Process
Interview with Nazgol Ansarinia
Towards the end of my month-long trip in Iran, I had the opportunity to sit down and interview Nazgol Ansarinia. Ansarina has been an artist who I have been referencing and admiring for a long time. I felt very nervous and unprepared in the lead up and I rocked up with a few shoddily written questions on my Ipad. We spoke for almost an hour. The first half was in a more traditional interview format where Nazgol explained parts of her practice through recent projects - her inspiration and processes. Then the remaining 30 minutes became more of a conversation between two artists. In which I was largely trying to get her approval (something that really made me cringe listening back). However, Nazgol was very gratuitous and thorough in answering my questions. I plan on fully translating the interview in the future but for now I will summarise some key moments.
When asking Nazgol about what drew her interest to the demolition and redevelopment happening in Tehran she explained that her focus is always relevant to the context that she’s in. At the moment it’s Tehran. Something will grab her attention and she will become obsessed with it and spend all her awareness on it. She later added that once she starts a project she has to see it all the way through until the very end, spanning years in the process. She routinely walked past a house that was getting demolished and one day asked the workmen on site if she could come and film their process. They agreed and she explained that so much work came from the documentation of the demolition of one building. This really drew me in, as I have spent the majority of my life documenting and archiving daily moments. At this point in the interview I thought about how much work could come from the images and films on my harddrive.
Ansarina observed this last layer of life of a person/family before it was completely destroyed and made into a new one. “Seeing parts of life that weren’t valuable enough to take.” As she kept working on this series of works she never had a clear view of the end and the content kept evolving itself. I spoke to her about my grandmother's house and how it shared the same fate as the building she documented. She too expressed her fear for her grandparents house, both of whom are long gone, but their house has been sitting empty for nearly 15 years. I wonder which is more painful.
One of the most important moments of the interview for me came when I asked her about her source material and research methods. I asked her if she had a few artists that inspired her and she told me that she tends not to look at other artists, because when she has an idea, the idea is hers and if she sees another artist with the same idea she doesn't want it to be a deferring agent in her creation of the work. I was surprised to hear this as a large focus in art education is this knowledge of what’s already been done. But, when I think about it more I realise that 2 people will never express the same idea in the same exact way. There will always be something new to be felt by each artist's expression. In my own journey I have felt the benefits of seeing other painters' works and learning about their methods. It has widened my own understanding of the medium and the different ways I can use paint as a tool for communication of thoughts. It’s been so useful largely because I never used to do it. I do think, however, that after the Masters is finished I will need a long period of self discovery in reconnecting to a style of work I was developing pre all the noise.
Finally this quote from the interview when discussing her empty pool series - the pool being an empty void, a void that once had a specific function and now void due to the rise in higher story apartments and therefore a lack of privacy - She said something like: Why are the pools empty? My conclusion might be completely wrong but this is what I think and that’s all that matters! Reminding me of a quote from Georgia Okeefe I heard in Megan Marcle archetypes podcast episode titled: ‘The Audacity of the Activists with Jamil & Shohreh Aghdashloo’. The quote being: “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.” I inspire to be the same as these inspirational women.
Graffiti
Nazgol described how her art is usually in response to her surroundings. Graffiti has become a backdrop to our daily urban lives. Lately in my work it has become a part of my settings and perhaps practice.
During my journeys to uni, whether it be in a DSA taxi or by train, I always notice the graffiti on the walls. There’s this one wall in Peckham which I found the competing styles to work quite harmoniously together - creating a collage of identities. Recently it was covered up by the council, or perhaps the homeowner, but you could still see the graffiti underneath. It had a light wash of paint over it, creating a translucent backdrop for new tags to be placed over.
The writings on the walls scream at each passerby demanding their attention.
While searching google for “We Move Amongst Ghosts,” a text (recommended to me by Anna) where the author wrote about graffiti in the streets as a sort of ghostly artefact, I happened upon this blog post titled “looking for graffiti - finding ghosts.” I realised the author of the blog was referring to those tags painted over by the city’s council as ghosts. These different layers of ghostliness is interesting - on one hand, yes, the graffiti by itself is a ghost of a moment, a time when the tag was actively being written. Perhaps the creator of the piece has passed away and what is left of them is their mark on the city waiting to be activated by the gaze of the viewer. However, this second idea of the ghost being the graffiti that is painted over is perhaps more literal. The ghostly marks of the graffiti fights its way through the translucent white emulsion that’s been laid on top like the kafan cloth that is used to wrap a corpse before it’s laid to rest.
To relate this to my own practice, I would say that my wall paintings have this same push and pull between permanence and evanescence. If they stay on the wall then they have more agency over the space they inhabit than a stretched canvas painting - as the painting on the stretcher can be removed and isn't painted in direct response to the space. However, if they get painted over then there will always be a ghostly mark left by them, seen or unseen. When I sand them the dust particles disturb atomic matter leaving a trace of the past forever in existence. (Past is a forgine country)
Graffiti is saying “Here I am”(Brom, Mai et al., 2009). I have friends who write and when I see their works in the wild I begin to imagine them standing there painting. Painting large pieces is a very gestural process and demands use of your whole body. How it must have felt and how much time and energy they put into the piece. Were they scared of getting caught?
Graffiti in the context of Iran can have different connotations. Firstly, it has a big presence as a tool for advertising, especially for those who can not afford to get a billboard printed. There is more to the purpose of graffiti now with the present situation developing in Iran. Graffiti has become a messaging tool. To spread revolutionary slogans in a state where the media cannot be trusted. Graffiti is the voice of the people. It’s people taking back some control and rebelling against the regime who kills free speech. These images of crudely sprayed slogans remind me of Samo.
This anonymous aspect is a big part of the movement, in a way youre gone with the wind once you’ve left your mark. But, at the same time it’s very much in-your-face, bold and loud and as writer BROM writes in “Writing the Memory of the City: “... the young person, in an act of emancipation, gains a personal identity. He names himself and thus presents himself to the world by name and by visual creation.” (Brom, Mai et al., 2009). In a sense the artist is creating a mask, splitting their identity into the seen - the writings on the walls - and unseen - their personal identity. Although, it is the unseen who is seen as himself and the seen which is the masked identity never a physical presence attached.
In a way this whole time I've felt this fear of getting caught. Getting caught by the Iranian government for my art is an irrationally rational fear. I'm not alone in having this fear - but thinking about graffiti artists it's the same. Once they find your identity they will fine you for all of the works you have created.
Finally I’d like to add that Graffiti is still responding to the space it's taking and I am too in my site specific paintings that are left on the walls.
Memory, nostalgia, and our obsession with it…
Pics i took from inside the cab to uni
During my time in this course I’ve noticed that memory has become a popular topic for a lot of artists. In Cara Nahaul’s lecture on Landscape and Memory, the Peckham road lecture theatre was over spilling with students. Nahaul paints from her memories, referencing her dual background - being half Malaysian and half Mauritius. There is an ambiguity to the landscapes she depicts in her paintings. She creates works that are neither here nor there. They ooze a sense of longing. She explained that the landscapes are not immediately recognisable to a specific location as this is conveying the distant feelings that belong to her, these places that are very personal but also faraway. Nahaul described this feeling to be one of alienation and in her paintings she balances melancholy with joy creating a sense of nostalgia.
This feeling of nostalgia has been capitalised by pop-culture for a while now. From the fashion industry's recent resurgence of early 2000’s fashion to the constant remakes of old films. A few hundred years ago, nostalgia would have been considered a disease. The term was first defined in Johannes Hofer’ s MEDICAL DISSERTATION ON NOSTALGIA written in 1688. There the physician referred to nostalgia as “mania of longing” and it commonly affected ‘displaced people’(Beronja, no date). In his dissertation Hofer describes a medical case study of a man with a high fever, who was practically on his deathbed, ultimately being diagnosed with nostalgia ‘which admits no remedy other than a return to the homeland.’ Once the man was made aware of the remedy he was feeling better and by the time he reached his hometown he had made a full recovery. As Hofer puts it, nostalgia is “the grief for the lost charm of the Native land.” (Hofer, Anspach, 1934) This resonates with me a lot and if I was born a few hundred years ago I would definitely have this disease. But still travelling back to my native land this summer, although it helped, didnt sooth this nostalgia, the moment that I am longing for. It did give me more memory triggers and more moments that I forgot I missed.
“...The word Nostalgias, Greek in origin and indeed composed of two sounds, the one of which is Nosos, return to the native land; the other, Algos, signifies suffering or grief; so that thus far it is possible from the desire for the return to one’s native land.” But what if this native land no longer exists? I like to think of my Ltbian friend who had to flee during the civil war and has never been able to go back in the last 10- years. How it must feel for her? David Lowenthal states in his book “The Past is a Foreign Country” “We are at home in the past because it is our home… The past is where we came from” (Lowenthal, 1985). This ‘place’ that a lot of us are longing for is not a tangible one. In a blog post social psychologist Francis T. McAndrew talks about the concept of home as being “the place where you feel in control and properly oriented in space and time; it is a predictable and secure place. In the words of poet Robert Frost, "Home is the place that, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." In short, “home” is the primary connection between you and the rest of the world.” As definitions on home are not subject to land but people and experiences and if my grandmother's house felt like home to me and now it's been destroyed then what does that mean? And what does it mean for my friend?
In her journal article titled Home and Away, Sara Ahmed refers to a statement by a woman who finds the airport terminal to give her a sense of home, as the place which is safe and secure. Ahmed says this is because the idea of transit and being somewhere with a clear destination is what gives the subject the sense of home. Home for displaced people or “global nomad'' is not a particular place that one simply inhabits. It is more than one place: there are too many times to allow a place to secure the roots or routes of one’s destination. (Ahmed, 1999) A sense of home can arise for those in the diaspora when they share stories from the past. Perhaps this feeling of home for me and my Libyan comes from talking about our “home” countries and maybe that's when I feel home and so in the paintings I produce. I am recreating that effect that ultimately brings me the feeling of being at home … So when I paint these portals in my surroundings I am trying to instil a sense of home in my present.
Recently I had the opportunity to ask Mattew Krishanu why he thought memory has become such a popular topic for artists, especially visual artists. To which he gave a very in depth art historical answer explaining that “it's something to do with the looseness and moving away from the photorealism of the 60’s.” Krishanu described this dissolving that has taken place in artistic styles through the application of paint from Garry Hume or Glenn Brown into artists like Peter Doig and Karin Mamma Anderson; and then from Luc Tuymans’ questions of memory to Wilhelm Sensal’s play of paint. Stating that now there are multiple narratives and voices, in contrast to the “one singular narrative that people were trying to cling onto right through postmodernism.” and that memory is an important part of the narrative whether you are looking at someone's individual voice or cultural voice.
A lot of us will be painting our memories because the future feels uncertain. Lowenthal describes “we feel quite sure that the past really happened; its traces and memories reflect undeniable scenes and acts. The airy and insubstantial future may never arrive; man or nature may destroy humanity; time as we know it may end. By contrast the past is tangible and secure; people think of it as fixed, unalterable, indelibly recorded… the past was safe!” With all the current political turmoil, wars and climate changes and *cough* revolutions, I've never felt more uncertain of the future. I know I’m not alone in this feeling when talking with my peers and when listening to others talk online. It feels like I’m in a fog and I can barely see my outstretched hands that are reaching for some kind of stable surface.
“It is not possible - I often wonder - that things we have felt with great intensity have an existence independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence?- Virginia Woolf, ‘A sketch of the past’ 1929 moments of being (Lowenthal, 1985) In which case, aren't the memories that we bring forth in our minds part of the present moment we individually experience? I believe that there is both a visual present moment and a virtual/mental present moment that can happen at the same time. And furthermore, as I paint memories then I am bringing them into the present everytime it is viewed by someone. Same as the graffiti ghosts.
“The mathematician Charles Baddage saw every past event as a disturbance that reordered atomic matter” He even suggested that once we have the technology AI would even be able to detect these disturbances from the past. “Others conceive of a past stored not in memory but in the material cosmos - through the notion of memory ‘traces’ implies their close affinity. Physical residues of all events may yield potentially unlimited access to the past.” (Lowenthal, 1985) The paintings on the walls whether they stay or where they are wiped away are true to this sentiment.
Listening to Cara Nahaul talk about her practice reminded me of my own. She is at a later stage of what I am working towards. I asked her a question about the sketch and how she maintains the sketch-like quality in her paintings and she said that she doesn't try to force the painting to be a sketch and recognises that they are two different mediums. This is something that I am definitely going to take on board when coming back to the building series. She is honest about her position as an artist; she doesn’t show the filth in the landscapes because for her these memories are a postcard.
Reflections:
“‘A shadow never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace’ thought John William Draper. ‘ Upon the walls of our most private apartment… There exist the vestiges of all our acts, silhouettes of whatever we have done” (Lowenthal, 1985) - This is why I get so sad when these buildings I grew up in get knocked down and destroyed and replaced by the hands of greed. My grandmother's house, where I spent months at a time in my childhood, was sold off quickly after her passing. I was dreading the return to my grandmother's house this summer In Iran. It would be the first time seeing it not there. I was holding tears as we turned each road getting closer to it. My parents kept telling me you couldn't imagine Mamani’s house ever having been there. As if that was soothing. But when I reached the faux marble bulky apartments it was true it was as if I was somewhere else now. The memories that I have of arriving outside her home at the beginning of every summer and leaving it before school started were somewhere else. Definitely not here. It was as if the past really was a foreign country and now, standing in the same exact location that I would stand every year at the beginning of my month-long stay in the country, I was somewhere else. And as I ascended into my brother's 4th floor apartment I was now standing somewhere that I could have never stood before. This was a comforting realisation. I didn't have to compare spaces. As I walked around I knew this was all new and if it wasn't for this new development I wouldn't have ever seen this perspective of the mountains. What was before air was now my brother's home. A dwelling. Still, I hate it because now her bedroom, her kitchen and her living room and majority of her backyard have become a 2 level indoor parking.
Figuring a Women’s Revolution: Bodies Interacting with their Images
In this piece of writing the author talks about what it meant for her to transition in the first few days of watching protests from her phone screen into actively taking part in them and how her body took the form of those whose pictures she had seen online.
What’s interesting about this text is it’s focus on the photograph and its power, it’s eternal-ising of the moment, creating history from close proximity. In a way this text has also become a photograph itself, because of all the horrors that have preceded the moments referenced in the essay. Already when I read this essay I am reminded of more hopeful points of the protest, I am still hopeful perhaps more than then, however the horrors we have witnessed since has removed any innocence from our collective thoughts.
The blurring of the faces of the faceless revolutionaries. All remind me of earlier paintings I did. People would ask me why I left the faces out and I would give a mixed response of respecting anonymity as well as allowing room for projection. Both of which is true but the main force was always fear. Here the fear of getting told off by my family, for potentially exposing them when they were in a private domain. The private and the public are two very different things in iran. And honestly up until this point I’ve been scared to even mention these things, but, the bravery I see in the people on the street has inspired me to speak the facts. That’s what’s crazy. I'm not even trying to be provocative, I’m just stating facts.
The protests have given me a new perspective on the screen, the longing for connection from a distance. A confirmation of my identity. Today I spoke to an Afghan girl who told me it doesn’t matter where you’re born, if you care, if your heart is there then you belong.
Notes from others comments in the reading group: Contrasting images that serve each other. Who gets to form the narrative - referring to the media outlets vs the people becoming the media.
Lately seeing a picture of a dead child's body has become an event that happens every few days. And I’m not actively searching for these, but, the people running news channels on instagram share them and I see my friends have liked them as well as 10s of thousands of other people WITHIN MINUTES of the post being shared. This trauma is a shared experience. It’s far from my curious adolescent days searching through sites like Best Gore out of morbid curiosity, and without a fully developed brain to understand the pain I was witnessing. Now I think about how much harder it is to see these scenes in person. To witness a child being shot, or blood flowing out of a lifeless body that’s just fallen out of the passenger's seat of his car.
These days i realise that instagram is a very different app for me (and other iranians) compared to the rest of the world. It’s become a place of pain. But also a place for spreading hope. I like this new power of social media. It’s definitely better than the superficial content we were mindless ingesting before. But still, we have to be careful.
Soheila Sokhanvari
Rebel Rebel
In Rebel Rebel Soheila Sokhanvari displayed miniature paintings that were based from film stills and other archival media, of powerful women of pre revolutionary Iran. The women were placed in the centre of these large geometric Persian motifs that filled the room. It was as though all the energy in the room was coming from them and at the same time being poured into them. Both modest and powerful. The small paintings were backlit adding to their allure.
The experience for me was very special. My mum and I had just come from a protest in Trafalgar sq for the atrocities happening in Iran. We found that there were a lot of saltanat talabs Monarc worshipers. Which put a sour taste in our mouth so we decided to go to the exhibition which turned out to be a better way of outpouring the emotions we had been holding onto in these past few weeks. This was the release we needed from being glued to our screens, consuming the traumatic news updates. The timing of this exhibition in its prestigious location felt like we were heard, at least it did for me. Even though I know this was probably planned months or years in advance.
A celebration of pre-revolution, creative and intelligent Iranian women. We were handed a guide book which had a numbered list with the names of the women corresponding to their portraits with their backstories and black and white headshots. One by one as we continued through the curve my mum would tell me the name of the women before I had a chance to find them in the book. I decided to play a game with her to guess the remainder of the woman. This made me think of time… celebrity-ism and took me back to a sepia toned golden age of Iran. Meanwhile, there were Iranian classics, songs sung by some of the women in the portraits, playing in the exhibition space. A woman's solo voice is banned in present day Iran.
We all hold this collective memory of pre-revolution Iran. From stories passed down by our parents, creating second hand memories. The artist who seems to be the same age as my brother, also born just after the revolution, also has second hand memories. But, my mother grew up with these women. She idolised them and saw them on TV and in magazines. I felt emotional for her. I felt a deep longing for a time that I will never know. And this duality of this golden past and this bloody present is confusing. This past that certainly did exist at one point (referring back to the past is a foreign country), means that we’re fighting to go half a century back in time. It’s insane. Now more than ever the future feels unsafe.
Sometimes it just feels too painful to continue. We’re so shaken that the everyday seems meaningless when there is all this pain happening across the pond. I had a dream where I had forgotten my headscarf. I was walking the streets of Tehran in my English summer clothes and as I kept walking I started getting more self conscious and scared. I kept trying to expand the cloth on my body to help cover me up more. Suddenly, we hit a protest and I wanted to be brave like the women I saw in front of me. At this point I had a full hijab on, stretched from my desperation using the cloth… But, I remember thinking “I don’t want to die, I don't want to get shot. If I take my headscarf off I will be a target.” I remember running and hiding behind cars, brave beautiful bodies would run past me standing tall. Not fearing death, but I was too scared. I couldn't join them the way I thought they wanted me to. It was in this dream that I felt the fear of the streets. It made me realise and admire how brave these youth are who are risking it all for a greater freedom.
Note from when I was writing this:
I guess I’d like to add that all this other research feels futile right now. None of it really makes sense. Because right now I have never been so engrossed by the present. There is little escape to the past. And for the first time I am thinking of a different future. One where I can be the artist I want to be. And I can live on our desert farm in Semnan, free with no cover.
Anna Bjerger
Recently I watched a 4 minute clip of Anna Bjerger on the Louisiana Channel on Youtube. A lot of what she said really resonated with me. There isn't a profound meaning to the image she chooses to paint, but rather, the profoundness comes as she’s painting it. Her process is to paint from an archive of images in books that she owns. Watching her video was like watching where I imagine myself to be as an artist in 10 years. She was quickly flicking through books to find a source image. It reminded me of going through my digital archive of family photographs; she knows when an image sticks and isn't trying to paint it again if it doesn't work.
Surface, Image, Reception: Painting in a Digital Age
Questions when beginning to read this essay: I noticed the date. The article was published in 2016… It made me think… is this still relevant?
This idea of storage is important
In this text Alex Bacon combats several pressing issues of painting in the digital age. He compares and brings forth several artists who work in this expanded hybrid plane between painting and the digital influence. I think what’s most noteworthy about my work is the influence of the digital age on our everyday life and how as this artist said: the screen is more a part of my life than eating.
Bacon describes painting as a “content-delivery system”, I feel this with the paintings that I do of these archival photographs. I paint them to deliver them to more people. For me the idea of storage is important. If we were going to compare painting to something digital, then if we take the paint used to build up the painting as the pixels that create an image then the canvas/frame are a storage device for the image. Storing emotion and memory in its grains.
“In essence what holds true today is the notion of painting as a frame” A focal point for the audience. A focal point for my ideas to come together. In unit 2 I started using the frame to bridge the gap between the digital images on my ipad and the canvas in front of me.
Staniak has …(noted) that the “element of ‘touch’ is synonymous with digital media and also primitive image making. It takes the image making process back to the most carnal implementations of pigment on cave walls, where muddy mixtures were applied very physically by hand.”
In a way my removal of the canvas and bringing back these primitive drawing tools back on the walls is referencing a few things related to what’s said above. Also Bacon mentions how making the digital image into a physical object removes the ability to zoom - this is interesting as certain freedoms of viewing are now restricted. And zoom now has become synonymous with a tactile action - thinking about the pinching motion we make with our hands - When in fact this motion is the opposite of a pinch which I now would like to compare to the letting go of a paintbrush, as that’s what a lot of digital artists have done.
Greg Breda
I really resonate with Greg Breda’s painting process, his simple and effective use of brushstrokes. Efficient marks used to build convey tone and shadow, creating portraits that are both elegant and bold. He creates dream-like settings for his portraits and they convey a sense of longing, isolation and deep thought. I wonder what his subjects are thinking about… I’m so impressed with how much he conveys with such block-y strokes of paint. He seems to use a large flat head brush… flat heads are my favourite brush to use. He has such an analogue method, but to confidence in his strokes almost make the image look like a 3D render at first glance.
Andrew Grassie
I had the chance to see Andres Grassie’s paintings at an exhibition in London a few months ago and I couldn’t believe they were paintings at first. I think the small scale size hid the brush strokes and made them look like postcards. I always appreciate an artist who works small.
I remember in the lecture we had with Grassie earlier in the course, he mentioned taking part in exhibitions and creating small paintings documenting the exhibit and then exhibiting this documentation. Creating a metaphysical artwork. I admire his miniatures with photo realistic resemblance. And while I admire them, I also reject it. For me when I try to be realistic it’s to show off - oh look how good a painter I am. But now my focus is on my looseness, my mistakes and self expression.
Grassie mentioned that those early inception paintings of the exhibitions would help him sneak in and for me I think the wall paintings are a good way for me to get my work seen.
Myung Keun Koh
The transparent box, The shape of a room. The void moulds your eye into thinking the shape is more diverse than it is. I think there’s a lot of symbolism in this work: the form of the box, the emptiness inside the transparency. The grime, the muck and dirty copy paste windows the space playing with illusion. Transparent repetition. Creating these translucent memories like spaces, objects floating in front of one another. The work has a ghost-like quality. I like Koh play on the photograph, time and space.
This is more about the metaphor in relation to my work rather than a direct influence. as architecture has been an influence on my work. I can relate this to my wall paintings I thinking of it as a reverse to this. in fact the solidity of the work in the space creates a mental map of the work that makes the space more fluid in the mind. transparency comes with knowing. the knowledge of what's where in the space.
‘Iran was our Hogwarts’: my childhood between Tehran and Essex By Arianne Shahvisi
Recently in my pursuit of connection during these trying times, I stumbled across an episode of The Gaurdian’s ‘The Audio Long Read’ podcast on spotify. After typing in Tehran into the search bar in hopes of finding comfort in the shared experiences of others. Music just wasn't doing it for me on the bus from Mottingham to Woolwich. Both places of misery with bleak post war social housing. These kinds of houses that have been copy pasted up and down the country. I realised I had listened to most of what came up in my search results and others were just too early on in the protests to still hold relevance. But then I came upon ‘Iran was our Hogwarts’: my childhood between Tehran and Essex. It was from last year and the title intrigued me. Comparing Iran to a pop culture reference from an English author.
The author of the essay was describing her home in Southend the dreariness of it all. It was fitting to my surroundings and view as I rode the 161 past queen elizabeth hospital. One part that stood out to me the most went something like: bodies can travel 3000 miles but it isn't quite the same for value. She was talking about her dad and the difference in his confidence and how he held himself in the two countries.
This made me cry and had such a profound feeling of being heard of “daark kardan” (understanding something). Like I felt her pain and she felt mine. Such a beautifully painful shared experience. It motivates me and gives purpose to what I'm creating. How a personal story can be soothing for a collective, because, culturally our stories are more or less the same. The beautiful scenes she painted in my head with her descriptive words I saw the houses she described a blend of my own family's houses with hers, creating a hybrid of the true essence of an Iranian home. I want to create these portals for myself but it’s also clear that they could transport others for some into an unknown land; others will project their own familiarities upon it and those who know will know.
It made me weary of this separation that we’ve all felt… The first time I felt it deeply was when I was around 7 or 8 and y cousins were moving to canada their house used it be my favourite to stay at when I was younger but then one summer I came back and they were gone and now it’s been nearly 20 years since I last saw my cousin
I think this repetition of architecture in England is what makes it so depressing and mugle-like it infects the people - Visual repetition becomes a habitual life stuck in repetition.
“This split in the personality of the country is in fact what makes Iran so difficult to Describe To non-Iranians. Two entirely parallel worlds exist side by side - The world of interiors, and the world outside." - (Abdoh, 2010)
Full essay can be read here:
References
Abdoh, S. (2010) Urban Iran. New York, NY: Mark Batty.
Ahmed, S. (1999) “Home and away,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(3), pp. 329–347. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/136787799900200303.
Bacon, A. (2016) “Surface, Image, Reception: Painting in a Digital Age” Rhizome, 24 May. Available at: https://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/may/24/surface-image-reception-painting-in-a-digital-age/ (Accessed: November 23, 2022).
Beronja, V. (no date) “IS FEELING NOSTALGIA GOOD OR BAD?,” Filtered Pasts: Nostalgia and Popular Culture. Available at: https://nostalgiaandpop.omeka.net/introduction (Accessed: November 23, 2022).
Ford, L.G. (2019) “We move amongst ghosts,” Verso Books. Verso, 29 May. Available at: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4334-we-move-amongst-ghosts (Accessed: November 15, 2022).
Hofer, J. and Anspach, C.K. (1934) “MEDICAL DISSERTATION ON NOSTALGIA BY JOHANNES HOFER, 1688,” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, 2(6), pp. 376–391. Available at: https://doi.org/http://www.jstor.org/stable/44437799.
L (2022) “Figuring a Women’s Revolution: Bodies Interacting with their Images,” Jadaliyya, 5 October. Available at: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/44479 (Accessed: November 23, 2022).
Lowenthal, D. (1985) The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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