Venue:
House of World Cultures, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin, Germany.

Dates:
19 March – 9 May 2004.

Organised by:
House of World Cultures - Berlin
in association with
The Iran Heritage Foundation. 

Introduction
This interdisciplinary programme of the House of World Cultures will feature art and artistic production of Iranian origin from both within and outside the country.  The focus is on the new artistic strategies with which Iranian artists constantly explore their limits and seek to expand their freedom.  The necessity for constant repositioning has led to a dynamic development in new forms of expression; symbolism, poetry, and metaphor being the formative traits.  This development has not occurred in isolation:  The works of Iranian artists abroad increasingly draws upon a common Iranian cultural and historical heritage.  Following a long period during which the country had little contact with the rest of the world, contact between artists at home and abroad has increased in recent years.  The programme at the House of World Cultures in Berlin/Germany offers for the first time, a forum for such a comprehensive and multi-faceted meeting of artists from Iran and from within the Diaspora.

By means of a large exhibition and programme of films, Far Near Distance places emphasis on the visual arts.  The curator in collaboration with the House of  World Cultures for both programmes is London based Rose Issa, an expert on contemporary Iranian, Middle Eastern and Arabic Visual art and film.  The programme, which will also showcase music, theatre and literature in addition to a conference and a youth programme, is to take place over a period of nearly nine weeks.

Exhibition
The exhibition Far Near Distance presents, in the form of hypotheses, artistic research, strategies and positions in the context of Iran.  The artistic grappling with contemporary life – within the country as well as in the Diaspora – thereby takes centre stage.  Locating and understanding one’s own heritage becomes the key to artistic survival in narrowed circumstances, characterised by censorship, financial constraints, isolation, space infrastructures, and a severe lack of opportunities to access information and to exhibit.  The challenge of finding a new artistic language in the face of these difficulties has led to a fascinating development for may artists who come from Iran.  Common to all of them is the interest in permeability, mobility, and change, going beyond or shifting boundaries, while asserting unusual points of view.  Artists include: Abbas, Siah Armajani, Shahram Entekhabi, Parastou Foruhar, Ghazel, Kaveh Golestan, Ali Mahdavi, Farhad Moshiri, Shirin Neshat, Marjane Satrapi, SAHRZAD Collective, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Mitra Tabrizian…

Film
In the 1980s, films from Iran began their conquest of the international scene.  It attained a key function in reconnecting Iran to the rest of the world.  The first films were pioneering acts, even daring experiments.  They became successful strategically and developed an aesthetic of their own.  Iranian artists and directors speak of a new humanistic language, known for its simplicity and modesty in treating themes and for showing contradictions within the society.

The film programme will present these new cinematic approaches as well as the work of the great directors, concentrating on five particular aspects of film: Real Fiction is concerned with crossing boundaries between documentary and fiction, as highlighted in Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami), A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf) and Bemani (Dariush Mehrjui); The Making of Feature Films examines the medium and its production as in Joy of Madness (Hana Makhmalbaf) and The Project (Bahman Kiarostami); Alienation focuses on the polarization and alienation in Iranian society, which leads to a kind of schizophrenia in everyday life:  Deep Breath (Parviz Shahbazi), Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi) and Letters of the Wind (Alireza Amini); Documentaries highlights the making of documentary film including Medium of Love (Elli Safari), And Along Came A Spider (Maziar Bahari) and The House is Black (Forough Farrokhzad); finally, Private and Popular presents films that have attained commercial success within the country, but are almost unknown abroad: I’m Taraneh, 15 (Rasoul Sadr-Ameli) and The Wind Carpet (Kamal Tabrizi).

In addition to this series curated by Rose Issa, a selection of films from the ‘Tehran International Short Film Festivals 2003’ will be shown These semi-documentary feature films are extraordinary and portray the most varied facets of everyday life in Iran.

Music
The Music programme raises the question of productive tension between local traditions and global developments.  Iran’s biggest music stars are as much at home in the USA and Europe as in Iran; Hussein Alizadeh, who works on a renewal of traditional Persian music; Dariush, the master of the protest song; Susan Deyhim, a fascinating singer between new music, popular music, and art compositions; and the famous traditional music ensemble Dastan.  All produce music internationally and give concerts all over the world for a growing community of fans, yet continually maintain strong ties with traditional roots.  Their yearning for their homeland, family, and friends is made clear in their encounter with traditional patterns of composition and improvisation.

In parallel to this and following many years of silence, a new young music scene is emerging from Iran’s major cities.  Rock, pop, and jazz is produced.  Iranian youth remain well informed via the Internet and mp3-files; they fuse international trends and process them in their own highly creative way.

The music programme of Far Near Distance will comprise three areas: classical Persian music; Persian folk music; and rock, pop and jazz.

Theater
The theatre programme focuses on Iran’s currently booming theatre scene.  The crucial forum for this development is the Fadjr Theatre Festival in Tehran, which in the last five years, has opened up internationally and has invited major theatre productions from Germany.  It has meanwhile become one of the biggest theatre festivals in the region, but above all the only real platform for new productions from Iran.  In the last few years, critical and radically aesthetic works, in particular, have won many prizes at festivals, in the process making theatre a leading art form of the critical cultural process in Iran.

The performances in Berlin will concentrate on new works for stage.  In four invited productions, these will be made accessible to a broad audience.  Lectures, scenic readings, forums for discussion, and a translators’ workshop will facilitate cooperation between a group of Iranian actors and directors and German artists.  Other forms of Iranian theatre will be presented in lectures and through film documentation.

Literature
Literature is highly esteemed in Iran.  Building on the centuries-old tradition of the Persian poetry of Rumi and Hafiz, Sadeq Hedayat’s novel The Blind Owl (1936) has developed in prose a modernist literary language of its own.  The literature programme will show how Iranian authors use literature to reflect upon issues concerning social realities.  As early as 1994, writers raised their voices against the difficult conditions under which art has had to be produced since the Islamic Revolution.  In the “Manifesto of the 134”, they demanded the creation of an independent writer’s association, which was founded a few years later.  Iranian authors have clung unswervingly to the creation of a modern literature that places the individual in its centre and maintains its freedom from ideological directives.  Numerous magazines and publishing houses are creating a literary landscape that is extraordinarily lively and colourful.

A few years ago, it was difficult to bring artists from Iran and from the Diaspora together, but today the situation has shifted Persian language works from abroad are published and read in Iran on a regular basis.  The boundaries have become more permeable, the desire for exchange stronger, and the opportunities for mutual perception and mutual enhancement more numerous.

Conference
The conference programme Framing explores the exhibition and presentation practice of non-European culture in the Western context, and the resulting structures of perception in the intercultural field.  On the basis of the exhibition Far Near Distance, curators, experts, and artists will discuss how exhibition practice and artistic strategies produce a specific perception of Iran and of art from Iran.  Here, the discussion will also focus on the influence that positioning such an exhibition in the House of World Cultures, in Berlin, has on the perception of this art – as well as on the role that the specifically Western relationship between art and economics plays in this question.  The concept for the conference arose in close cooperation with the Iranian artist and scholar Tirdad Zolghadr and the social anthropologist Kerstin Frei.

Youth Programme
Within Iran, a youth culture is developing, seeking its own path between Western influences and the realities of an Islamic state, and finding in this process its own new forms of expression. This generation is especially relevant to Iran’s development – about 60 percent of Iran’s population is under 25 years old. The medium of film/video will play a central role in the youth programme, in the form of a video workshop and associated workshops on music, visual art, theatre, and literature.  Iranian artists and directors will forge ties with young people living presently in Germany.

Enquiries:
+49 (30) 397870, info@hkw.de, www.hkw.de.