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Theory of Survival Publication/ Arts at CIIS/ Fall 2015 Theory of Survival: Fabrications was organized by Taraneh Hemami at Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco from September 5 to October 25, 2014, with Morehshin Allahyari, Ali Dadgar, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H. Fallah, Arash Fayez, Hushidar Mortezaie, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Sanaz Mazinani, Amitis Motevalli, Haleh Niazmand, Azin Seraj and Taravat Talepasand. Historical Memory as Aesthetic Practice: Iranian Diasporic Artists Interpret a Revolutionary Archive. Manijeh Nasrabadi If remembering is always a subjective act then it is also al- ways a political act, for the selectivity of memory (including Above, from left to right: Dozd Bazaar, by Hushidar Mortezaie; I stand with, by Amitis Motevalli; Revolusign, by Ali Dadgar; Below: Theory of Survival: Fabrications; Architectural Design by H. Majd that which is forgotten) can be understood as an individual, Design Group; at Southern Exposure Gallery, Fall 2014, San Francisco, CA unpredictable response to multiple relations of power. When it comes to traumatic events—such as revolution, dislocation, anti-racist and anti-Vietnam war organizing that shook Ameri- and war—such responses are matters of survival; some people can society, this movement is virtually unknown among those work hard to forget while others cling to moments in the past as who study U.S. social history of that era. if their lives depended on never letting go. Sometimes memory Like many American activists, the ISA was deeply influenced by is unruly, refusing to submit to the will of the conscious mind, anti-colonial revolutions across the Third World, especially those like a restless ghost with its own agenda. One way or another, in China, Cuba, and Vietnam. A significant number of its mem- truths are shaped through this disjointed relationship with the bers went on to join underground leftist parties, returning to past. Conclusions are drawn about what was and what might Iran to participate in the 1978–79 revolution. Despite nuanced have been, and each has political implications for the stance differences in ideology and strategy, these parties overwhelm- one takes towards the future. ingly supported Khomeini’s rise to power, never imagining that Theory of Survival: Fabrications turns the politics of memory into the faction he led would soon utilize the resources of the newly both a research question and an aesthetic challenge. Thirteen formed state apparatus to hunt them down one by one. The vio- diasporic Iranian artists from different generations and back- lence was extreme, practically eradicating an entire generation grounds were invited to engage with an archive of the Iranian of Marxists. The Left’s miscalculation of Khomeini’s intentions Students Association (ISA), the anti-Shah student movement and of its own role in the revolution has been used to discredit that mobilized thousands of young people in the U.S. through- its legacy and to cut later generations off from its radical gene- out the 1960s and 1970s. Though the ISA was involved in the alogy. Silence was often all that remained—the silence of offi- 1 lution” itself was cleansed of its opposi- ed to look like a round piece of flesh Fabrications confronts the tional connotations and invested with pierced by a bullet. It is worth pointing viewer with a collection of the disciplinary authority of the state out that both of these artists have fam- that ruled in its name. ily ties to the Tudeh era of the 1940s, memories that move through If feelings of guilt, despair, isolation when Iran experienced the growth of a different moments in time, and disorientation made it difficult for mass communist party for the first time. fabricating the objects the leftist veterans of the revolutionary This longer genealogy of radicalism ap- necessary to get us there moment to speak about their aspirations pears in Niazmand’s work in the form of and losses, the generation that came handwritten poetry by famous dissident and back. after was also denied any kind of col- writers such as Forugh Farrokhzad and ment unfold through the digital ephem- lective, public reckoning with this lega- Khosrow Golsorkhi, found among her era that helped to sustain it, the memory cy—if they knew about it at all. Hence father’s papers and now reproduced as of what might have been is preserved, the significance of Fabrications, which text stitched into the fabric of her ele- much in the way the yellowing pages encourages personal encounters with gant chiffon dresses. Mortezaie includes of ISA literature constitute evidence an ISA archive and collects them in one selections from his father’s archive of of a different vision of revolutionary place. Assembling these individual in- Tudeh-era works by leftist literary fig- transformation that never came to pass. stallations in a group show format high- ures such as Nima Yushij and Samad Ala Ebtekar, inspired by the exhibition’s lights the heterogeneity of diasporic Behrangi, whose faces are printed on invitation to engage with a revolution- engagements with—and relationships pillows with ropes tied around their ary archive, delved into his own family to—a shared traumatic past, as each necks. Though they did not live to see history and discovered that his relatives artist makes a distinct statement about the events of 1979, Yushij and Behran- had collected and maintained an audio what it means to look back. At the same gi nonetheless helped to radicalize that archive of revolutionary songs and news time, however, the multiplicity of images generation of revolutionaries. broadcasts from 1979. He remixed these and sounds, the juxtaposition of histori- Since much of the ISA’s activity was tracks onto cassette tapes—the mass cal and contemporary cultural referenc- focused on exposing U.S. support for technology of the time that was widely es, and the diversity of aesthetic sensi- the torture and execution of dissidents used to spread anti-Shah propaganda— bilities generates a milieu in which the in Iran under the Shah, it should come sometimes adding his own voiceover viewer can become immersed, drawn as no surprise that blood was a central as English translation, in order to “(re) first to one display and then another motif in the group’s printed propaganda. consider the moment when the future based on whatever catches the eye— Hemami engages with this repetition cial histories (in both the U.S. and in Iran) Top: Theory of Survival Gift Shop, by Taraneh Hemami; of Iran was as hopeful as a high school much like in a bazaar. through formal reproduction of every- that represent the revolution as “Islamic” at Fabrications, Southern Exposure Gallery, Fall 2014 mix-tape.” This is intentional, of course, as the day objects; for example, she copied a in a monolithic and axiomatic sense, and It is perhaps this desire for reapprais- Some people work hard to artistic visionary behind the project, graphic of a single drop of blood from the silence of those struggling to hold al of the impulse towards revolutionary Taraneh Hemami, set out to make a pop- an ISA pamphlet and produced refrig- their heads above an ocean of grief. forget while others cling to transformation that forms the most co- up bazaar full of objects that blur the line erator magnets, and she silkscreened a The former ISA members who sur- moments in the past as if their herent theme of the exhibit and that between art and commodity, harness- more elaborate glob of multiple drips vived and returned to the U.S. found approaches something like a politics of lives depended on never ing the ambivalence, irony and provoca- onto throw pillows and handkerchiefs. themselves among a growing popula- remembering. Rather than a collective letting go. tion of the Pop Art tradition. The viewer As if to belabor the point—and evoke tion of exiles, many of whom held the memory of a hidden history, Fabrications is invited to touch each object as a con- the rhetorical style of the movement it- anti-Shah student movement partly to confronts the viewer with a collection of sumer would examine the merchandise self—she manufactured and displayed blame for creating the conditions which memories that move through different in a shop, attaching complex desires to the variously shaped drops and drips forced them to leave. Pro-Shah sympa- moments in time, fabricating the objects its form and function, imagining oneself found throughout the archive as glossy, thies predominant among the post-79 necessary to get us there and back. wearing or using it in one’s everyday life, candy-apple red wall ornaments, their Iranian immigrants, and the virulent an- Ali Dadgar’s wall of protest placards inspecting the item up close for possible ghostly shadows hinting at the horrors ti-Iranian sentiment that swept U.S. soci- seems to reaffirm the need for mass purchase. It is this closer inspection that they were initially intended to represent. ety in the 1980s, left little room for the action today by presenting images and disrupts the comfortable familiarity of a Not every artist makes such explicit public mourning of martyred comrades. slogans referencing the current moment shopping experience and offers instead use of the images found in the books, Nor was there space to express the an- of U.S. drone warfare and Israeli occupa- a confrontation with an archive of pain pamphlets, and leaflets that make up ti-imperialist fervor that had animated tion of Palestine, while simultaneously and suffering. the ISA archive. Indeed, several artists the ISA and that was now wielded by the engaging in a critique of slogans that ex- The red sequins on that glittering jack- work with different archives altogether, Islamic Republic to justify its persecution press the nationalist ideologies of both et cut like something Michael Jackson such as Moreshin Allahyari’s “#AsYou- of dissidents.

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