city of story theatre

micmacs

KAOS theatre

counterpoint

The Rite of Spring - The Riot of Spring

goldberg variation

Jacques Lecoq mime

mirroring notes of counterpoint Bach

Contrapunctus XII, Art of the Fugue:
http://www.teoria.com/articulos/analysis/kdf/XII/eng/index.html

red alarm

This is what I was hearing as a child at the time of Iraq bombing Tehran. W'e'd go to basement to be safe but it was just another game for me. In fact I loved the excitement, hiding, and basement gathering with neighbours and didn't bothered about war as much as I remember. I feel I should do something with this sound.

musical chairs

I find choreographing musical chair for officers intriguing. This is from Evita.

Roulette

I have interest in the from and function of this object, also on concept of Casino and games in general. Im particularly fascinated with kinetic toy-like round objects such as hourglass, spin top, or holahoop.

pendulum Waves

When hearing music brain of the beholder tries to put the audio and visual together, even though they're not designed to match in this example. This is all physics but it looks magical.

victor gama

Form of his instrument (which he designed himself) is really interesting. He showed lots of other creative instruments at ROH a few weeks ago. it's a visual theatrical experience as well as musical when you see him playing.

octave

The art of fugue, bach counterpoint 1

Steve Reich Six Marimbas Counterpoint

military music and ritual in Tehran

Mourning for the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE.  This ritual is still live in Iran and it started from 17th century. Even those who are not really religious they participate. In my childhood experience it has been a theatrical playground or a carnival which contain music, performance, certain colours, and certain food. European travellers wrote about violence of this ritual in 17th century in Isfahan.it's not violence in current in Iran as far as I know. However In 2009 this ritual turned to protest against government, which was followed by utmost violence of government against people. The shift from replicating war sense to actual war doesn't seem to be very surprising to me. Now we have two war sense to replicate in coming years! Here is a video:

war dance

Sabre Dance is a movement in the final act of the ballet Gayane written by Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian.

Dance in Iran before Islamic revolution

Pictures of dance in Iran before revolution on first half of the video is surprising to see for me. This is a swedish ballet company who's doing sort of persian dance. It doesn't seem interesting but still. Sheherzade ballet seem more profound and middle eastern, although the music is not classical persian!

ballet Sheherazade & Persian march

ballet Sheherazade composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888. Based on one thousand and one nights.

 

Music is persian march by johann strauss. He composed it when Nasereddin shah, king of Iran visited Europe.

Persepolise music is composed based on persian march. It is subttler and in a way less of a march I think

choir dancing

This is a experiment I've done yesterday.

Michel Gondry- music videos

I am not interested in the music but the music video. There's equivalent of every bits of music with image. For example when we hear higher note we also see a bold imagery such as the bridge. Image and music represent equal intensity in relation to one another. Gondry actually plotted out the synchronization of the song on graph paper before creating the video, eventually "modelling" the scenery with oranges, forks, tapes, books, glasses and tennis shoes.
 I'm interested in bringing this to sculpture.

In this one he had represented each element of the music with a dancer.

improvising on accidents

I had random prints of books on the floor and a few microphones between them. I started walking in them anxiously. While I was looking for critical information in papers audience was experiencing noise which was adding to my anxious behaviour. Then I started improvising on some of the texts I found. little by little I found texts about crime and death.  I read the, out loud and then asked audience to sing from musical notes that I found. Similarly I've created another narrative on singing by giving them more texts about 'Structure' and 'methodology'. In this experiment I was looking to improvise narratives through fragments of information. By adding extra sound of papers I was looking to exaggerate drama and intensity of the narrative and taking the audience attention from materiality of papers to their content back and forth.

Christian Marclay's "The Clock"

I've seen this in venice biennial and had no idea about it. while I was sitting for 45 mins I just looked at my watch and released it's synch with the video I'm watching. Those who had this knowledge already didn't enjoyed the piece much. I had a golden moment of living with piece. 

Marianela Nunez rehearsal

I'm posting this as an example of obsessive orchestrated synchronisation of sound, movement, body and rhythm. I've found the rehearsal video after I saw the piece live at ROH. I'm more interested in rehearsal compared to live perfromance as it reveals sensitivity of synchronisation through choreographer's counting and directing. I think I'm quite obsessed by relationship of details that are carefully looked after.

Dance notation.

Micro attempts can't go more exact and anal than this. This quality is also seen in martial art, calligraphy, and playing an instrument. In all of them performer is conscious of her minor moves but action is executed through an atomicity which is result of practice. I think It is a self critical task as there's no end to how 'perfect' one can be with body.

Perforative choreography in tea ceremony! This is not only tea to drink, but also to feel through all senses and most importantly performer make you wait for the final aimed pleasure, drinking. Keeping one waiting to give pleasure is fetishistic in a way. 

ADHD and Sensory Stimulation

ADHD has a very close relationship to hyper focus activities such as playing musical instrument, or risk taking activities such as extreme sports. It also has a relationship with desire for physical interaction, and constant stimulations such as procrastinating and working under deadline. This is all fascinating for me and closely related to the type of art I'm looking at.

ADHD Improves With Sensory Intervention
ADHD and Sensory Stimulation
"Many children with ADHD also suffer from sensory processing disorder, a neurological underpinning that contributes to their ability to pay attention or focus," explained Koenig. "They either withdraw from or seek out sensory stimulation like movement, sound, light and touch."

Perhaps the reason why nature calm down mind of an ADHD person is becuse it's highly sensory visually, auditory, etc. ADHD's love gardening and cooking as well, both of which engage senses.

This film stayed( and still ha) in my mind for a long time. what fascinate me is how it portrait senses. The angel want to expereince what human being experience though senses. I'm interested in how he goes into people mind, experience them,  and hear them.

Same apply to The diving bell and the butterfly where the main character misses his adventure life due to accident and he start a journey through his imagination. We experience inability of the character as we are watching from eye of this character. We lose health and start to realise its value. Through his eyes we experience a frustrated desire to move, to talk, to express, and to enjoy. the director, Julian Schnabel, is in fact a painter and he has improvised on the spot whilst making the film. I think that's why the film is very inventive and fluid.

'Life and nothing more' by Kiarostami is also direct the viewer symbolically to celebrate being live. Although Kiarostami has a more philosophical attitude towards life, very much influenced by Khayam poetry and also Eastern Buddhist traditions (at least in his early films). He often losses aesthetic and visual details in favour of concept. His films repeat theme of life and death and the contrast between the two which suggest subtly to celebrate life and the moment. But it demand's audience patience as it doesn't offer much visual aesthetic pleasure, accomplished cinematography, or professional actors. He also like Julian Schnabel comes from fine art background, and he question cinema and approach it through symbols.  His film as well as his thoughts behind them affect me intellectually but simplicity goes too far. I think I'm drawn to irrational/fictional quality or dramatic cinematography which is often missed from his works. 

Joshua Bell, The four seasons

You can see how alert Joshua Bell seems in this video.  This is perfect example of flow described by Csikszentmihalyi.

extreme sport!

Present feeling, risk taking, alert concentration, and reaching limits of your body and mind, decision making on the spot interests me. The anarchy in extreme sports is similar to some of the art I'm looking at currently; I'm also looking into relationship of extreme sport and ADHD. I think desire to take risk is directly connected to an ADHD. if you're life is in danger and you're the one directing it to survive you have no choice but focusing on the moment with 100% focus. For an ADHD who naturally experience whirling of thoughts and emotion this is a relief to have clear mind. That's why these people either can't concentrate or they are hyper focus.

 I believe artworks that provide material for more senses function better for these people, particularly those art works that are absorbing and don't allow audience to be absent in the moment of experiencing. 

Here is study on emotions through extreme sports:

Feeling the extreme: An exploratory study of experienced emotions during extreme sport

John Smith films

Bright
The kiss


I'm drawn to music video type of films recently.

Sara Sze

I'm interested in her work for it's theatrical quality, use of light, risky installed elements, and cosmic quality. there are focus point with how she take the object to perspective and then release them. I wish she could make them without everyday objects that are too recognisable such as water bottle. If using landscape or figure is too representational in contemporary art using ready mades is beyond that.

Richard Serra

Agian my fascination with risk. Richard Serra's steel parts are leaning on each other, of course with pre calculation. This is in permanent collection at Tate now. Although the whole point is experiencing it, health and safety considered fence around it. So you can only see it from a very 'Safe' perspective which is disappointing. Tate is often disappointing with presentation!

the other, Rest energy 1980

This is best of Abramovic to me, celebration of the moment and being in present. pleasure of feeling live by getting very close to death! I like this performance for many reasons but risk option is on top of my list.  How she is dependent on him and the fact that arrow is facing her and that he is in power to penetrate bring it close to discourse of feminism. Fragments of Pina's choreography is very similar to this performance.

I have same reasoning to find this sculpture by henry moor interesting. There's a edition of it in contemporary museum of Tehran and I remember I was holding my hand on the sharp edges when I was passing by.

spell stop motion

I might have thought of sharp edges in my work when I made Spell a few years ago.

 

Death proof, by Quentin Tarantino.

"Tarentino films have been characterized for nonlinear storylines, satirical subject matter and the aestheticization of violence that often results in the exhibition of neo-noir characteristics'

"...Tarantino presents violence as a form of expressive art...[in which the]...violence is so physically graceful, visually dazzling and meticulously executed that our instinctual, emotional responses undermine any rational objections we may have. Tarantino is able to transform an object of moral outrage into one of aesthetic beauty

"Beauty and violence", he calls the film "a groundbreaking aestheticization of violence." is "a breathtaking landscape in which art and violence coalesce into one unforgettable aesthetic experience".

                                          

Fight club! 

Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer comes in my mind right after Pina. I'm interested in intense drama of both, expressive gestures of material, ambiguity of fiction and reality in his multimedia pieces as he use photo, sculpture and painting. It is very striking to inter a room and face his work which surround you through massive scale

The film is done really well, it brings narrative of war through his work even better than his work alone in a gallery.  Music, camera, and location added drama to his works. 

pina

Pina had great deal of influence on me. The intensity of drama,  post war violence, male-female relationship, surreal imagery,  discrepancy of humour to violence and beauty to suffering.

She is dancing in a transcendence state and that fascinate me. There's choreography for performer's hair in pretty much all of her works.

BABEL, Sidi Larbi

I'm interested in new space created by movement of minimal set here, which is done by British sculptor, Antony Gormley. The relationship of moving space with performers has created a magical quality to it. However choreography isn't satisfying. Any entertaining artefact that isn't subtle or layered with meaning/criticism is out of my horizon. I think I admire comedy-noire as it keeps the drama and it respect audience intellect and intelligence.

dOCUMENTA (13) - William Kentridge - The Refusal Of Time,

I think I dreamed of similar kinetic sculpture once, only I'm not sure if it was after seeing this in Documenta or before. I enjoyed this work in all aspect, sound and animations was so immersive and playful that I was almost losing my flight on last minute to come back to London. This peice was like when you're dreaming and you know you are dreaming. Yet you want to save important information in your asleep memory for the time you wake up as you know it's vital information.  The surreal atmosphere, the play between real and fiction, and composition of sync/ out of sync image and sound, also voice over of narrator on top of all was extraordinary. The peice was offering garvity of meaning in dreamy and often chaotic format. Use of black colour in Kentridge works is bold as always and this drawn audience in. 

Forest / Karlsaue / Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller

Video of this sound piece doesn't justifies pleasure and experience you could get from this piece in Documenta. Sound was coming from all around us just like home theatre. It was believable and you'd start closing your eyes and imagining events. Displacement of site by hearing real sound of the forest followed by sound of war then choir. It was time travel just as your mind travel in any instant from one event to the other. This is what I experienced also in 'Master and Margarita' play. In this sound piece I'm interested in transitional moment from when you believe it's war to when you believe its choir singing through your senses. In Master and Margarita you'd believe it's devil then it change to Jesus or you believe Jerusalem on stage and in a instant you are in Moscow; and you're just in fact in theater hall, and all the time travel goes on in your imagination. As soon as you believe in a time and place, the piece take you to another time and place. I think  woolworths choir by  Elizabeth Price had the same quality with transitions. I should write about hers separately.

lter Bahnhof Video Walk, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

This interactive piece was disorienting and seductive. It was engaging enough for audience of Documenta who has the whole city to explore to investigate about 20 minutes of his time and mental/physical attentions.  It was living in two realities at the same time. One in your actual time and place and in the rail station and the other in the memory of events which was repeated by you going though. You could believe what you see on the screen and miss your feet on the ground. There was very subtle point where you'd realise you're actually in the station and not in the video. In this sense the transition point between present and past or real and fiction was keep going back and forth. The fact that this was happening with such a minimal tool made it even more interesting.

complicite, master and margarita

                                         

The musical correspondence between various elements in complicite reflect collective creation, presence of casts in the moment, and percise directing. No wander why he direct Opera. Here is theatre synchronisation of music, light, sound, actors, can't go more precise.  If anyone has a hyperactive mind like me, would appreciate pace of the work. It reflect how brain jump from one subject or memory to another.  Schizophrenic relationship of the narrative along with time travels, from Moscow to hell was believable, and all the fragments started to have meaning after a while. Everything seemed to be committed to the story. Time was as crucial for all the cast as it is for musitians in an orchestra. It felt that they had to perform bar of music in a right time. I am drwan to sensory heightened aspect of it, which was also a criticism for some people. He recreated a surreal Russian novel on the stage using both simple objects and technological mediums purposefully.  Use of magic tricks was surprising but the experience lasted longer than seeing an illusionist and that owes to Bulgakov  timeless story. Use of opposites both in terms of content and form lead audience from one end to the other while offering variations. Opposites such as casting the same actor for devil and Jesus, mirroring actors with projection, mirroring audience on the stage, contrasts of humour and tragedy. You'd get very close to drama by directing audience to humour. It is also clever to choose such a fragmental absurd novel for theatre since it is almost impossible to adapt it for film successfully. Devils and monsters are disappointing in films, except for early cinema that things weren't so real perhaps.

Here is the film of Master and Margarita. 

 

I'm also interested in the fact that he improvise the whole work 'unknowns that reveal themeselves in the process'. This is what we do as fine artists. Such plasticity is impossible to afford in film production. With improvisation one rely on instinct rather than polluted rational decisions; it put us in touch with wealth of unconscious material; it is a state of transforming chaos to from; and it is core of creation in any discipline.  A writer, painter or composer start from blank canvas and improvisation comes naturally. In a collective creation like theatre that a group start from a story, the only way to find the blank canvas to create a new world is improvisation. 

Also the fact that complicite use suggestions and story is completed in mind of audience bring it very close to practice of fine art. What's great about theatre is that it doesn't impose full vision like a film; it leave space for audience to imagine using their own vision. In that sense good theatre is hand in hand with story. When one read a story one imagine it freely. Giving such freedom to audience when adapting a story is more essential than making the story word by word. That's how Moscow was experienced in London for me seeing Master and Margarita. 

Elizabeth Price, USER GROUP DISCO

I'm also influenced by Elizabeth price, specially with complexity of layeres. fiction-real. obsessive edit that resulted in amazing synchronisation of sound and moving image.

Michel Gondry's music video

I'm influenced by Micheal Gondry's surreal imagery, use of mirrors, and mad relation of situations! fragments work in same way as brain jumps!

performance document

This is document of one to one performance I've done. I asked audience to listen to each other's heart beat. The simple tool was blocking any other noise of environment and after a while it was confusing as we were both feeling we're listening to our own heart beat and not the other person's.
I was going to wear same colour as the tool and also put a drink (in same colour such as cafe) and have mirrors as prop but I changed my mind.

This photo collage is work in progress. 

just found this quotes in Surrealism. by Patrick Waldberg

' its aim is to express pure thought, freed of all controls imposed by reason and by moral and social prejudices' page 12, 

' only imagination makes me of the possible, and that is enough to lift a little the terrible restriction; enough also for me to surrender to imagination without fear of being mistaken' page 16

Cindy Sherman

I'm interested in Cindy Sherman photoe's as she dissolve in different characters, identities and situations. Although she becomes them visually which bore me as you can just predict her work after you see first once. I guess I need more complex layers, sensational process to be satisfied in an art work. But you can naturally transform to somebody else's character just as actor do. I do that on sound and gestures.

seeker and desirable

This is video of a sculpture I've done. I guess it came out of those moments I was dissolving in waves coming in the beach, the moment when water join and disappear in sand. It also respond to a site in Iran, basement of a mosque.

casting the tree in Goldsmiths campus

Time and Tide Bell by Marcus Vergette

I like this sculpture for its correspondence with nature.The bell rings with rise and fall of the sea. Marcus and I are aiming to collaborate on one piece together but we haven't came up with it yet.

images of video I made a while ago

images of video that I made in south bank

Kiarostami on making of five

Kiarostami is integrated in his philosophical attitude toward nature and he facilitate this in technicality of his cinematography. This is not something you can grasp from the film it self but it's his secret codes that he reveals in an interview like this. Here he is explaining how he give control to coincidence in his  and how he consciously consider a role for chance. This narrative that resulted in final film add a lot more value to his film.

Improvisation is core element in Persian music. Here Keyhan Kalhor is explaining 'what you play change when you change'. His music is fundamentally influential for me.

This painting is by Sohrab Speheri. I'm interested in Sepehri's poetry, although his paintings illustrate his poetry both in terms of subject matter and style. His poems are light hearted and induce Buddhist ideas, mysticism and western taraditions. He mingled the Western concepts with Eastern ones to create his poetry. I used to read them as a teenager. I can follow my interest from him to Kiarostami's film. Story happen in setting of a village in major works of both of them although Kiarostami address more philosophical meanings whereas Sepehri leave us with a nostalgic and child like pleasure. Yet we see tree as a bold part of image in Kiarostami setting as well as his photographs. He make a road on top of a flat hill and locate a tree there in one of his films.

The Tenants

here in another film of Mehrjooi we see one of the characters singing to his flowers and trees and talking to them in order to preserve them.

Kodirsar cemetery

This is considered holly tree. It is located in a village in the middle of a cemetery in north of Iran. That's my friend who is making a wish by binding a piece of fabric to the tree. There is so much meaning attach to this tree.

The Pear Tree

Here we see section of the film where people living in the village are talking to a tree that hasn't had fruIt like other trees of the garden. I'm interested in such intimate relationship of people with nature when it's rooted in their rituals.

I am interested in minutes 27 of the video where Liam is saying he wants dancers to keep the realism so that  the audience forget steps. "people should get so lost in what they see that they shouldn't see steps, it's ballet but it should cross every boundary that there is. it should transcendent to a completely different genre" I'm interested in taking singular rhythmic elements (from sound and movement) into an immersive whole to the point where basic elements are forgotten.

swan

The relationship of swan and dancers fascinate me. Although the final result is not aesthetically pleasing perhaps because of choreography. However lack of it has resulted in more poetry and natural feeling of the piece.