I attended the Hemispheric Institute‘s 2014 Encuentro at Concordia University in Montreal (June 21-28). I had applied to present a Passages performance there, but my proposal was not accepted. Among the program‘s performances and presentations there were only 3 presenters…
In deciding to focus only on Joseph Emin’s early days in England, I am obviously leaving out large parts of his life as an intellectual and liberation activist. I may return to this, perhaps to incorporate one of his many…
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.…
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”…
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…
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…
چند یادداشتی که امروز اضافه کردم(در مورد تریزیا شرلی و جوزف امین) اشاره میکنند به مشکل بزرگی که من با هویت و تاریخ نگاری معمول ایران دارم، به خصوص در رابطه با چند قرن گذشته و غرب. معمولا ایران به…
Since I read Said’s Orientalism many years ago, I’ve been wondering why we don’t have a parallel branch of “knowledge” labeled Occidentalism. Well, it actually seems pretty obvious why: Orientalism is a colonial discourse produced as part of Western expansion…
In passing, Tavakoli-Targhi lists Joseph Emin as another Iranian traveler to Europe who wrote an account of his journey: Joseph Emin (1726-1809), a native of Hamadan, was another traveler who visited England in 1751 and wrote an account of his…
در طی خواندن مقاله ای در مورد هویت ایرانی نوشته عباس امانت، به این فکر میکنم که احتمالا، و شاید به نحوی نه کاملًا خودآگاهانه، این پروژه را برای این در دست گرفته ام که به «ایرانی بودن» بیندیشم، و…