Seven glass bottles of water are suspended from the ceiling in a full bath tub. A goldfish is swimming in each bottle. Ink is emptied into the tub, colours the water black and drives the fishes upwards, towards the light. The whole thing is broadcast on monitors in the window of a gallery. This documentation of the installation »A Few Centimeters Above Sea-Level« (2002) by Neda Razavipour and Shahab Fotouhi is the opening piece on the DVD curated by Susann Wintsch and Parastou Forouhar on contemporary art from Teheran. It exemplifies a hallmark of most of the artistic projects and statements assembled here: a symbolic, aesthetically concentrated approach to lived reality, an examination of isolation as an issue and the desire to break through barriers, as well as the incorporation of new media and networking.

In the DVD »compiler/01« (in conjunction with tweaklab and Milica Tomic, 2003) Swiss curator Susann Wintsch had already taken a specific place – former Yugoslavia – and its artistic discourses as her sphere of investigation. For the Teheran project she worked with Frankfurt-based Iranian artist Parastou Forouhar. They realised in the course of their visits that the lively art scene – Teheran has 200 galleries and a plethora of alternative art spaces – also constituted a struggle against an unbelievable degree of stagnation and isolation. They took this as the starting point in developing their concept: »Analysing While Waiting [For Time To Pass]« is the title of the DVD, which gives a marvellous glimpse of the broad spectrum encompassed by Tehran’s art scene, ranging from performances, photography, videos, installations, painting and documentation of an Internet-based work through to statements from people involved in various forms of cultural production.

The analysis of waiting is at its most direct in the written statement by Soghra Zare Anaghezi: when she moved into a new studio, used before the Revolution by a gynaecologist, who had left many utensils and patient files behind, the artist wanted to ask the generation born back then - in other words, her own generation - about their (lost and betrayed) dreams, wishes and goals. For political reasons the project could not be realised in this form. In the video »Aboureyhan Self-portrait: Day and Night« (2004) by Jinoos Taghizadeh, we once again see and hear time passing with something verging on physicality. Wearing a video camera around her neck, the artist records her quotidian activities in her studio flat. Swaying rhythmically, the camera feels its way towards the objects in an apparently random movement and yet constantly tears them away from this engulfing appropriation. This work reveals a further group of motifs that come into play on the DVD, namely a peculiar, almost oneiric type of isolation and withdrawal. For example, in the digitally animated video »The Room« (2006) by Hamed Sahihi we look down from above on a woman sitting reading in an armchair. The room is cramped, its walls pressing in, the black door seems to seal off the space. The armchair suddenly begins to rise and carries the woman upwards – in a sense re-inventing the fairytale of the flying carpet: this time it is a book that transports a woman out of base confinement into the heavens.

The period of reforms has seen women assuming an entirely new position in the art scene, as highlighted by Alireza Sami Azar, former director of the Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art and now made redundant (with the centre now revamped as a historical museum): sixty per cent of all art students are female. Although there is still a great deal of painting, interest is focussed on the new media, because they are better suited to portraying social realities. Azar’s words clearly underscore something that becomes apparent watching the DVD: what we see here are artists experimenting, seeking to break out of national isolation and establish their position within the global art context. Although there are regional particularities, all the projects could also have come into being elsewhere. By working through isolation in an artistic vein, that isolation can be overcome - offering us a different image of Teheran, full of vitality.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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