Iranian New Media Society is a platform for researching and promoting new media arts in Iran. INMS’s approach will be as inclusive as possible to maximize outreach and to include and initiate cooperation with existing infrastructures and resources within the country and the network of artists and professionals in the diaspora.
INMS is designed to create an open source archive of New Media as well as a study room/ meeting place for artists, researchers, and scholars, and aims to bridge the gap between new media artists and their potential enthusiastic audience.
INMS wishes to promote interdisciplinarity and create a context for practices that take place at the intersections between art, science, and technology, geared toward video art, sound art, and new media. The society will be acting as a hub and mediator for several emerging project spaces across the country as well as the international scene, by archiving and facilitating projects related to new media arts, and by organizing talks and workshops, publications and events such as presentations, screening, symposiums, and exhibitions.
Public outreach, knowledge production as well as archiving and preservation will be the society’s key tasks to provide a much-needed platform for the ever-growing scene of new media in Iran. Another goal of the society is to reverse the one-way stream of art and knowledge production leaving Iran and taking residence outside of the county. INMS aims to encourage artists/researchers aboard to share their experiences and expertise with students and artists back home. Despite the absence of academic opportunities inside the country, there is an emerging scene of young artists who are experimenting with new media. On the other hand, because of the same lack of educational infrastructure, there is an increasing number of artists and specialists who move to other (mostly western) countries, for studying, and then in many cases for a living. In such circumstances, one realizes that there should be a platform that can incorporate intellectual resources from Iranian artists and professionals from all around the world.
New Media Society is the recipient of 2014-2015 grant from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development for a year.
We wish to ask for help/support for design and promotion, building the audience and the online/offline hub for new media society public artistic and education programs. To invite a team of experts to design the structure and guidelines for the archive, and articulate their finding and through the online bilingual portal. While our project room will be a multi-purpose venue for producing cultural outputs, social awareness and public engagements whining the society, our rotating screening programs and workshops in collaboration with local initiatives will be helping artists and audience outside of center to engage and participate in their cities without the need of coming to Tehran.
As a side project, we would like to invite international artist and thinkers as temporary residents and workshop instructors to elevate the scene and the quality of the programs. (These programs will be funded independently from Prince Claus Fund and through embassies cultural programs and foreign countries resources to cover travel expenses.)
for more information please contact us here:
newmediatehran[at]gmail[dot]com