“What You Listen To” a group show, performance, a paper —->
This week in March, University of the Arts, London (UAL) presents the Unfolding Narratives series. I’m in the group show, giving a performance and presenting paper on my PhD research in a hugely colourful, cross-disciplinary symposium. For the group show I explore the significance of being visible and audible in an increasingly surveilled society. For this I’m contributing two textiles pieces and a new video work. I realised that my protest banner “NO MORE DICTATORS”, is unlike most other banner artworks, as it was actually made for and used in real protests. The other piece is an organic rendition in textile of a digital piece I first made in the UAE for Harper’s Bazaar Arabia “WHAT YOU LISTEN TO” quizzing you on where you send your attention, and what sounds or voices it is that you are focus on and are heeding. Internal or external, constructive or destructive, within your control or running amok and driving you insane? This has been a constant in my work, and the fact that this piece is made no plastics in it, but moss and wool, and found objects in wood and fabric instead, and the way it is splayed out and hung in totemic fashion, is a signifier.
For the Unfolding Narratives group show I’m also presenting my first ever video piece on the importance of the right to protest in UK. “PSA – Public Service Announcement” ‘speaks’ silently as an uncensored iteration, and a silent work about noise within the context of being listened to and watched, within shifts in British law, and total blackout on protests in my country of birth Iran and their main tech-supplier, China.
Still from a recording of “What You Listen To”, performance, 2025.
Finally I also present the performance piece “What You Listen To” which is based on my doctoral research into Smart Cities as a source of a new kind of noise pollution. This is a phenomenological work, of sonic storytelling and shared listening. There is a video clip of it here.
Unfolding Narratives takes place at my home college within UAL, London College of Communication and the performance is on Thursday 14th March at 4.30pm.
Later on this month I’ll be installing at London College of Fashion (LCF) in Stratford City an altered iteration of the same video piece, this time with sound, for a parallel series Fashioning Frequencies taking place across the college in April. And in July I’m in a group show in West London more on those soon.
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