Part of Me: mise en abyme, a video program in two parts curated by Amirali Ghasemi and Sandra Skurvida for the Iranian Arts Now festival and exhibition, June 23 – July 24, 2012

Cité international des Arts, Paris
Opening reception: Saturday June 23, 6 – 9 PM
Exhibition open 2 – 7 PM daily except Sundays and July 14th

More info about the Program www.otheris.com and the Festival www.iranianartsnow.com

Part of Me is performance, part of me is poetry, and part of me is pain, pain that may not have visible symptoms. My part here is to deliver nothing spectacular, but something delicate enough to be rendered in Turbulence mode we are in. There are things that cannot be said aloud — no manifesto can handle the light weight of the message — the message cannot be broadcast nor encoded to be safe; and sound is the void…. The part curated by Amirali Ghasemi includes works by
Mohammad Abbasi, Erfan Abdi, Makan Ashgvari, Ghazaleh Bahiraie, Amir Bastan, Pouya Ehsaei, Golnaz Esmaili, Bahar Fattahi, Arvin H. Kamal, Tala Madani, Mahan Moalemi, Amirali Mohebbinejad, Photomat, Bita Razavi & Jaakko Karhunen, Sona Safaei, Mohsen Saghafi, Ali Samadpour, Mamali Shafahi, Melika Shafahi, Melodie Zad, Zoha Zokaei, and Niloufar Zolfaghari.

Mise en abyme is a stand-in for the void, a figure opening the subjective fissures of national states, and performatively destabilizing positions of power — the “I”s are focused on the potentialities of arousals and upheavals. The program curated by Sandra Skurvida features works conditioned by the aporias of recent social, political, and ideological insurrections around the world and with reflection on Iran:

Morehshin Allahyari, Mehraneh Atashi, Maneli Aygani, Bahar Behbahani, Negar Behbahani, caraballo-farman, Samira Eskandarfar, Nooshin Farhid, Barbad Golshiri, Anahita Hekmat, Zeynab Izadyar, Nosrat Nosratian, Amitis Motevalli, Neda Razavipour, Hamed Sahihi, Bahar Samadi, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Negar Tahsili, and Kianoosh Vahabi. 

But not all parts are those of art. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri suggested in their recent Declaration, engaged practice “allows us to turn our attention away from the video screens and break the spell the media hold over us. It supports us to get out from under the yoke of the security regime and become invisible to the regime’s all-seeing eye. It also demystifies the structures of representation that cripple our powers of political action.”