Context

Kish is a small island in the Persian Gulf and has been functioning since before the 1979 Iranian revolution as a place for economic, architectural and touristic experiments by the state and private entrepreneurs. (See previous project Sunset Cinema, which also addresses Kish but from a different angle.)

Before the revolution – in 1978 to be exact – the island was partially developed into a private resort for the royal family and their international guests of honour. It was supposed to reflect the ‘success’ of the 10-years plan of modernisation reforms to the outside world. A year later of course the Islamic revolution confirmed its victory. Soon after Kish was declared a free trade zone. This was a step towards opening up a far off island to foreign investors and tourists, mainly for economic reasons as a kind of a response to foreign embargos.

The almost schizoid nature of the island is manifested through its design and displays. Whether developed before or after the revolution, the design of the island is the symptom of its historical ambivalence – as an economically, politically or culturally articulated place. Ambivalence on the one hand offers space for multiple fantasies, but also, when it is historically prolonged, when it becomes chronic that is, fantasies may be built on traumas of the past. And this is certainly the case with Kish.

Undecided Utopias
Recently, a privately initiated project has involved up to twelve German architecture firms in a competition to design a huge international tourist and business resort for the Kish island. Whether it will ever be built is another issue completely. But the resulting designs are a mixture of 19th century European architecture – like the Cote d’Azure – and hyper postmodern buildings with orientalist detailing. Our approach to Kish in ‘Undecided Utopias’ is initially within the realm of design and display. The project tries to address design in its exploitation or misrecognition of localities. It is at this level that a place, when subjected to such design, is brought to a certain extra–territorial, or extra–geographic mode. But on the other hand, such excess provides the best ground for the coming together of various geographic and cultural points of views, enacted in design. In fact it is within this perversity of design that what are thought to be discords, come to outdo one another’s fantasies. In the end you cannot tell what is whose fantasy.

Undecided Utopias contains of a series of interviews with some of the German architects involved in the competition. A scale model of the competition site is another part of this project. Further, a historical reference is made through a visual re-appropriation of an article from a 1978 issue of Vogue that covers the official inauguration of the Island with a special focus on design, architecture and style.

Undecided Utopias is part of an ongoing series of projects related to the island of Kish.

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Context

In the waters of the Persian Gulf, eighteen kilometres off the southern coast of the Iranian mainland, lies the coral island of ‘Kish’. The master plan for Kish was initially developed before the 1979 revolution. The inauguration of the preliminary plans was held in 1977 with one of the first landings of Concord at Kish airport. Among these planned projects were palaces for the royal family, the Kish international airport, casinos, hotels, restaurants, banks, a French shopping mall, a golf course and the establishment of radio, television and telecommunications networks. It was reported that a month after the victory of the revolution the people of Kish occupied the palaces belonging to the royal family. A year later, in 1980, the government declared Kish the first ‘national free-trade zone’ of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the start of the Iran-Iraq war delayed the full realization of this plan. Finally, in 1993, Kish was officially re-established as a free-trade zone that applied the principles of a free market economy. In the 1994 master plan almost 55 percent of the island was assigned to tourism.

Without opening the entire country to the outside influence the main motivation for the development of this island was to attract foreign investment and non-oil export as an answer to western trade embargoes. But in reality Kish, an hour and half flight south of the capital, has become a site for Iranian tourists and investors. For many, the tolerant lifestyle on the paradise look-alike island of Kish provides an escape from the restrictions of the mainland. One of Kish’s tourist attractions is a steam ship, known as the Greek ship, which was stranded on the island’s shores in mid the 60’s and has since remained there to slowly rust away into the waters of the Persian Gulf. Every evening tourists gather to view the ship as sun sets behind it. This view has become one of Kish’s landmarks, almost made into a mythological brand for the island’s tourism.

The sun-splashed island has become a studio back-lot for an experiment into the limits of a more liberal attitude by the state. Amid this environment an international documentary film festival has been organised over the past five years, screening films with a realistic view of life on the mainland. The screening of these films on the island is interesting in so far as they introduce certain narratives of social consciousness into the escapist fabric of the island.

Sunset Cinema (ongoing)
Proceeding with a focus on specific conditions that define the geopolitics of a place, its cultural activities and productions, Sunset Cinema sets itself on the island of Kish. It proposes the construction of a cinema for the island that will host the documentary film festival and displace the economical and political attributes of the island into the architectural disposition of the cinema in Kish.

For the first part of the project, the architects Mohammad Hassan Malekpour and Gelayol Mosaed are invited to collaborate with Pages and respond to the idea of cinema from the architectural point of view.

The mushroom-like architectural growth of the flat landscape of this coral island may promise the flourishing of a new life, but the agitation of style and function in architecture and planning expresses the unpredictability of this promise. The buildings in Kish are either a poor imitation of Western style architecture or a revival of historical periods in Iranian architecture. Every zone is identified by a different architectural landmark which gives the illusion of being a focal point for the whole island. Driving through expansive sandy fields, one arrives at yet a new site with its own focal point. At each turn one has the illusion of being in the heart of Kish and of having a total view of the island.

Reacting to an architecture that is identified by its focal presence, a site-less structure is proposed to host the documentary film festival of Kish. These are independent mobile projection units set at different locations throughout the island, they become temporary side streets off the existing boulevards and crossroads, opening into spaces beyond the island, into the imagery space of documentary cinema.

The rectangular units are built from reflective glass. Mirroring the island at different locations, these units confront the island endlessly with itself. The site-less-ness of the units alludes to the undecided role of the island as a place for cultural activities.

In alluding to the Kish Documentary Film Festival with a focus on issues relating to the mainland, a series of films are permanently screened on Monitors as part of the project. More importantly, these films – each with their own cinematic articulation of the current condition of Iran – transpose the whole of the project from the imaginary of the Island of Kish into the reality of the conditions these films address.

The films screend were:

Test of Democracy, directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran, 2000

An Eclipse, which Dropped from the Sky, directed by Mani Petgar, Iran, 2000

Exteriors, directed by Alireza Rasoulinezhad, Iran, 2004

Pilgrimage, directed by Bahman Kiarostami, Iran, 2004

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Context

Kiosk # 974 is an allusion to the unstable condition of the press in Iran. In Tehran 90% of these publications are distributed through the 973 (legitimate or illegitimate) newspaper kiosks located in various spots in the city. The display space of these kiosks is so limited that newspapers and magazines often have to be laid on sidewalks or hung from the nearest trees. Occasionally plastic sheets are installed to protect the publications from rain. Over 60 percent of the kiosks in Tehran function illegitimately regarding their spatial arrangements. The management of the kiosk is pursued through a continuous arrangement and rearrangement of its goods.

For this project we address the subject of the kiosk in its fragmentary, disoriented condition to allude to the kaleidoscopic circulation of information in Iran, where the lack of a consistent discourse (social or political) is compensated by a continual reconfiguring of bits and pieces of signifying fragments. What are the parameters that define these configurations? Can such configurations help us develop a new design for these kiosks that reflects the condition of the press and at the same time offer a flexible space for infinite reconfigurations? Such a space would be capable of reinterpreting its use and functionality according to changing conditions.

Kiosk # 974
The first part of this ongoing project is developed with the collaboration of the architect Kianoosh Vahabi. It is essentially a proposal for a new design for the newspaper kiosks in Tehran. Based on extensive research, a supplemental issue of ‘Pages’ – a newspaper titled ‘kiosk # 947’ – was developed that reflects the various approaches of the project to issues of the press and newsstands in Iran.

The design proposal depicts display and accommodation facilities beyond the current existing design. The developed design is in fact defined by all the architectural attributes that surpass the legitimate boundaries set by the municipality.

Video-interviews with different kiosk owners from inside their spaces in Tehran reflect their views on the spatial and economical aspects of newsstands and their work.

Based on the information published by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Iran, a diagram is also developed that depicts the condition of the press in Iran in its different modes.

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Context

Long distance telephone interviews on radio programs, when carried out in a foreign language, are often overlaid with intervals by a third voice simultaneously translating the interview into the language of the listener. As the geographical barrier of language is made audible, the hearing experience shifts back and forth between ‘here’ and ‘there’.

For Radiodays, Pages took the above notion of ‘hearing’ and created a short program on film dubbing in Iranian cinema. The program consisted of telephone interviews with experts on dubbing in Iran and some fragments of dubbed foreign films.

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Context

Workshop held by Pages at the Piet Zwart Institute for postgraduate studies in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

To start the discussion we opened the workshop with an introduction into the production of the diegetic spaces of the public and private in the Hollywood film industry with its stylised decors and set designs. It goes without saying that each genre in Hollywood has both its own social and political message and its corresponding semiotics of production design. These representations of space not only set out notions of publicness and privacy but also produce modes of subjectivity.
Production design also plays a significant part in the construction of our cities. Cities are often restaged as experiential environments either temporarily (during festivals or celebrations of various national events like elections) or permanently (tourist centres and shopping malls). Staging is often a best means of constructing an identifying city. Of course, this has evolved into more private spaces of our lives. Television, with its reality TV programs, has been quite successful in staging our homes – isn’t this endless re-staging of everyday reality a way of convincing ourselves of the realness of our own lives? One thing that is true is that by staging privacy and publicness one excludes modes that fall out of this bilateral articulation of being.

With a series of presentations and lectures by invited guests the discussion was opened among the participants inviting a critical view of the topic of the workshop. Ali Madanipour1 delivered a lecture and presentation focusing on urban, social and cultural differentiations in pubic and private spaces in cities. On the notion of difference he concluded: “Although the display of difference is crucial for the city and the society, the over- display of difference is often a way of controlling genuine difference”.

Monica Narula2 delivered a lecture with the focus on the specificity of the public and private use of space in India, pointing to the fact that societies and cultures each have their own ways of articulating the public-private relationship. She talked of New Delhi, where: “In full public view, the most intense desires, the most painful humiliations, the darkest anger, the greatest joy, the strongest love and the most profound loneliness find their fullest expression. The street is where the public act and the private motive get to know each other.” (…) “The terms 'Public' and 'Private' can then be seen more as place holders for concepts that change their content over time, than as actual descriptions of ways of inhabiting space.” The European notion of public and private, introduced in South Asian societies during their colonial past, has always failed to correspond with the reality of these places. As Narula pointed out in her lecture: “It is one of the strange ironies of post colonial societies, that these European, (and deeply Christian), heteronormative injunctions regulating 'private' behaviour and sexuality through publicly laid down norms, which arrived in non-European cultures as 'innovations' have now become the mainstay of cultural conservatism in the same non-European societies.” (…) “Yet even in Europe, historically, the distinction between public and private has tended to break down the moment deviations from prescribed moral codes have occurred.”

Monika Narula concluded her lecture with a the question: “How might we construct spaces where our private anxieties and public masks can on occasion be held in abeyance, while we construct other modes of interactive being?”

Karen Alexander3 presented films by the Black British film collectives ‘Sankofa’ and ‘Black Audio Film Collective’. These groups were established at the time of political unrest and activism in 1980s Britain. In her talk “Making the Private Public, race representation and the media” she focused on the specific cinematic language these Black filmmakers developed in response to the dominant political mood and the prescriptive labels of cultural difference of the time. These two groups were among the first Black film artists to start looking at Black British culture and its relationship to modernity. “As a collective (…) they felt an important part of their strategic intervention in British moving image culture was to theorize and educate the very audiences they were making work for. This was never theory for theory’s sake, rather they felt, as media activists, that they needed to interrogate radical film theory’s take on race and representation, which all too often took the face of first-world avantgardism and third-worldist activism.”

Paul Elliman4 gave a presentation on the role of voices as sound signage (mind the gap or this is a security announcement…) in defining our experience of the public spaces of cities. In the light of what film writer Michael Chion terms as “the acousmetre” – the disembodied voice of cinematic characters that are heard but not seen– Elliman articulates these spoken forms of public information as “having introduced a new kind of acoustic space to the city”, namely “an acousmatic space”, a space that blurs the boundaries between the space where these voices come from and the space into which they are projected.

“We can now conjure up a kind of surrogate workforce apparently from nowhere. They remain out of sight and untouchable, as if they were somehow unaccountable. And yet they are always there, talking and walking us though the acousmatic spaces of the city (…) Perhaps, when we hear the electronic facsimiles of audio signage, we also feel a part of ourselves dissolving into the built environment, becoming a spirit, a ghost, an erasable memory (…) Our relationship to these voices – which are often a curious combination of the celebrity and the figure of authority – tells us something about the way organisational forms of technology insist on positioning us with regards to a place or social situation.”

. . .

Beside the group of participants from the fine art department, the Piet Zwart Institute invited two postgraduate architecture students from Iran to take part in this workshop.

All participants in the workshop approached the topic of the workshop from the perspective of their own individual artistic practice, pursuing it further into different theoretical and experiential contexts. During the workshop close discussion, either individual or within the group, lead to the development of textual articulations or artistic works, some of which are included in this supplemental issue of Pages.

Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi

Footnotes

1 Ali Madanipour is professor of urban design at the university of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Uk, and the director of the Integrated PhD program in Urban Design and a founding member of the interdisciplinary research centre Global Urban Research Unit.

2 Monika Narula is a member of the Raqs Media Collective, an artist collective based in New Delhi-India, and the co-founder of the periodical Sarai at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.

3 Karen Alexander has taught on film and cultural studies courses in London and is currently working at the British Film Institute.

4 Paul Elliman is a designer based in London. He has taught in the Cultural Studies Department at Central St. Martins School of Art, London; The School of Visual Communications, University of East London; and at the University of Texas at Austin. He has been a project tutor at the Jan van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands, since 1996, and assistant professor at Yale School of Art since 1998. Currently he is also an advisor to the new Shanghai University of Art and Design.

      

Context

July 2004 we began the search in Tehran for a location in order to set up an independent international art space. It appears to us that inevitably some important characteristics of any potential location need to be carefully considered.
As in any other city, various locations in Tehran carry out not only specific urban functions, they also possess a socio-political significance. Producing an independent art space would in one way or another force us to internalize issues relating to these paradigms from the very start. It would be futile to try to disavow the socio-political and urban significances of these locations however independent we like the space to be. Clearly the notion of a desirable art space remains relative.

This first step in the project “In search of a location for an international / independent art space in Tehran” is focusing on the various attributes and significations of locations that may or may not offer possibilities for the setting up of an art space. By launching the idea of an art space through various urban, political and social traits of each of its possible locations, a series of spatial positions are introduced that already provide a space or the means for generating art projects.
The first production out of this search is a “décor-object”, which is an extract from the first location. The original object, being a wooden built-in shelving unit with an extension frame forming a passage from the hallway to the living room, has a significant role Separating this object from its original mise-en-
object, is an attempt in diverting, however partially,
the desire for an art space towards production.

The “décor-object”, an approximate reproduction of the original shelving unit, has a height of 290 centimetres, is 78 centimetres wide, and with its extension frame carries a length of 350 centimetres. It includes four shelves each being 58 by 20 centimetre with a distance of 50 centimetres in between. The material used for this reproduction is 3-centimetre thick plywood. The object is later coated with chestnut brown finish.

The reproduced “décor-object” is a condensation of the idea of location and display at once, a trade mark for a possible independent art space.
The project “In search of a location for an international / independent art Space in Tehran” will continue to develop further and will be an on going part of the activities of pages.

* Built in the early 70’s together with the house, it is a reduced version of a once popular design that originally functioned both as spatial division and decoration. This pseudo-modernist architectural element, famous as the “decor” was first introduced in the early 50’s and is still to be found in houses from that era.

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Context

News From Tehran is the first project by PAGES that started in February 2004 and which was developed through exchange and close collaboration with Iranian artists working in different disciplines.

The project attempts to work with different representations implicitly addressed in the work of the artists involved. As a curatorial project it is neither developed on the basis of a predefined concept, nor it tries to fit individual works into preconceptions of cultural locality and representations. The result may be one of a multiplicity of concepts and perceptions introduced by the works presented.

The project takes a horizontal approach, in working explicitly with differentiations in artistic activities and productions. It can be seen as part of the broader concern with investigating how artistic practices in Iran are both constituted by and seek to address in the specific socio-political condition. The narratives these practices communicate are often themselves marked by difference and dissonance. And as such they not only resist subjectivization but also tend to escape becoming mere examples of cultural difference.

News From Tehran is rather an allusive reference to these differentiations and dissonances. "News" does not refer to the presented works as news or means of mediating news from Tehran, but rather to events and discourses circulating within the current Iranian context.

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