Iran. Making Space for New Media

25. November 2014, 17.00 Uhr Interface Culture Lecture Room, K2, 3.OG

Interface Cultures lädt im Rahmen der IC Lectures Series zum Vortrag von Amirali Ghassemi.

The Tehran of the nineteen nineties was not really acquainted with new media; the handful of galleries preferred to stick with the norms and dedicate themselves to showing painting, sculpture and, much more rarely, photography. Using images, posters and video extracts, the presentation sets out to shed some light on the progress of new media art in Iran. The talk begins with the belated emergence of media art toward the end of the last decade of twentieth century and looks at the reason why it blossomed in the early two thousands before languishing, forgotten, for several years. The forces behind its recent powerful and independent comeback are then addressed. In the absence of funding from either the government or abroad, the development of the new media art scene has only been possible thanks to collective efforts and organic self-organisation. The presentation takes video art in Iran and the way it has forged its own way ahead over the past fourteen years as a case study. Tehran’s new media scene is expanding into other cities, such as Isfahan, Sanandaj and Mashahad. At the same time, a few independent initiatives are try to push the back the boundaries in order to open up the space to more interdisciplinary practices by organising exhibitions and running festivals geared toward video art, sound and interactive projects and digital art, as well as holding regular audiovisual performance events.

Amirali Ghasemi

* 1980, Iran, is a curator, media artist and a graphic designer. He graduated in 2004 with a BA in graphic design from Central Tehran Azad University, with an emphasis on research in digital art history.In 1998, Ghasemi founded *Parkingallery*, an independent project space in Tehran and in 2002 he set up Parkingallery.com, an online platform for young Iranian artists. Ghasemi has shown his photographs, videos, design works in various festivals and exhibitions internationally.
As a curator he has been directing many exhibitions, workshops, and talks for Parkingallery projects, such as *Deep Depression (2004-06), Sideways (2008).
He has co-curated The Urban Jealousy,1st International Roaming Biennial of Tehran (2008-09) and three editions of Limited Access Festival for Video and Performance (2007-11), followed by his involvement in a variety of projects for institutions, project spaces and universities in Germany, Netherlands, Serbia, UK, Egypt, Turkey, United States, Brazil, Canada, France, Sweden, and India.
He was the guest curator for the CCBRUGGE in 2010 and along his independently curated programs like "The invisible present"( Brazil,USA) he recently guest programmed a video art section for Rotterdam and Goteborg film festivals in Jan- Feb 2013.
He is currently working with photography, video, installation and interactive projects, besides writing on the Tehran arts scene and contemporary Iranian art for various magazines and on his own art-log.
IRAN&CO is his ongoing curatorial project, an ongoing exhibition and archive of Iranian art representation beyond its border.
In summer 2014, Ghasemi co-funded New Media Society, a network base research platform and library.