EVENT LANGUAGE: GERMAN.

Valleys of the Simorgh
A transhistorical Quest for Equality and Democracy

Since September 2022 people in Iran have been protesting for regime change, democracy, freedom, equality and human rights. This protest movement, initially started by women and girls at the risk of their lives, expanded into a feminist-intersectional revolution. People from different marginalized groups joined together and collectively try to establish democracy and equality in Iran.

They build a union of diversity, similar to the Simorgh in Farid Al-Din Attar’s Conference of the Birds (written in the 12th century). From a transhistorical as well as transcultural perspective, the project aims to highlight the significance of this epic for today and to explore the role of art and literature in the struggle for equality rights.

We warmly invite you to participate in our events where artists present their work and discuss with us the afterlife of the Conference of the Birds.

On Thursday 16.11.2023 the kick-off event of the INTRA-Project “Valleys of the Simorgh” will take place within the framework of the Vienna Art Week 2023 at hinterland. We will start at 6pm with the lecture performance “Wandering Images” by Farkhondeh Shahroudi and at 7pm the exhibition “Flight of the Birds” will be opened.

In a lecture performance, the multimedia artist Farkhondeh Shahroudi gives us an insight into her artistic work. In her oeuvre, the migration of materials, images, metaphors, ideas and narratives plays a central role. At the same time, these migrations are always accompanied by a process of translation, which is reflected in language (Farsi/German), text and image.

How does a change of place, a change of language, a change of material transform what is represented, what is narrated? Everything is in motion, even the two-dimensional written text, which detaches itself from the carrier medium and is transformed into spatially sculptural forms, or when the ink is replaced by threads and wanders out of Shahroudi’s textile books into the space of reception and becomes tactile. These dynamics of overcoming spatial, temporal and pictorial boundaries are the subject of Shahroudi’s lecture performance and the fitting prelude to our project, which is also dedicated to the dynamics of movement and makes temporal persistence, spatial migration and language-image transformation the focus of investigation.

https://www.hinterland.ag/vogelgespraeche/2023/wanderingimages