[Introduction by Mojdeh Rezaeipour, interview follows below]

In early 2020, I was approached by the director of a local institution in DC with a collection of ancient pottery fragments originating in over thirty different sites across the Middle East. Bit by bit this past year, I started researching these fragments: learning about the layered histories of the places they come from, looking through similar pieces inside other institutional collections, and having conversations with diasporic artists with lineages across these sites toward a collectively imagined work.

The research is ongoing and has since taken on a life of its own, leading me in part to this recent collaborative experiment which lived as an exhibition at VisArts from June 8th-August 8th, 2021 alongside Natalie Amini, Kamyar Arsani, Rex Delafkaran, Bita Ghavami, Nasrin Navab, and Anita Poushan. The show culminated in a live performance in the space featuring Nasrin, Kamyar and Rex, as well as a screening of a 40 minute film, where I pieced together all of our many fragments of memory, movement, poetry and song through stop motion and projection play.

The following conversation on Friday, September 17th, 2021, not unlike countless other conversations between all of us, lives at the heart of this work.

Screenshot of this conversation from September 17th, 2021

ANAHITA (ANI) BRADBERRY [moderator]: I think the most powerful place to start would be to hear how everyone felt about that first time you all spoke on zoom, and where you were each beginning in this process?

KAMYAR ARSANI: I want to say we are all Persians. We taarof. So it's going to take us half an hour to get started. No, you go first. No, you go first. No, you you you. No, please. Force us to talk and we are all poets, we will talk for hours. But yeah, you should say our names and we will be like, hmm yeah.

MOJDEH REZAEIPOUR: Kamyar, why don’t you go first since you already got started?

KAMYAR: You always throw me in there and I love it. For me, it became a family right away when Mojdeh and I started collaborating and the collaboration started growing bigger than ourselves and our bodies. It was beyond what we could think of. And you know, you get together with people and you say, hey, we collaborate. We do a project and there is a deadline for it. The deadline is an endpoint. But from the beginning of this project, it became very clear to me that there's no deadline here, that this is going to be ongoing. Mojdeh actually said that to me, but I did not understand what it meant at first when she said it's going to be ongoing.

ANI: When did that conversation take place?

KAMYAR: I don't know...a year and a half ago? A year ago, Mojdeh? I'm not good with times. I'm sorry. As a musician, I just know the timing of the songs. Besides that, I have no other idea of timing.

MOJDEH: I think a year and a half ago is right, yeah. But it wasn’t even that this project in its current manifestation was clear to me at that point. I was kind of exploring different things with video and also looking to build community with other Iranian artists. I remember reaching out to Kamyar who I had met a couple of times and just being like, hey, we should talk. Then, we just started putting things into the same folder and seeing how they fit. We had all these different ways, all these ideas for what we would do with what we make, but somehow they all were already seeds of this (project), in a way?

KAMYAR: All the ideas, yeah. (laughs)

MOJDEH: And in our connection, I was reaching for a connection to my Iranianness, you know? But then I realized that doing this with one person is not enough. I want to have a whole community of my people to collaborate with. Like, why can't we just build our own world where we can all have that?

ANI: Yeah! So how did you find everybody?

MOJDEH: I know everyone here in different ways from different pockets of community in my life. I had really unique and wonderful relationships with each person. None of them knew each other, though. Some people I’ve known for years and some people I just met. Like, I’ve known Nasrin for six or seven years but I’ve never even met Anita in person. She just came to a lot of virtual not (yet) futura free events in 2020, and we really connected. I really had no idea that it would be such a great fit as a group.

NASRIN NAVAB: I remember that you called me about your research with the ceramic fragments. That’s the first conversation where you asked if I want to be part of it: to just be ready, to do something about it. Then, we didn't talk about it for months — maybe two short conversations about this? But when you contacted me for this project talking about آتشکدہ (fire temples), it was very close to the actual exhibition.

MOJDEH: Right. That was in the middle of May, I think, and the exhibition opened June 8th.

NASRIN: Right. I can see from the videos that I took that one day because, as you called me, I just did it and sent them because I felt: I like the idea. Let's go for it. I just know that she's playing with something and she's enjoying this game. It’s okay. I am one of these toys (laughs). I adore people who are just doing what is like a game or playing. Because at the end, life is a game somehow. And then I just...I trusted her for what she wanted to do and that was that. When we all met on zoom, I was excited to meet younger people. It's always a pleasure for me to work with young people. I enjoyed that, and I was looking forward to the performance day. I didn’t know how it would go but I think it went very naturally, and I loved it. Yeah. This is what I think the whole world needs — people to go with not what is set for them as a role that they should play, but the role that they enjoy to have in the society. But we are in sets and roles that aren’t natural for us, so that was a great experience. Thank you, Mojdeh.

ANI: Thank you. Before we dive into the performance or the sort of output of your work together, I'm curious to hear from everybody: what do you feel like you brought into the conversation when it began? And what do you find yourself leaving with?

ANITA POUSHAN: I have been in a totally different part of the world out here (in New Mexico), isolated! And something about my thirties… I just all of a sudden feel like every day I wake up and I can feel my Iranian blood more than ever. I've been more removed from people and the Iranian community or diaspora for most of my adult life, definitely in the past five years, and this connection I feel in my blood is not bound or reserved to place at all or even time. So for me, this was already happening. I was already turning into this. I was already feeling a desire to want to get more in touch with aspects of Iranian culture as it exists through us, through newer generations, through people that haven't had the chance to be on the land. I was so curious.

I know I'm not alone, but I'm certainly out here in the deserts of the Southwest in America, far away from most people, experiencing this. So when Mojdeh reached out and started talking about this project and the connection to fire and how elements carry history, it was almost like taking a monologue out of my mind and just running with it. And I thought, oh, my god, I don't even know you but, like, yes! I am right there every day. I'm thinking about this every time I’m out here with my dog running through these cliffs and mountains. I lived in Southern Colorado for the past several years and there were sand dunes near me...upon being surrounded by tall dunes and dry mountains for miles and miles I felt so comfortable like I could just slip into a pocket and live there for a while and maybe I would understand more or hear some stories in the wind. It was all very mysterious and hard to articulate. So I feel like what I brought to this project was just a little piece of myself to share and see where everyone else is at in their journey. My intention is to honor the mystery of connection I have been feeling and cultivating out here, seemingly on my own. But, I knew I wasn't doing it alone, and then what I got from it was this affirmation that like we're all in this together navigating these weird waters of yearning for a place and belonging that isn't in our everyday life here but doesn't really exist anywhere in a physical manifestation, besides through these imaginary, ethereal spaces. I feel like it's all been quite spiritual for me.

ANI: Yes, and when it's your own memory, it becomes incredibly difficult to describe the yearning that means something so different for everybody. When Mojdeh and I were talking just before this conversation, I felt that even before you all met, everyone shared something: not an identical memory, but a shared feeling...maybe a kind of confusion?

KAMYAR: I have this connection with the imagination of home. After leaving (Iran), home for me was just trying to use my childhood imagination to keep making one in my mind until I arrive at the location. When this project came up, I entered the zone with a little fear — fear of hitting that emotion that I left Iran with the night of, which was: I will never see you again. Because of military service stuff, not never. I’ve got to wait ‘til everything is clear...God knows when. I have a lot of friends, high school and college friends in Iran, they all go back and forth between Australia and Iran, Argentina and Iran, wherever they are and Iran. I love my friends, but I had to get off Instagram because I couldn't bear it. They would go to Vanak where my house was and text me like, ‘Kamyar omg check it out,’ and it's so sweet. I want to get on that call, and I want to see that image, but I didn't want to cry over the phone so I wouldn't want to talk to them. I think this was a good opportunity for me to connect with my Iran that is real and really was there. And as a musician my mind 24/7 has a ticket to another planet, so keeping Iran real was my dilemma and Mojdeh pushed me. Everybody pushed me. Not really pushing, but like the energy of family, that intense love, you know? And it was a good push for me. Because of that, I tried to push everybody else when it came time for performance. It takes a community for anything really in this world to be done, and this dream just came true with everybody being a part of it, you know? Once the intentions were set, all the stars started to say yes to it. Now that it came true, now we are hungry for bigger dreams, so we'll see what comes next.

Behind the scenes play with Natalie Amini at VisArts.

NATALIE AMINI: I think overwhelmingly the feeling of being on that first call together and seeing all the faces and hearing the voices and the shared stories and experiences of what this meant to each individual person was like such a homecoming. It was very similar to, you know, visiting a country where your culture and your people are from, but you've never been there. Still, there is this sense of familiarity and belonging. There were some really beautiful stories shared between the other artists while working on the project. One of the sentiments that was echoed was feeling parts of yourself that you didn't know were there, so there was this underlying longing before the project that was so distinct, and also so difficult to even put into words. After the project, I feel like that longing dissipated, if not like completely transformed into something different. In terms of just having this space to feel seen and held with like-minded people who share such different life experiences, but there's this link between us all. It really felt like soul family, and to feel that with, like, absolute strangers is nothing short of magical.

The group's first zoom call in June, 2021

MOJDEH: For me, this experiment was born out of a deep yearning to commune with a 1,500-year-old fire that is still burning in a Zoroastrian temple in Yazd. But then I talked to Nasrin about it that one day, and she was like “you know, I went and saw that fire. It’s behind a glass window, and people take pictures of it with their cell phones.” And that's just not the kind of communion I was hoping for! Even if I could go to Iran physically, that's not what I’d want. So then I thought, what if I could literally go back in time and be with that fire in the time when that communion was sacred? When there was a different rhythm of life, you know? I took this workshop with Jade T Perry a year or so ago called Rhythm Over Time where she kept calling our attention to “a time and a place before whiteness, before capitalism…” That exercise really stayed with me. So when I was thinking about the fire, I thought, what if I could return to that time in that place where my ancestors were at that time? Before all these histories of colonialism and imperialism separated us from home and from family and from ourselves. And together, the seven of us actually did that. One of the things I realized in that process is that anytime any of us light a candle, sit by our fireplace, whatever… we're already doing that. We went there, we really did. It was so real. This thing I’m taking away or bringing back from there… I’m not sure what words can describe it or what shape it has, but it lives in my body. I walk in the world with it now and healing on all of the levels feels so much more possible. I don't think it's linear. I think that it's something that I constantly have to show up to, go back and get maybe? Like, this project isn't finished. It will never be finished.

ANI: It’s a milestone.

MOJDEH: Yeah. Like, this conversation is a milestone. When I talk to Anita, when I talk to Rex, when I talk to Kamyar… every one of those conversations is like a checkpoint on this journey.

REX DELAFKARAN: Yeah. I'm like, somehow very emotional hearing you all speak, which is a little surprising. Not surprising, obviously, but thank you all. Mojdeh and I have studios right across from each other and have been in close proximity with precious conversations over time, so when she approached me, I was so thrilled. There was like an initial, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is it. Finally, there's this opening of collaboration.’ It all started out very heady for me. I started engaging with my own relationship to my Iranianness with you Ani, in my practice with Nevermind Azizam. I think after that point it had drifted a bit for me. It got very much about this relationship with language and became academic somehow because I think maybe that's a little bit more comfortable for me. So what I was bringing to the project once I met everybody was a little bit of this fear that was tapped into my experience with my family and with Iran, which is like a separateness and failure to be either… and sadness. Quite a lot of sadness. And distance. I hadn't really worked with a group of Iranian people before, so I felt very tender going in and just like, so overcome with gratitude and curiosity when I heard from everybody. We all started talking about our experiences and what we wanted to do physically in the space. Making those little movement videos after talking to Mojdeh was like, oh, you know, my work is talking about language and tension within language and not knowing it and knowing it and feeling it but not understanding it and then ahhhh and then movement!

Actually, movement is the thing I think. There's a very physical response to the whole project that took me by surprise. There were some things that happened during the performance that was so surprising and sweet and nothing quite like I was before. Not this far away “let’s talk about identity,” you know? It was a lot more physical and like… wait what? I can feel this? I can feel this? And my feeling of this is legitimate? I can learn so much in a community with other people. I left it different. I had a dream that I was in Iran for the first time working on this project. I was speaking Farsi in the dream. I think it was affecting me on many levels, and this definitely feels like the tip of the iceberg.

Performance footage from July 29th, courtesy of Igor Dmitry.

ANI: That's wonderful. I learned when Mojdeh and I were talking before that the performance was sort of an impromptu happening without regimented planning beforehand, and that it was shaped by what felt natural at the moment. I think that is the most poignant answer to the question of Iranianness that you and I share, Rex. The answer is this kind of intuition, right? To feel it without fear and to explore that feeling surrounded by those who love you and who understand the place that you came from? The freedom to feel and engage with these emotions collectively is a defining part of this project, and I think this is a great segue into talking more about the performance itself. There was so much latent meaning that everybody brought to that moment and the overlap was just incredibly natural and beautiful. It seemed everyone felt fueled at that moment to really experiment and just find that center of gravity in each other. Plus, there's a whole other element of this where you were all challenged to work collaboratively with other mediums that you may not work with already. I mean, the projections, the music, opportunities to really flow in languages that maybe you didn't work with before. I'm curious to hear how that affected you all, and I just really would love to hear more about how this process flowed at that moment.

(silence)

ANI: Nasrin. (laughs) Kamyar? (laughs)

NASRIN: نہ، تعارف نکردم (laughs) It was not taarof. I was just confused, like at the beginning of the performance, I started as an observer. At the same time, I was waiting there. I felt like waiting, not performing. Observing. Waiting. Then, I just felt ‘I need to go!’ Like, ‘enough confusion, that’s enough, let’s go.’ I’ve always performed in Aroosi’s and parties, I’ve always performed in 13 Bedar, with family, but I'm not a singer, not a dancer. I wish I knew more. Our family, especially my aunts and my cousins, they sing together. Many things I learned from them, not from professional singers. I learned from my aunt. In the car, we were six kids. We were singing, always. It was like that: ‘let’s go together, it’s not serious.’ And as I started, I started to connect. At first, I was a little confused, ‘okay, when does Kamyar want to go there, or where does he want to go?’ I was waiting for him to move from where he was to start but he would not go anywhere. (laughs)But one thing for me, when you talk about Iran...I grew up there. When I came out of Iran, I was almost 30. I believe when you start to discover social spaces: streets, buses, like when you're a teenager, you start to connect to the city, to urban life, to school, to space. We went by bus and minibus to school. We walked in the middle of the town not feeling unsafe. Our parents didn't give us rides. Meidoone Hassanabad is the center of Tehran and we lived in Amirabad and we go by bus there. And I loved it. For the performance I chose that poem:

جخ امروز

از مادر نزاده‌ام

نه

.عمرِ جهان بر من گذشته است

“I'm not born just today, the life of the world has passed on me.” This poem talks about very dark moments. All of us, we are experiencing many dark and shameful moments. Like, what’s happening in Afghanistan is very shameful. Sometimes you feel ‘okay, I'm safe…’ but the meaning of being human is somehow degraded now. I think we are all like, بافتہ شدہ, I don’t know… we are part of this historical texture.

KAMYAR: Sewn to each other? Woven to each other? Interwoven?

NASRIN: Yeah. Yeah. With smells, with music, with images, and with dirt. And what we miss is that sense of being respectful. Like there was this Zoroastrian saying پندار نیک، گفتار نیک، کردار نیک “Well Thinking, Well Talking, Well Doing” I know there is a more poetic voice to express better, but this is something that we miss in this world today. It’s not just Iranian, but in the stories, in the history, we feel that someday that respect to the human soul was there, and we are missing that, I think, in this world — this Capitalist world, actually.

پندار نیک، گفتار نیک، کردار نیک

ANI: Thank you so much for those thoughts, Nasrin. The performance was so incredibly human, so I can see that every soul emerged within the performance. Based on my personal history, Rex, I feel most connected to your experience. You’re probably more advanced in Farsi now, to be fair, but to perform within these spoken texts and to perform within them...I’m curious. I know that headspace that inevitably happens when you hear Farsi and you cannot put words to it. Still, its meaning is often a kind of direction. In the kitchen, for example, my mom might say something in Farsi, and I know she wants me to chop something and your body moves independently of your confusion. It leads you to the truth of putting more turmeric over the onions (laughs). How did you feel about the immediacy of that performance? How did you think it was going to be? How was it different from what you were expecting? You probably entered some kind of trance while it was happening...

REX: Yeah. I think it was many things at once, you know. There were little moments of anxiety — not in a negative way though. Like, I'm very comfortable in my body and very comfortable performing because I've been doing it for so long, but then there was a moment of like, oh, I have not performed in this way before, and I didn't realize it until it was happening. I thought ‘oh, this is not what I have done before, actually (laughs). This is new. There were really incredible moments between Nasrin and Kamyar, where I became so immersed with the experience and music that I would look up, and I would see them look at each other, and see this explosion of understanding and meaning just like drip everywhere. And the fear around ‘oh, that’s not happening for me was just completely unimportant because it was dripping everywhere, and then it touched me, you know. It felt okay that there is not a song that I grew up with. There's an understanding. I could feel it in the room, too, with the other Iranians present. I could feel that the air became, like, thick with understanding. Then, I got to be in it. There were these funny moments where I would like, understand a word and I’d be internally thinking ‘omg I understand “walking”’ or something completely useless but still a word or a phrase that I've heard before, and those moments would anchor me into my mind and the space. Also, I listen to a lot of Persian music. I grew up with it at a party, family sense. So it felt like there were other ways that I was accessing that same thing. And then there were these unspoken, these really great moments with Nasrin when we were dancing together that was just so incredible and that felt so communal. The movement and the physicality between the three of us actually felt so beautiful. We're just dancing together. It was fun in a way that performance has not been fun before, maybe. You know?

ANI: Thank you for that Rex. I feel… a lot. Kamyar — did you plan these music selections before the performance? How did you pick what to play? How did you feel at that moment?

KAMYAR: In general, just based on the habit of my brain, on the angle of the wind and the light on the stage, I might change my mind about a song. When I perform solo and it's all in my own control the songs and what happens, I always have like, three plans. For this event, I threw away all three because Nasrin said something and I knew that this is a day for the three of us to do a thing we've never done before. I didn't know what that would be for each of us. Randomly, I just had one of my Daf students from New York City who is a master of whirling reach out to me, and she was like, “Kamyar, you teach me daf, I’ll teach you whirling. I'm going to come to DC once or twice.” She came, we worked together, and then she just gave me a skirt like, “alright, I think I can trust you by yourself. You can do it.” And she just left. I was like, I'm going to practice. And then I thought to myself, ‘oh my god, what if we push ourselves to a point where we don't care what people are thinking? As long as I whirl, and I don't hit anybody. As long as I get Rex to kind of like, maybe go from slow to fast within a very short moment.’

I don't know if that's possible, but I like watching their performances and Nasrin knowing that she's very real and present and in the moment and when the poetry comes she will perform it super well, but I knew that she needs a little, like, hand on the back. I think the way to open it for me was to just start playing and not look at them so that they know I'm not there. I'm gone. So Nasrin and Rex, they started with this kind of “confusion” which I knew is going to turn into communication. Within the first few seconds for me of a performance I don't know what's going to happen, I close my eyes and 10 seconds later, 20 seconds later is enough for the adrenaline rush to start kicking in. People either are about to throw a tomato or throw a shoe, or they're like, “wow,” which, either way… I think it was very easy to close eyes and not have a plan and trust each other.

MOJDEH: There are so many different ways that I'm hearing you all talk about connecting during the performance and the way that I felt you connecting throughout the performance. Then, there were other layers of connectivity beyond the three of you that were also present and resonating in the room. Like, we definitely had not gotten to the level of timing the projection to your movements before the performance. (laughs)

KAMYAR: (laughs) yeah yeah

MOJDEH: Nasrin, as you started saying آب آب (water water) at that very moment, the projection behind you started playing Anita’s feet and the water washing over them. Another one of the favorite moments for me was also when we started handing out the percussion instruments Kamyar had brought to different people and they ended up in the hands of some people who really knew what they were doing. I love it when it works out like that, getting the audience to join you in that felt really, really special. There are some moments when - I think, Rex, you referred to this - where you all were playing a certain song, and some of the Iranian audience members started humming along to it and it really became this like collective experience. But, it also went over a lot of people’s heads, I think. An Iranian man came up to me afterwards and he was like, that was really really powerful, I just really wish that you had written something so that people could have known what was being spoken. I was like, ‘thank you that's really kind and you’re totally right that would have helped people understand.’ But when I called this a “playground and a laboratory,” it wasn't just a figure of speech. It literally was, it really is. So there was no way I could have known what was going to happen to put it in a pamphlet beforehand.

KAMYAR: Sorry, my favorite part, though, I don't know why and how, but I got that vibe from Rex and Nasrin, like, enough with this shit, this artistry, can we get, like, Persian for a second? So I just started with a daf, going ritaratitum dattaritum. I went total Persian wedding on them out of the blue, and then they started going at it, shimmying. It was amazing because I think that was the whole idea. Can we create a radio dial where you keep changing the stations? I mean, we started the program with very confusing sad songs like, “oh, little bird, don't sit on my roof because I don't know if I have anything to give you.” And I think that's a part of the Persian confusion. Generally, when we have happy times in our history, we make sad music. When we have sad times in our history, we make happy music.

So this paradox of personality and art has always been a shining light. So I think that day we just embraced everything good, bad, ugly, not good. Most of the times for concerts I perform, I tell people they have to pay me double if they're telling me what to do, and that's not what I'm going for. But if they don’t tell me what to do then it’s for free, and that's the idea. Finding that platform to be this free is very rare. Very rare. And if you go on Google, probably they will tell you Kamyar Arsani is an experimental musician, but that doesn't make any more sense anywhere else until I am with my friends, then I am full-on experimental because they respect it. I respect them. We have this trust. Yeah.

NATALIE: For me it’s so interesting, because I'm watching the performance, like I don't speak Farsi, right? And so because the performance was done with Nasrin reciting poetry in Farsi with Kamyar singing in Farsi and performing the daf, I could only go off feeling and emotion. And it was so fascinating to have Nasrin translate the words that she was speaking during the performance, because it was so in sync with the feelings that were provoked in watching the performance. So, you know, I think that goes to show the level of like, energy and passion that they brought forth because like that transcends language, you know what I mean? And I think as a child of immigrants, you learn to pick up on like, body language and gesticulation and tonality, in a way that's like very specific, even if you're talking to someone from a different ethnicity or culture, speaking a different language, you may have an easier time communicating with them on a nonverbal level. Because you're just used to having to navigate those those language barriers and in that way with a little bit more openness. So to be a spectator in the room, and just slowly be able to go off the imagery, the movement, the sounds, the vibes, you know, like, it was really beautiful to experience because I felt like, I understood everything that was happening without the verbal language part.

ANI: I love that. I'm really interested in how you, Anita and Bita, are both in New Mexico and how that landscape must have felt incredibly meaningful during this whole adventure. The nature and the mountain horizon served as a medium for you both to explore and communicate through, lending so much meaning for everyone in the group as it holds such similarity to the Iranian landscape.

NASRIN: Anita, I have to say, I love your video parts. I felt very connected, like it creates connection with I think whoever watches it. Thank you.

KAMYAR: They're beautiful.

ANITA: Thank you. Everyone made me feel so included, even though I was physically far away. Oh — what to say about the Southwest? The last time I was in Iran, I was seven years old, and I remember the mountains. I spent a lot of my childhood in Florida, where it's very flat, but there's the ocean, so there's still big, dramatic nature but I think it's the mountains out here coming to Colorado and coming to the Southwest and seeing the mountains and then also it's like a high desert, so there's still lots of trees. There's lots of Alpine trees out here. But then there's also this, like, dirt sand, desert-y texture in the ground. As a kid, I was always just obsessed with the mountains. When I saw the mountains in Iran, it just felt very organic and natural. There’s nothing really easy about living in the Southwest, but certainly the landscape has just always felt really magnetic to me. So when I found out that Bita was in the same little town in New Mexico as me, I lost it. I was like, ‘there's no way, what are the odds?’ And then I also thought, actually, that makes a lot of sense. Why aren’t there more of us out here?

ANI: It does. My mom's name is also Bita, coincidentally, and she spends a lot of time in Colorado and New Mexico. She always speaks about the mountains there, sharing that same feeling of ‘this is familiar to me, this air feels precious to me, the temperature, the density of the air and the cold nights.’ It makes a lot of sense...there should be more Iranians in in Colorado.

ANITA: Yeah. And I think there's also this display of independence and freedom and, you know, this rugged individualism that is on full display out here. But the truth is, when I feel and sense into the feminine bloodline, the women in my body, there's something about getting on a dirt bike and riding through the desert that feels liberating in a way that I don't really know how to explain. Like, it's not even fully mine, that desire. It's like some kind of freedom that is dramatic and amazing and feels important to be a part of and it's very accessible out here. It's just the way that it is. You meet someone and you end up going on a motor ride along the edge of the cliff of the Canyon, and you're like, well, this is extreme, but it's actually just appropriate.

BITA GHAVAMI: (Bita was not present for the conversation, but she had previously shared some related thoughts on an IG post, and later added some more words included below) I recorded my portion in high desert sagebrush of Taos, NM, land of the Pueblo people. Much like Iran, this is a place with a complicated history that extends to the present. I am not from Taos nor do I own any of the land, but one of the reasons I am so drawn to this place is how much the geography and climate remind me of Iran. I believe that land—not ideology, not politics—is the root of culture.

The land is what gives shape to art, food, music, movement, and wisdom. No matter where we are, the land, and therefore everything born of it, deserve our utmost reverence. The land also mirrors our true nature, as that of embodied beings. Through somatic movement and communion with the elements, we can reconnect—with our true nature beyond trauma imprints, with our ancestors, with heritage. My movement ritual is one of not only healing, but connection.

ANI: There's a shared love of the landscape for all of us, it seems. I totally understand that in the environments explored in the video that were so familiar. For me, and maybe for others, there is a kind of self-mythology of memories of Iran, things that are maybe fantasies. They’re a patchwork of memories that are a bit ineffable: multisensory and without timelines. These memories have just kind of smashed together where you have this one feeling, or an emptiness, when thinking about a place. I feel like you captured that feeling in the video so beautifully. I can imagine those in the audience watching that and feeling “oh, that must be what Iran is like,” even if it's just the feeling of water on your feet and dry dirt. I would love to hear more from you all about the experience of watching that video, performing in the projections, and finding your body reacting to the imagery and sound. How did that kind of play out?

NASRIN: For me it was like swimming. Swimming and diving in deep feelings and memories combined. I loved it. I enjoyed it. At the same time as I was looking at what Mojdeh did with editing the video parts, like how playful this video is...is this even me, or not? The playful movements and the connections, everything. Thank you, Mojdeh. It was beautiful.

KAMYAR: Yes, it was so for me too. I always have this dream about my parents’ house where I was born. This house is at the bottom of the ocean and everything is kind of floating. But that's how life goes. So at the moment that I was playing the daf, looking at the projection behind on the wall, at first it was hilarious. I had to stop myself from laughing at the moment. It was so familiar, too familiar. It was like, too familiar. I was freaking out. It was that moment that all the molecules in the body are like, ‘yeah, that.’ That happened for me. I think that’s what pushed me to be able to just be like, ‘alright, I'm just going to throw the daf on the floor and whirl because yeah.’ The projections helped. I mean, massively, I think. I'm so thankful they were there.

MOJDEH: And I think the projections were really just the presence of everyone who wasn’t technically performing that night, across time and space, you know? Anita, Bita, Natalie…

KAMYAR: Yeah.

REX: Yeah, it felt like performing with a much larger group, seeing Bita’s body in a large land space while being a body in a smaller space, it had this expansive effect. I feel like we were all moving together, everyone in the video and in the space and it just made it all feel a bit grand.

KAMYAR: Yeah.

ANI: Thank you all so much for your reflections. Before we wrap up, I’d love for everyone to tell us what's going on in your next chapter.

REX: I am currently starting a new project out of the space that I'm running with my collaborator Nancy Dlay, “but also” where we are throwing lots of pottery in our storefront space. We are swimming in clay right now, and it feels so good to make a reason to work with clay, and make meaning together around what it means to practice. I'm desperate to be making work in the studio and talking more about the ideas that were so present in Mojdeh’s work and in my own as well. I feel a little bit like I'm on a roller coaster, and excited to feel so active in all areas of my practice and life, while also holding on for dear life. I'm really excited about what could come out of this work we have done together because when Mojdeh shared that we were coming together to process the work with you Ani I was just so thrilled. It’s so nice to see all of your faces and revisit the project and its potential. So tender, and I feel so much inspiration from all of you!

ANI: How about you Kamyar? What's next for you?

KAMYAR: What's next, let’s see. I’m just releasing singles on Bandcamp and Spotify, then a full album. So within the next month and a half, I will be releasing all the tracks that I recorded during pandemic, you know. Some shows coming up, solo stuff, doing Sufi things, and getting all artistic with that. I also used to be in this punk band (Time is Fire) that probably will not get together, but we're doing a little party for one of our friends in the backyard. We’re keeping it going on a microphone whenever we can, screaming whenever we can.

ANI: Nasrin, how about you? What are you working on these days?

NASRIN: Right now I’m living in Fairfax, VA, but I'm leaving to Illinois in one week. I'm excited about a project I will be working on between University of Illinois Champagne and Art Institute of Chicago with artists who were formerly incarcerated, or victims of mass incarceration. I was myself incarcerated after the revolution, during the mass oppression in the 1980s in Iran. I'm going to run some workshops, and improvise. I think this project will help me trust more in connection. The subject is connection and disconnection. We met for the first time yesterday, and there were five people from totally different backgrounds from different countries, with different reasons for being in prison. One person has been twenty years in prison, one person thirty-one years in prison, and art helped them keep their sanity or to keep connected to themselves. I'm excited to see what will happen because we are sharing a moment of disconnection. This project is based on one installation that I had done in 2015 dedicated to journalists who were arrested. I start to drive next week and will be there for two months, three months. Then in March or April, we have an exhibition at The Museum of Illinois Champagne. I’d love you for you to come over there!

ANI: That's so exciting. Wow. That's a whole new journey! I really wish you the best.

NASRIN: It is. Thank you.

ANI: Anita, what's next in your life?

ANITA : I mean, I wear a few different hats in my life. Within this context, I think it's just continuing to go on this healing journey. For me, it's all been woven into my own healing. I have a body work practice, a healing arts practice that sometimes looks like offering outward, but sometimes it's really just inward work. This collaboration has been a huge part of that. I do a lot of writing in small groups. But for me, it's just the relationship part, like continuing to have conversations with everyone, continuing to hold this thread that didn't feel like it started or ended. I’m just waiting for Mojdeh’s call. Anytime she calls, I'm there in any way, truly, but no pressure! And more than anything, what's next is an invitation for everyone to come here in person to eat, laugh, sing, dance, cry and share together.

MOJDEH: I'll just jump off of Anita's thing. I’ve been doing too much since this ended. I feel like I just jumped into project after project after project. I'm just finally coming to a point where I could maybe pause after just one last project. Lately I’ve been working on another collaborative project called Born 1000 Times which is a zine that turned into a 170-page book with my friend Liliana Padilla. It’s actually a book of conversations. But, yeah, just trying to rest really good over the winter. Also maybe continuing to have conversations with the different people toward my research with the fragments. Seeing how it all builds slowly. Natalie, what are you working on now? Or what do you have coming up that you would want to share?

NATALIE: I feel like I'm still integrating the lessons and the messages and the gifts that came about from this. Through this conversation, I'm transported right back to all those feelings. This was like, the most important thing I've done all year, you know, in terms of my personal growth and just impact. So, thank you. I was previously working on a personal brand called Abundance Bruja that found the intersection between spirituality and personal finance and helped people work through money blocks and redefine abundance for themselves. However, through this work and experience, I realized that I want it all to shift to come from more of an aligned and authentic place. I'll be working on a project called Abundant Bodies, where I will be mapping out my journey with healing and connecting to my body and source through movement, and helping others do the same. So that's a very new and exciting project that will be slowly making its way into the world. I'm excited about that. I am also planning to visit Iran for the first time in my life, and I will be the first out of my siblings to do so. It feels like ever since working on this project even before but especially after completing this work with you guys, I have felt such a pull to visit Iran, specifically to a lot of the historical sites that were included in the work, because it felt as though through this work, I'd already visited them. There is a deep need for me to put my feet to the soil of our land. I'm feeling guided and pushed by my ancestors to do so. I'm just kind of excited to fulfill that calling right now.

ANI: It seems like so many threads had begun in this project set. It would probably take a lifetime to explore.

MOJDEH: It’s a good thing we have lifetimes together!

ANI: Well, I'm truly excited to watch you all continue to grow and for your connections to expand even further. Thank you all so much for your time. I hope that this conversation as a piece of writing can offer some kind of permanence to the project outside of your private relationships. I'm so happy to be a part of it.

(left to right) Kamyar, Mojdeh, Nasrin, Rex and Bita after the performance on July 29th, 2021

Mojdeh Rezaeipour is an Iranian-born artist whose interdisciplinary practice bridges over a decade of her work in the world as an architect, storyteller and community organizer. Her research and creative projects are often concerned with excavations of material memory at the intersection of her own story and a collective diasporic story. Mojdeh is currently based in Washington DC, where she is a 2021-2023 Studio Fellow with Henry Luce III Center for Art and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Listen to the recent conversation between Mojdeh and Kamyar on WPFW here.

Entanglements is a series of conversations between artists and those who know them best and have seen their work evolve over a significant duration of time — friends, family, partners, etc. We are interested in facilitating, making public, and archiving conversations that are often already held in private. We believe in the power of intimate conversation as a source of trust and authenticity.

To check out the full series of Entanglement conversations, click here.

Entanglement 009: Mojdeh Rezaeipour, Natalie Amini, Kamyar Arsani, Rex Delafkaran, Bita Ghavami, Nasrin Navab, Anita Poushan, and Anahita Bradberry