Arbitrary Lines in Tehran

“Arbitrary Lines” is a project by the New Media Society and Parking Video Library, which gathers seven lens-based artists who live around the globe.

Their unique and research-based approaches question mass media coverage, representations of the other, and the silent process of marginalization via micro/macro narratives. In these works, the boundaries of intimate stories and personal spaces blur with the manifestation of sociopolitical concerns.

Using various resources from print media, found-footages, and testimonies in public archives to collage and 3D models inspired by advertisements, their multifaceted perspectives reflect fragmented realities and fables, simultaneously. Most importantly, their cameras dare to capture the obscure and elusive lines of segregation and normalization. Hence, the ambiguity within the imaginary allows them to bypass loops of Nostalgia and reveal the vulnerability of the system at the same time.

The visual poetry and peculiar observations of the artists exhibit a wide spectrum of concerns.

“Script for Groundless Images” by Sanaz Sohrabi decodes the affective registers upon which military and media complexes rely for propelling and sustaining a homogeneous narrative of trauma and war. The inclusion of the interviews gathered from the American veterans of the Persian Gulf War and insertion of a fictive character tend to reveal the uncertainty and performativity of the interview as a tool for rethinking and recollection.

Sona Safaei Sooreh’s work titled “Revolving” revisits the semi-colonial history of the Iranian Oil Industry via comics, animations, and magazine ads. It seems that new propaganda messages have emerged from the initial British petroleum ads of the 1950s, tinted with a middle-eastern twist and contemporary fictional figures.

The fragments of the essay film titled “How to Leave the History Behind and Refuse to Relive it Every Day?” by Nebras Hoveizavi, next to her earlier body of collage work “Trying to Read Western Press” create familiar yet unexplored scenery inspired by poetry and alternative history.

Daily life and the delicate line between childhood and teenage years are presented through a gender-aware lens of Sara Abbasnejad.

In Anahita Hekmat’s video, the intimate/mind space appears in the distance between home and its greenhouse. We witness that the past of the present and the imagined future of the past merge.

In Negar Yaghameian’s project, the geographical boundaries that once were crucial for human growth are now changing at an unbelievable pace. Independent local shipping and trade, which was always part of life in these regions, involved human mobility and survival from one generation to another. New ways of international trade and shipping are now threatened. Large ocean-going vessels replace the movement of people and trade with small-sized Dhows. The Smell of Earth and Tree gathers photographs, maps, and other treasured possessions to reimagine these stories, many of which remain untold.

Rendered via found footage under the #earthsound hashtag, Jaleh Nesari’s piece on the future of the blue planet appears more and more frightening as its residents are becoming aware of their imposed irreversible manipulations, but their so-called environmental activism often contradicts their lifestyle and the way their artistic interpretations portray/address the crisis.

The “Arbitrary Lines” reflect on the existing lines. Whether they are growing or fading, coming close or moving away, these seven artists have shaped them all into personal, organic, entertaining, and frightening imagery. They are ephemeral and delicate tracks having captured in frames.