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Critical Practice

Farvash

What is- the- matter Oracle?

Born in Iran, Farvash is a research-based artist whose practice is deeply rooted within Persian mythologies, histories, and ontologies.

Her practice focuses on transformative processes that span from metamorphic realities to navigating contemporary immigration guilt. 

With a background in chemistry, she redefines scientific methods within the realm of material science and art. Creation of materials by studying characteristics, qualities, properties and behaviours from the smallest material component, nanotechnology and extends all levels to performance, lectures, and installations.

While she is concerned with the coming realities, she also has an enviable past; such as negotiating with the sports ministry of Iran for female stadium access, forcing Director of Pernod Ricard to lay down on the floor and do hypnosis as well as designed security features for banknotes worldwide.

If you care to know more about the past, please visit website for CV.

Contact

Website

Degree Details

School of Arts & Humanities

Critical Practice

Whoever holds the power to matter (present time: matter that gives revenue), in return, has power over the world.

 

As a maker, my performance practice is an intuitive channelling. The performance functions as a spiritual tool. The connection between the subject, time, tension and audience, gives the body access to embedded and unconscious knowledge. Not everything is logical, rational, and describable. As for the matter/material, since our bodies are firstly materials, I believe they are embedded with information, maybe about the nonlinear past or a potential nonlinear future. And maybe even: there is no separation of a past or future, they are both the same. 

So if "Matter/Material" is a vehicle to access other realities, so what is "matter"?

I´m interested in materials, since I see them as a vessel of past and future knowledge. In our present time, materials are politics, it is an embodiment of the financial structure and it holds the intention of society as well as the direction of a society. Material science is a discipline developing new materials, traditionally driven by two defined forces, "market pull", and "technology push" where “technology push” is mostly governed by military industries, health industries and national strategies. While "market pull" is a market requested development, for example, the speedy development of VR for sex industries. Material science today functions as applied science to provide us a market-oriented technological human development. 

Who decides the direction of our future and our society? Who makes the decision? Who has the power to change it? And what is my role as an artist?

Questions such as these contextualize the material aspect of my practice and serve to explain why I create my own materials. My practice is a process, which dismantles the forces, which are continually shaping my identity and my interests. This connects to my central interest in the origin and future of the imagination, and its relationship to capitalism and power-based social structures.

In the 1984 book Reasons and Persons, philosopher Derek Parfit asks the reader to consider the following scenario: 

“You step into a teleportation machine that scans your complete atomic structure, annihilates you, and then relays that atomic information to Mars at the speed of light. There, a similar machine recreates your exact atomic structure and composition using locally available resources. Have you just travelled, Parfit asks, or have you committed suicide?”

The arrangement of molecular components gives a whole new set of conditions. If a material can never be destroyed nor created but always transform into a new matter would it still contain the memory of its past? 

In one parallel reality, I died, I got burned, and my ashes were compressed into a carbon stone. Does that stone have my consciousness embedded? Left for xx years, one day, in a new world a creature type: "dog" eats the stone, poops it out. As I am now an inanimate material, traveling inside the dog and then I am pooped out on this material called concrete - what information is left within the body of this poo-like material?

ParadoxTaleofLogicGate_Deep Sleep2020 — Please check scheduled timings
LIVE Schedule:

16th - 9AM Here / 9PM at CAP page
17th - 9AM Here / 9PM at CAP page
18th - 9AM Here / 9PM at CAP page

25th - 9AM Here / 9PM at CAP page
26th - 9AM Here / 9PM at CAP page
27th - 9AM Here / 9PM at CAP page
28th - 9AM Here / 9PM at CAP page

Paradox tale of Logic Gate is a fictional myth based on the concept of “Gharbzadegi غرب‌زدگی /Westernization,” which is one of the theories leading to the 1979 revolution in Iran. It is investigating how control of access to high technology is power and how the suppression of technology/knowledge creates totalitarian governments with structural belief systems. The work is looking at the future and past of material concealment as a method to enter these two paradox realities.

The performance is a body of works with multiple narratives built around Citizen 000 00X and their territory. It aims understand the relation between isolation, self-control, and ancestry trauma. A non-linear time-traveling - braiding past and future sub-consciousness into a ritual, investigating how control can travel beyond borders and time. Paradox tale of Logic Gate is a window into their no-land and their ritual of pray.

Medium:

Performance

Size:

Duration 5min - 30min

In Collaboration with:

Sound
Photography
Assistant
Art and Sciencecontrolisolationmaterial sciencemyth sciencePerformanceScience Fictionself-censorshipTechnologyTerritoriesTraumawesternisation

AND Citizen of no mans land; — Hanger

OR Techno Soldier; — Uniform

Don’t worry babe; — Poem / Sound

Don’t worry babe; — Poem / Sound

XOR As the voice of public; — Performance

NOR Constructed as I, machine; — Performance

Citizen 000 001 is an embodiment of personal and collective trauma dealing with the sense of alienation, and a constant strive to create a territory of belonging. Being torn between “Gharbzadegi غرب‌زدگی” adaption to west, the "privileged guilt" of being an immigrant, with a feeling of imposed fear and control. (Within my culture – even undesirable immigration is considered a privilege. Having a sense of not belonging but still having to be grateful. There are many amongst my generation that deals with suffering mental health due to this concept) Marking becomes a method of taking control and searching for a place of belonging.

The uniform
A reference to a historical camouflage, this exact pattern was used in combat.
The camouflage is very unique because the colors were changed from the function of disruption to a symbolic pattern. The colors were made as a tool to unite the soldiers under one belief - martyrdom. The red is for courage and martyrdom, green for religion, white for peace. The uniform is hand-embroidered on a couture level to adapt it to a western fetishization and glorification of war and camouflage.

Medium:

Hanger: Aluminum, Rope, Stainless Steel / Uniform: Glass Beads, Hand embroidery, Tulle

Size:

1600*2000mm
Logic Gate; Control Unit One — Satellite Dish, Display

Exhibit OR — Poem / Sound

Sound Experience — Deep Search at 14:13 / Don´t Worry babe; at 16:20 / Westernisation; at 18:11 / Control Room; at 20:46 / Westernisation; at 22:56 / Deep Search; at 25:22 / Don’t Worry Babe; at 27:47 / Don’t Worry Babe; at 30:52 / Connecting to the Mothers at 33:05 /
Future of Concealment

The display is within the family of printed electronics. Why this technology is particularly interesting as a future material of concealment is because is flexible, thin, potentially cheap to scale to mass production and has Super low energy consumption. It has also the ability to change colors without transmitting light.
It is hand screen printed and with 12 different screens of electro-active inks and patternings to create the display.

Medium:

Display: Pdot, Silver, Carbon, E-lyt / Satellite Dish: Stainless Steel

Size:

250*250mm / 700*700mm

In Collaboration with:

Hans Appelqvist
Don't Worry Babe; — Performance

It’s the Gate of Logic; — Performance, Installation

Control Room; — Schematics

‘Westernized’
‘Westoxification’
‘Gharbzadegi‘ غرب‌زدگی refers to the loss of Iranian cultural identity through the adoption and imitation of Western models and Western criteria.

This narrative looks at western society uses oppression of technology as warfare, and how suppression of technology gives birth to new mythologies and constructs stronger belief systems.

Medium:

Mixed Media, Schematics

Size:

Performance
Paradox Machine; — Sculpture, performance
Elahe — "Be yade saiad"بیاد سایاد Composer Morteza Hananeh, Lyrics Elahe

Medium:

Performance, installation,

Size:

durational

NAND
 Imagined Myth; — Satellite dish

NOR 

Maybe it’s an arranged belief; — Performance

XNOR
 Dear Guardian Commander; — Prayer Mat, Details

Don’t worry babe; — Prayer Mat, Performance

Its just Logic. — Drawing, Display

Its just Logic. — Drawing, Display

Thank you for taking your Time

Medium:

Mixed Media, Sculpture, installation, Performance

Size:

Durational
Launch Project

Situationist RCA

Research Institute Sweden

Yusuf Mulla Jessica Ahlin Kathrin Hübscher Björn Norberg

Website:

https://www.ri.se

Team Tony

Photography

Hans Appelqvist

Sound

By Lo Sweden

Tailor

Patrik Engström

Photography
16 July 2020
8:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice: Farvash – Paradox Tale of Logic Gate

A performance
Read More
27 July 2020
17:00 (GMT + 0)
Zoom

Past/Future as a form of Resistance

Organised by Peter Spanjer with Sonya Dyer, Tanoa Sasraku & Alexandria Smith, Students Questions
27 July 2020
13:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice Talk: Chapter 2 – Fictioning as a Form of Resistance

with Sonia Bernaciak and Lawrence Lek
31 July 2020
13:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice Talk: Archiving as a Form of Resistance

with Bisan Abu Eisheh and Michael Rakowitz
30 July 2020
17:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice Talk: Chapter 3 – Archiving as a Form of Resistance

with Bisan Abu Eisheh and Michael Rakowitz
21 July 2020
17:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice Talk: Chapter 1 – Empathy and Care as a Form of Resistance

with Jennifer Martin and Beverley Bennett
22 July 2020
13:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice Talk: Chapter 1 – Empathy and Care as a Form of Resistance

with Jennifer Martin and Beverley Bennett – REPLAY
25 July 2020
8:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice: Farvash: Paradox Tale of Logic Gate

Performance and Q&A with Citizen 000 001
26 July 2020
17:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice: Talk Chapter 2 – Fictioning as a Form of Resistance

With Sonia Bernaciak and Lawrence Lek
25 July 2020
20:00 (GMT + 0)

Contemporary Art Practice: Farvash – Paradox Tale of Logic Gate

Performance and Q&A with Citizen 000 001

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