These questions are the starting point of the project Sideways.
Atousa Bandeh Ghiasabadi / Visual Artist/ Film Maker asked 5 artist and writers to research this questions and produce an artwork to be presented in two different exhibitions one in Tehran and in the Netherlands and finalized with a Publication(book).
Sideways in Tehran will literary replacing the context.
Bandeh being part of a minority group with a non-western background in the Netherlands often questioned the comprehensibility of her work by the western audience not familiar with her cultural history. Now she will reverse the process by exhibiting works of a group of artist in the context which is familiar to Bandeh but not to them. In this she hope to find out a more objective approach through her own experience but also through the experiences by participants of Sideways.
Katrin Korfmann / visual artist, living in Amsterdam, NL
Katrin Korfmann is analyzing the often-quoted ´magic moment´ of photography. Or we could say she plays with it. The time factor of the ´magic moment´ is stretched, deconstructed, duplicated and subsequently assembled.She observes places of daily life, humans and machines, stages of public space.
Finally the space and the experienced time at the location is documented en coded again to a location never experienced like this. The image is document and invention at the same time.
For the project sideways Korfmann relates to her hometown West-Berlin (Germany) and the change of the city since the wall came down. The photograph fast forward (Checkpoint Charlie) 145 x 253 cm is showing a crossing point between former East and West Berlin. 20 years after the cold war this spot is one of the most demanded tourist attractions of the city. Fake American and Russian soldiers play theatre there. They sell visas with stamps and are bargaining over original gasmasks and GDR flags.
For money one can pose with the soldier to get the most wanted holiday snapshot.
The monument of the cold war becomes a funny game. A busy movement, a film set, where visitors try to catch the spectacular moments of German history.
Sara Blokland / visual artist
Her works often explores the representation of the concept of family, exploring the confusion and ambiguity between the personal and impersonal. As a artist she interested in deconstructing the exotic subject, and reconstructing new ones. Her photographic images challenge the exotic presumptions of the dominant culture. How is the exotic part of the representation of the Western artist in the search for a ‘’original view’ and understanding the subject..In two short films ‘’Brother’’ and ‘’Roos’’, she will reflect on photography as a ''exotic'' object and incorporating the personal experience of one viewer and photographer.
Nickel van Duijvenboden Photographer/writer turned from photography to writing and is operating in the grey area between visual art and literature. He uses his experiences as a former member of a punk band as a point of departure for a short fiction — punk being a highly idealistic, non-conformist subculture which is supposedly Western (or is it?). In Teheran, he will combine photographs with a text about one particular aspect of his experiences."
Bassam Chekhes (Syria, 1965) Film Maker graduated from audiovisual department at the rietveld academy and mainly is making short films.The subjects of his films are related to his personal surrounding and have a direct contact with his own experience, as if they are a dairy or a biography.He prefers to work with different images as the starting elements for his films rather than text or a complete script, and to experiment the relation between the subject of the film and the related form that finally get."
Tina Rahimy philosopher researching at Erasmus university Rotterdam
Her research will focus on the choice of literature as a form of expression. Why do strangers, like refugees choose to write, why do they choose language of the host country? Language, the most demanding element, the crown witness of our alienation, not only in its content but also in its form. Do these writers however believe in the deficiency of their speech, or rather acknowledge the hesitation in and of a language as and characteristic element of any speech?
Sideways is sponsored by Visual Arts, Architecture & Design fund Netherlands Fonds BKVB
The exhibition is organized & curated by Amirali Ghasemi
Sideways project is a project by Atousa Bandeh Ghiasabadi Artist/Filmmaker Intendant for Cultural Diversity, Sideways started in 2007 and will be finalized by presenting a book and an exhibition in the Netherlands in 2009.
Poster is designed by Behrad Javanbakht for Parkingallery Studio.
Watch the Moon 20-25 June 2008
Performance Hours: 18-20
Opening: Friday June 20th:16-20
Azad Art Gallery
No 41,Salmas Sq. Golha Sq. Tehran,Iran|
Tel: +98 21 88008676
Performers:
Soheil Peyghambari / Clarinet
Daryoush Azadpour / Violin Alireza Favakehi / Violin
Shahriar Khansari / Viola
Alireza Mahammadinia/ Cello
Mohammad Javad Safari / Keyboard
100x70 cm, 2 color silk screen
Urban Jealousy Dead line: Monday 21st of April 2008
Do philosophers poud in bed? Or do they invent there great ideas about the world outside, just before falling asleep, covered with stakes of books and papers?
Philosophy is pure thought. Clean, abstract, bodyless.
Beds, on the contrary, are very specific. Our journey into the world starts in a bed, and it mostly ends there when we die. We relax our tired bodies, hide, sleep and dream in the bed. Here, it seems, we are the most reduced to our physical existence. The bed is our most personal place.
The German artist Gloria Zein has put these two worlds, the bed and philosophy, in a relationship: For more than two years she has interviewed international philosophers about their thoughts around the bed – in order to dedicate an individual object to each of them. Ten “beds” representing this ongoing investigation can now be viewed at the Iranian Artists’ Forum, alongside drawings, photographs and texts. Her inventions range from the metaphorical to the poetic and humorous.
We would like to cordially invite you to the opening of
“philosophers’ beds/bedding philosophers”
Mirmiran Art Gallery at the Iranian Artists’ Forum
Sunday, March 9th 2008
17:00 to 20:30
The artist as well as Simon Farid O’Liai, Iranian philosopher participating in Zein’s project, will be present at the opening.
The exhibition will run until March 13th. Daily visiting hours 14:00 to 20:00.
Poster Designed by Amirali Ghasemi
