Arefeh Riahi

This research project was conducted for the occasion of a book launch event of 16/10/20: a publication project by Notes on Hapticity Collective. To this publication, the trio collective "To See the Inability to See" contributed a text. For this occasion, we re-read and re-activated the library of Printroom in Rotterdam, in relation to our text. We made three book/objects, each consists of different selected publications, ‘woven’ to each other. Through performing a triangular reading of these objects, a temporary, polyphonic, anarchival narrative was created.

In a collaboration with artist and researcher Sher Doruff, I research the uncertainty of language, as well as its potential for resisting archival modes of communication. What do ‘limitation’ and ‘consolidation’ mean in relation to language? In what ways are borders manifested within language? In every form of language, an inclusion and exclusion process is at work. Do there exist some levers for resisting this othering process, inside the structure itself? How can language be activated with the poetic quality of secrets — coded and yet simultaneously open? This research manifested as a constellation of coalescent components — a site-specific performance in two parts, that left behind a residual installation, accompanied by a sound composition, printed material and a video work. While each component could be understood as an independent work, they were simultaneously an annotation and a recollection of the collaborative process. In this regard, the works too existed within a self-referential dialogue with one another. The performances took place at a glass border between interior and exterior, located at the entrance of the W139 project space — a building that is situated in Amsterdam’s red light district. The audience of the work were thereby extended to the transient public, who can observe it from the street, through the windows.

This Project focuses on the complex relationship between public and private space, and more specifically the tension between genders within these spaces. Through the modality of traditional architecture of houses in central Iran, and their division of spaces into public, semi-public, private, etc, I try to understand and problematize the hierarchy of social relations. The main focus of the research is upon a space called the “hashti”: an entrance room that is the mediator between inside and outside — and the connector of different spaces of the house. It is a space of in-betweenness, and of different possibilities. A Hashti was usually made in the shape of an octagon. The term “hasht” or eight also refers to the eight sides of octagon. The first iteration of the research manifested as an installation consisting of three different parts: 1.The Unspeakable Secrets, a letter-essay: A text in the format of a private letter that is written to be shared with the public. It resembles an undecidable space in-between public and private. 2. The study of the octagon in two dimensions: through folding an octagon on paper, following various folding patterns, the potentials of this polygon, come into investigation. 3. The study of the octagon in three dimensions: a foldable octagonal instrument, made of cardboard and fabric, with one side covered with mirrors. The mirrored side of the device, was placed in front of a projection. The image that is projected on the mirrors is broken to eight pieces (stripes) and projected upon the opposite walls. The audience was invited to examine and manipulate the object. By changing the folds of the object they could make their own composition of the projected image on the walls. 

The projected image shows the inner part of the octagonal dome of the tomb of Hafez in Shiraz, Iran. Hafez was a Persian poet (1325–1390), whose poetry and vision is being investigated in the letter, in relation to secrets and friendship.

In the sixth edition of the visual poetry project with the artist Martín La Roche, Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo project space in Chile invited me to collaborate. The work is described on their website as followed: On this occasion the artist proposes a composition of intertwined words. What seems par excellence a poetic gesture, that is, to emphasize what the words represent, becomes a riddle. Her work takes on an abstract structure that on a first reading is easily legible - words that at first glance seem familiar but then turn out to be equally strange. The artist seeks to construct a space in which interpretation is recognized as a valid component within communication, and in this way to highlight the undecidability of language.

The Remote* Archivist is a recurring publication from the Archive of de Appel that can also be accessed while the reader is physically distant, or the archive is far away. The distance, and at the same time the fickle proximity of digital platforms is now translated into the tangibility of archivistic messages. On one side of the paper, you will find a record from de Appel Archive; be it from years ago or just yesterday; after all, how fast does an event turn into an archival record? Referring to the leaflets of documentation that de Appel sent to its ‘followers’ in the 1970s, the Remote Archivist commemorates the joy of receiving printed matter in the mailbox. The Remote Archivist will keep you informed about what has taken place and what is yet to become history. On the opposite side of the paper, archive visitors are given space to cherish, celebrate and publish their findings. De Appel Archive is kept alive with a gentle touch, ample attention, and remains ready to be rediscovered, time and time again. *absent, dreamy, far away, remote control, distant In this first series of three episodes, Arefeh Riahi, Maartje Fliervoet and Martín La Roche Contreras have been invited to take care of one side of the paper. They have been regular visitors and thorough researchers in the Archive since de Appel moved to Broedplaats Lely. In 2017, during a collaboration with Martín La Roche Contreras and Maartje Fliervoet (Manifold Books), the term Remote Archivist came into being due to the archivist’s lack of time. Two years later, during Arefeh Riahi’s archival project “Un/folding Interventions”, the three makers met and formed “To See the Inability to See”. Together they delved deeper into de Appel’s Archive, connecting in their love for paper things – especially for the “aliens”; the pieces that don’t belong anywhere. Their own collections, memories, records and the meticulous determination leading to those lucky finds, culminated in Outdated Compass. Here, non-archivable and non-categorisable knowledge resonates in the now, but just a bit too late and out of time! https://new.deappel.nl/en/pages/1862-series-01-to-see-the-inability-to-see

Triangular reading is a collaborative anarchival research and performance by To See the Inability to see (Arefeh Riahi, Martín La Roch and Maartje Fliervoet) as part of the Uncertainty Seminar: Care in Stroom Den Haag Library The video documentation of one of the performances can be find in the link bellow: youtu.be/pIVdoCYoH0M?t=3115

A collaborative un/narration by To see the Inability to See (Arefeh Riahi, Maartje Fliervoet and Martín La Roche Contreras)

In a collaboration with choreographer Setareh Fatehi this intervention to the Archive of de Appel brought the bodies into dialogue with the abstract body of the fourteen-fold-object and the body of work, the archive.

Un/folding Interventions is a research-driven presentation during a residency in the archive of De Appel. It is a series of interventions that was manifested through daily actions, archive gatherings with event-based performances, as well as an ongoing yet constantly changing exhibition. Each intervention marks a pivot in a conversation between the archival site and a specially produced multifaceted, self-enclosing folding object, the construction of which is based on the template of a cube with additional surfaces and folds. This object — a body, a box, a book, a folder, a container, a component, a space that is archiving itself — was in residence in the archive of De Appel for two months, was folded and unfolded, to exist as an anarchival agent within the archive. Through its multiple interpositions, enabled by intervening bodies — the artist, the archivist, guests and visitors of the archive — the object engages with the surrounding archival materials, structures and space. By testing the limits of its capacity to extend, contract, recoil its limbs and re-orientate its axis, the object rearranges the existing archival system. It insists on interruptions, suggests new associations and chronologies, and re-routes the space’s flow of movement.

Peace, Place, Potential is a lecture-performance that explores the symbolism of political gestures through the history, mission, and objects within the Peace Palace in the Hague. It describes a fictional encounter between two heads of state, representatives of unnamed nations in conflict. The small and occasionally humorous details of their arrival, encounter with the building and its objects, and interactions with (or avoidance of) each other form the narrative thread of the work. Peace, Place, Potential borrows from the language of theater, performance art, storytelling, and film, to invite the audience to imagine what is not physically before their eyes: a story of a dance between two political “enemies,” but also a fable about the contradictions within the idea of “peace” itself.

This work is from an ongoing series of performances entitled Devocalcomania. The word was invented during the 2014 performance A Converformance with Sher, adapted from ‘decalcomania,' a French word for a technique of transferring image from one surface to another. It is a blotting process whereby paint is squeezed between two surfaces to create a mirror image; the technique was adopted by the Surrealists to create imagery by chance, rather than through conscious control. Devocalcomania entails experiments in which I use an event and the presence of an audience, whereby I approach performance similar to drawing exercises. Many of the ideas for the series are participatory. This first edition is a collaborative work with Rotterdam based artist/musician Anna Mikhailova. The live presentation shows a fraction of our long-term experiments using sound and language. In this work, the two performers try to communicate in two languages, Farsi and Russian, by each trying to translate or rather transfer the sound of the alien language to her familiar mother tongue. The process challenges the borders of language and how choices in lingual communication are negotiated. Sometimes, in order to continue the conversation the domain of language has to be interrupted and dissolves into the realm of none-meaning, none-language, the realm of sound. In some instance of the same experiment, a sentence ends up being transferred or squeezed into one single word. In this version the performance started with a Farsi sentence being written on a window and then said aloud to the other performer, who responded to it with a possible translation in Russian, responding solely to the sound of the initial sentence. This Russian sentence was also written on the window and spoken aloud. The relay between performers ensues until no window space remains. At the final stage, the sentences were translated into English by the performers and read aloud.

This text was written specifically for the aforementioned exhibition, functioning as an artwork in its own right. It is written by hand on the entrance window of the project space 1646, in a fashion that allows the first two paragraphs to be read from outside, while the third paragraph is readable from inside. The first two paragraphs read as follows: ‘Let’s begin with my mother’s hairbrush: an oblong plastic brush with undulating patches where the material had probably been melted from a casually misplaced cigarette now and then. It was green, which earned it its title of being the green brush. Upon my mother’s purchase of a new brush, the green one was promptly confiscated by my brother and I. On the childish high of a ping-pong obsession, we adopted the green brush as a ping-pong paddle. Such a gesture reminds me of the occasion I encountered an old ceramic flush tank being employed as a peculiar flower pot in the garden – an object that had once possessed a distinct functionality now serving an alternative purpose. One could say that once the dominance of an object’s default use fades, a myriad of other possibilities come into existence, and thus everything acquires the status of being a container – regardless of the specifications of the object’s actual physicality – a container of possibilities...’ 

I modified the template of a cube to produce a multifaceted, self-enclosing object: a body that is a box that is a container that is a component that is a space that is archiving itself as well as all these concepts, whilst simultaneously being neither of them; a full emptiness, a hiatus; essentially, undecidable.

an installation consisting of a sculpture, multifaceted object, inspired by the template of a cube, situated upon a table, alongside a self-standing glass board, reminiscent of those typically found in school buildings. This installation was used during the exhibition to enact a performance, bringing together the subjects of language, structure, and abstraction.

This work is comprised of several elements: an oblique wall upon which a video work is installed, a self-standing sculptural object resembling a school writing board, and a textual diagram executed onto the architecture of the space, namely several window panels — readable mostly from the exterior of the academy building. Evoking notions of playfulness, the work is equally concerned with observations on the aesthetics and structure of authority and institutional power.

This work is a collaboration with another The Hague based - Iranian artist Ehsan Behmanesh and is an installation consisting of a forty-page ring bound booklet, featuring a variety of manipulated art and exhibition flyers sourced from The Hague, along side a mural image made by the remaining pieces of the same flyers; after being used as stencil. The title In de Galerij itself was extracted from one of the flyers, which was an exhibition running concurrent to the exhibition wherein this work was shown. The work was made in the occasion of the exhibition ‘Exit Gemak: All Art is Political’, the closing event of the project space Gemak — the exhibition space of a foundation (stichting) that had been one of the longest running in The Hague. The sudden announcement of its closure had provoked much debate within The Hague’s art scene, specifically concerned with the power (or lack thereof) held by artistic institutions.

The first incarnation of my initial investigations into the format of a cube modified so as to posses eight folds and nine surfaces. It has been presented as a durational installation, whereby I placed the box on a wheeled table, which I guided between three locations in the gallery. In these locations, magnets had been installed onto the walls, allowing for the box to be rearranged and installed in a variety of positions. At some points in the installation, audience members also participated in examining the possibilities of the object.

This video was made for the occasion of an exhibition entitled ‘Locus’, focused upon the location of the artist and the impact that such positioning may have upon the work. This work therefore engages in the theme of dual languages and the prospect for translation — beyond merely direct translation. The body within the video reflects upon the struggle of mediating different meanings and the associations a word may possess depending on cultural context.