"Things didn’t happen as I imagined. On the one hand, with the situation in Tehran, I expected the police to arrest me. I also thought that the resulting dress wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. But it turned out to be more homogenous than I envisaged. Most of the passengers wanted to communicate with me and participate in the project. And I enjoyed this attention and collaboration. The point wasn’t their understanding of the project. I didn’t want anything to be imposed on the audience or participants. I wanted ordinary people to encounter their own personalities without any preconceptions about contemporary art. More than anything, I wanted something to emerge that is shared — between me and everyday metro passengers."
The story of fashion student Shirin Abedinirad who conceived and carried out an unusual (and unusually bold) performance art experiment by asking Tehran metro passengers to donate their rubbish to pin on her dress.
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Nov 16, 2011 -
10 comments
Misreading Tehran: Leading Iranian-American writers revisit a year of dreams and discouragement. "With a full 12 months now between us and the election, the time is ripe to start revisiting the hype and hope in a year of writing: which stories were overblown, what stories were missed entirely, and what can be gleaned about Iran's
annus horribilis from a more thorough understanding.
FP asked seven prominent Iranian-Americans, deeply immersed in both the English- and Persian-language media, to look through the fog of journalism at what actually happened in Tehran -- and why so many of us got it so wrong."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Jun 8, 2010 -
29 comments
For Neda. "
For Neda reveals the true story of
Neda Agha-Soltan, who became another tragic casualty of Iran's violent crackdown on post-election
protests on June 20, 2009. Unlike many unknown victims, however, she instantly became an international symbol of the struggle: Within hours of Agha-Soltan's death, cell phone photographs of her blood-stained face were held aloft by crowds protesting in Tehran and across the world. With exclusive access to her family inside Iran, the
documentary goes to the heart of who Neda was and what she stood for, illuminating the larger Iranian struggle for democratic freedoms through her powerful story."
[more inside]
posted by homunculus
on Jun 4, 2010 -
7 comments
A view from Iran: Golboo Fiuzi, a young resident of Tehran, talks to fellow Iranian citizens about why they think the US hasn't attacked yet, their political views, opinions about globalization and their lives under UN imposed sanctions.
posted by Surfin' Bird
on Oct 20, 2008 -
24 comments
The cover of 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' symbolises the way anti-Iranian propaganda in the U.S. works: The original picture from which this cover is excised is lifted off a news report during the parliamentary election of February 2000 in Iran. In the original picture, the two young women are in fact reading the leading reformist newspaper Mosharekat. Azar Nafisi and her publisher may have thought that the world is not looking, and that they can distort the history of a people any way they wish. But the original picture from which this cover steals its idea speaks to the fact of this falsehood.
The cover of Reading Lolita in Tehran is an iconic burglary from the press, distorted and staged in a frame for an entirely different purpose than when it was taken. In its distorted form and framing, the picture is cropped so we no longer see the newspaper that the two young female students are holding in their hands, thus creating the illusion that they are "Reading Lolita"--with the scarves of the two teenagers doing the task of "in Tehran." In the original picture the two young students are obviously on a college campus, reading a newspaper that is reporting the latest results of a major parliamentary election in their country. Cropping the newspaper, their classmates behind them, and a perfectly visible photograph of President Khatami--the iconic representation of the reformist movement--out of the picture and suggesting that the two young women are reading "Lolita" strips them of their moral intelligence and their participation in the democratic aspirations of their homeland, ushering them into a colonial harem.
Read Hamid Dabashi's full essay '
Native informers and the making of the American empire.'
posted by hoder
on Feb 22, 2007 -
67 comments
This Iranian American Life "This blog is for an experimental documentary that I am working on this year, where I will be shooting video of my experiences in Iran and creating shorts, interactive installations, and/or videoblogs using the footage from my experiences and the experiences of others."
Iranian-American student Paris Marashi has gone back to Tehran with the goal of documenting her own experiences with family, friends, and about town. She's also giving inexpensive cameras to Iranians to help them document their own experiences. There are only a few posts up at the moment, but it should be stay interesting as time goes on.
posted by chasing
on Aug 8, 2006 -
15 comments
Halliburton's business dealings in Iran: Waxman’s and Thompson’s complaints revolve around a Halliburton subsidiary called Halliburton Products and Services, which is based in Dubai and registered in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven in the Caribbean. As the Financial Times first reported, the subsidiary opened an office in Tehran in February 2000, when Cheney was still CEO of Halliburton. The subsidiary has sold $40 million worth of oil services in Iran.
Thompson, who is acting on behalf of the city’s pension funds, has asked Halliburton for clarifications about its business dealings in Iran, a country listed by the American government as a sponsor of terrorism and thus subject to stringent U.S. trade sanctions. Thompson claims that Halliburton has been using its subsidiary to circumvent a 1995 executive order barring American companies from doing business with Tehran.
posted by hoder
on Jul 7, 2004 -
5 comments
Iran considers moving capital away from Tehran. Tehran lies on a major seismological fault and experts have long warned that a strong earthquake in the city would be devastating. A professor of geophysics at Tehran university, has warned that if a quake of similar magnitude hit Tehran it would kill more than 700,000 people. Government buildings would be destroyed.
posted by hoder
on Jan 5, 2004 -
14 comments
