Posts

City as Stage: Performative Body and the Authoritarian City

Image
  Al-Zahra University, Tehran, Iran, 12 November 2022. A student re-enacting the torture scene of Khodanour Lajaei being tied to a flag post by the state agents. He was shot during the Zahedan massacre (aka. Bloody Friday) on 30 September 2022 and died in a hospital on October 2 .   City as Stage: Performative Body and the Authoritarian City Authors: Ahmadreza Hakiminejad and  Mahsa Alami Fariman  Synopsis In a cold day in December 2017, on the curbs of Enghelab Street in central Tehran, Iran, a defiant woman climbs a utility box, takes her hijab off, ties it to a stick and waves it to the crowd. Her eyes stared soulless towards her city, waving her white scarf in silence. The performer reclaimed the street to convert it into a theatrical stage with its astonished audience. This simple yet courageous bodily phenomenon tending to reclaim the city became a symbolic act of protest against the compulsory hijab. In light of the ongoing Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran – ignited by d

Arts and the Urban Commons: New Visions for a Phoenix City

Image
  SpaceX Event, LTB Showrooms, Coventry. July 1, 2022.  I was invited to speak at SPACEX event co-organised by the  Centre for Postdigital Cultures and  LTB Showrooms  in Coventry.  SPACEX (Spatial Practices in Art and ArChitecture for Empathetic EXchange) is a European Union-sponsored " transdisciplinary research action, comprising of 1 3 universities and academies and 16 cultural organisations, across 11 EU countries with 1 partner in Palestine, which tends to " respond to the troubling rise of populist nationalism and conflict in European societies by engaging new publics and forging a culture that embraces diversity, difference, and discursive exchange within cities, towns and urban sites." The event entitled ‘Arts and the urban commons: new visions for the phoenix city’, will address  "the issues arising from Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture. We will hear from artists, curators, researchers and local citizens, this will give an insight into some of the cu

City, Public Space & Body

Image
  I co-organised an international conference titled: City, Public Space & Body , hosted by the  Goldsmiths' ICCE Department . The conference was virtual and took place on 14-15 December 2021. For further details, please see the conference website .  Conference Theme The growing of urban population and the rapid change of urban environments, accelerated even more in the current century, entails challenges to defining and practising public spaces in cities. The public space, its implications and accompanied expectations, its embodiment and consequent social impacts, have been the focus of ongoing theorisation and debates. Ideally, the dynamics of gathering in and passing through urban public spaces, indoor and outdoor –from streets, squares, parks, libraries, museums, to other cultural and leisure centres – could lead to a culture more open to differences. Yet, in our time, governmental power and the force of privatisation have been inflicted upon these spaces, squeezed not only

'The Right to the City' and the Problem of Tehran

Image
  'The Right to the City' and the Problem of Tehran Published in AMPS Proceedings Series 24.2 (chapter 23, p. 233-243) I presented this piece as part of the panel:  Political Economy and the City , in the  ‘Cities in a Changing World: Questions of Culture, Climate and Design’ conference, jointly hosted by AMPS and City Tech , City University of New York, 16-18 June 2021. Synopsis ‘The right to the city is like a cry and a demand’, wrote Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le droit à la ville . In the noted urban scholar Peter Marcuse’s words, Lefebvre’s right is ‘a cry out of necessity and a demand for something more’. Despite rather astonishing efforts of former IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) Commander turned mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, to portray a deceptive picture of Tehran on a global stage – either by inviting world-renowned urban thinkers such as Setha Low, David Harvey and Saskia Sassen, or by being invited as a key-note speaker by world-renowned institution

The House of Tyranny: Thoughts on Iran’s Pyramid of Power

Image
Representatives of the first Iranian parliament, National Military Academy, Tehran, Iran, 1906.  The National Library and Archives of Iran, World Digital Library,  The House of Tyranny: Thoughts on Iran’s Pyramid of Power , a piece I presented  as part of the panel: 'Exhibiting Democracies - Religious and Colonial Assemblies', in  Parliament Buildings Conference  hosted by  the Bartlett School of Architecture and the UCL European Institute. 

The Oil and the Brick; Tales of a Scotsman in Persia

Image
  ‘Abadan — The Fruit of British Industry that Persia Covets.’ The Illustrated London News, 8 September 1951 (cited in Damluji, 2013) The Oil and the Brick; Tales of a Scotsman in Persia Ahmadreza Hakiminejad On a late-spring day in 1901, the King of Persia signed a notorious concession and gave the English millionaire William Knox D’Arcy the rights to prospect for and market oil. Seven years later, the black substance was no longer a mystery in the  land of Persia . In 1909, the London-based Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was born and by 1912, the liquid began to flow in the pipeline from the oil fields of  Masjed Soleyman  to what was yet to become the world’s largest refinery on the desert island of Abadan; putting a poor, deprived village on the map. This was the time when, far from Abadan, a 25-year-old Scotsman, through “a remarkable stroke of good fortune” [1], was about to join the office of Edwin Lutyens – the empire’s eminent architect – who had just been commissioned to cr

'The Hole' and other photographs

Image
'The Hole' and other photographs (Prints for Sale)  This peculiar view of Paris's beautiful monster (The Hole, 2015), is now available for sale via Photos.com provided by Getty Images. You are also invited to visit my photo gallery on Fine Art America  where you can order prints in a variety of frames and sizes.