Slowly working my way through piles of primary material (travelogues and memoirs) and secondary material (academic articles and books), I’ve realized that my work in developing the script for the performances is more like that of a historical fiction writer.…
A series of lectures at University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology looks at some famous historical voyages and travelers. This one by Paul Cobb is about Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan who traveled vast distances across Asia and Africa in the…
اولین سفیر ایران در آمریکا حسینقلی خان صدر السلطنه بود که درسال ۱۲۶۷ شمسی توسط ناصر الدین شاه به واشنگتن فرستاده شد. او فرزند میرزا آفا خان نوری، وزیر اعظم دوم ناصرالدین شاه بود. علی حاتمی، نویسنده و کارگردان پرکار…
Yeap. Sadly, the project was not selected for Summerworks Live Arts series. I now have to start a new search for a venue. Definitely open to suggestions.
Reflections prompted by a lecture by Ahmad Karimi-Hakak about Persian literary production in India. The lecture is in Farsi but my thoughts are not specific to his lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4XUKMCH5k0 I’ve been revamping and stretching my imagination of “Iran” and “Persian”…
I’m grateful to Canada Council for the Arts for support through visual arts program. The news just came, not a minute too soon.
In thinking about embodiment and my live art methodology, I’ve been trying to go beyond simplistic conceptualizations of actor, performer, character and toward a complex, unpredictable encounter between myself and my collaborator(s) as we embody spirits of the past with…
Continuing with quotes from R. Bosnak, Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel. Bold emphasis is mine. On flashback and trauma, or how to change the past: Flashback-type memory is completely different from the discursive, narrative memory of ordinary…
Some quotes from R. Bosnak, Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel. Bold emphasis is mine. The most absolute and unmediated form of embodied imagination is a dream. It instantaneously presents a total world, so real that you are…
Mirza I’tisam al-Din’s travelogue Shigarfnamah Velayat is believed to be the first Persianate travelogue about Europe. As I read a translation in English (I haven’t yet been able to find a Farsi version), once again I am struck by the…