exotic Art, will open on 20th November 2011.  The show will end on 10^th December 2011.

Highlighting the use of writing in the field of contemporary Arab and Iranian art, JAMM”s exhibition will feature artworks that incorporate text in its various forms- calligraphy, graffiti, quotations, poems and sometimes just a single letter. Featuring works by both emerging and established Middle Eastern artists, the participating artists include Parviz Tanavoli, Hassan Hajjaj, Farideh Lashai, Katya Traboulsi, Fareed Abdal, Amira Behbehani, Shezad Dawood, Nargess Hashemi, Susan Hefuna and Farhad Moshiri.

'This is a wonderful opportunity to present the works of contemporary Arab and Iranian artists and to showcase works in various artistic media that incorporate text. The use of writing is familiar theme in the field of contemporary Arab and Iranian art. We want to highlight and celebrate that. Nevertheless, the use of the Arabic language renders the art from this region as ‘exotic’ to outsiders. In highlighting these so-called ‘exotic’ elements, we hope that viewers will question the nature of exoticism and appreciate the works, which are among the best examples from each of the artists selected. As a research-based exhibition, the selection was dependent on the works’ relevance to the theme of the show rather than the time that the works were produced;' says Sheikha Lulu Al-Sabah, co-founder of JAMM. 

Scarlet Stone

Who are we to blame?! Being scattered is the fruit of the bitter seeds which we planted on this land, and now they have bloomed. Whoever has had an ideal in mind and a desire in heart, now grapples with the self in the dark black cave of separation. But the key to this big black cave ...?!  

-- Siavash Kasrai

 Scarlet Stone is a new multidisciplinary and collaborative music/dance/video work told in the language of dance-theatre to be performed in:  San Diego Mandel Weiss Forum, UCSD, November 19, 2011; and Los Angeles Freud Playhouse, UCLA, December 10 and 11, 2011.

This epic piece is based on the last work of Siavash Kasrai, Mohre-ye Sorkh (Scarlet Stone) which re-tells the most famous tragedy of Iranian mythology, namely Rostam and Sohrab. The production uses the modern rendition of Ferdowsi's ancient mythology to portray the current struggle of the people of Iran, especially those of the youth and women, in their brave quest for freedom and democracy. The goal is to make this project directly relevant to the current political and social climate of Iran and the Middle East in general. Scarlet Stone emphasizes the value of wisdom over infatuation and brings to our attention the need for all Iranians to take responsibility for the cultural, social, and political development of the country in the past 60 years.

UCSD's professor, director/composer- Shahrokh Yadegari in collaboration with French-Iranian choreographer/dancer Shahrokh Moshkin-Ghalam (also starring as Sohrab) have gathered some of the best performing talents of the Iranian diaspora to include Afshin Mofid - former NY ballet star (as Rostam),  Ida Saki - young rising star dancer (Gordafarid -Sohrab's lover), Mariam Peretz - Bay Area-based acclaimed dancer (Tahmineh-Sohrab's mother) and Fatemeh Habibizad, the first female Iranian Naqqal - (Epic Story Teller, Ferdowsi) for this production. Advanced interactive video designed by Ian Wallace, and stunning lighting by Omar Ramos and Kristin Hayes define the world of the story.

Similar to the artistic form of Kasrai's poem, Scarlet Stone is staged with modern aesthetics and a deep commitment to the traditional and ancient values of Persian arts. Advanced interactive technology is used for production and projection/diffusion of video and sound, which will help the integration of the multiple disciplines used in this project. With a critical view, Scarlet Stone offers strength as well as hope. One can argue that much of what is addressed in Scarlet Stone, both in terms of societal problems and solutions are alive in the current social and political movements in Iran. For many years, the only option for defining a structural basis for a social or political movement was either leaning towards the left or the right. Kasrai, having come from the leftist tradition and having been the victim of the disillusionments which followed the left movement in Iran, proudly writes a hopeful poem for facing the problems which have plagued our times. We feel the current movements in Iran (and the Middle East in general), where all sections of people have come together to voice their desire for peaceful reform and freedom, are a living example of this approach.