Faezeh

Bumped into my favorite NYC artist Shirin Neshat on the street in Soho on Saturday - or should I say I did that most un-New York thing and stopped her as she walking past !! Shirin Neshat's video "Faezeh," which I saw at the Gladstone gallery early in the year is still my favorite moving image of the year so far. The video is one of five large-scale video installations which were completed between 2004 and 2008. They all take their inspiration from the Shahrnush Parsipur’s Iranian novel "Women Without Men" which Neshat describes by saying - “Magic realism is a common style for artists in exile like Parsipur. People who have been forced from their homes tend to reach out for a universal vocabulary that transcends time and place. After all, how long can an exile depend on their memory? What if they don’t feel connected to the place where they live now? They might not foster an obsession for their new home. But art is an obsession—art has to be an urge, not something you calculate.”


Production still from Faezeh, 2008.

How did you come across Shahrnush Parsipur’s book Women Without Men?
Neshat: Women Without Men is a very well-known book in Iran. It was published in 1989 in Tehran, and subsequently banned along with all of Parsipur’s other work. Parsipur spent more than five years after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 in prison because of her writing, and she was imprisoned again for Women Without Men because she mentions virginity in the book. Most educated Iranians know about Women Without Men.

I had read Women Without Men some years ago, but had forgotten about it. When I was trying to find a project to bring to the Writers’ Workshop Lab at the Sundance Institute, Robert Redford’s organization for independent film, a friend of mine urged me to reread Women Without Men. When I reread it, I knew I wanted to work with it at Sundance as a film project.

What was it about the book that inspired you?
Neshat: Women Without Men is written in a tradition of magical realism where anything can happen. It is a wonderful, little book. The book tells the stories of five different women who are suffering from their life situations. The author Shahrnush Parsipur uses metaphorical and subversive language to explore the social and religious pressures that oppress these women who come from different classes in society in Tehran. Trying to escape society, the women eventually find themselves together in the garden of Karaj, a symbolic of Garden of Eden. There are lots of strong images in the book, like the image of Mahdokht obsessively knitting, which I felt would be interesting to work with visually.

Also, I was looking for material that would lend itself well to film. For me, film is about characters and narrative, and I was interested in the female characters and liked the loose narrative structure in Women Without Men. I had never tried to develop characters with personalities or psychologies before, so I needed characters that I could relate to. In my earlier work, people function more as symbols, or even sculptures. With respect to the narrative structure of Women Without Men, I found out after I had started working with the book that the chapters of the book had originally been written as separate stories and then later tied together in a final chapter where the characters meet each other in the garden. I guess this loose structure instinctively appealed to me.

I also really like the political aspect of the book. Women Without Men is set in 1953, an important year in the history of Iran. In 1953, a democratic government headed by Mohammed Mossadegh was brought down by a coup led by American and British forces. The coup reinstalled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as the absolute monarch. In the last chapter of Women Without Men, the women find themselves in the garden of Karaj trying to form a new society, a sort of alternative feminist utopia—again, a symbolic Garden of Eden. I have never worked on anything that was specifically political before, and I saw this as an opportunity to look into the political history of Iran. Not so much in the Women Without Men video installations, as in a feature length film which I expect to finish in about two months.

Let’s talk about the other part of your Women Without Men project, your full-length feature film. How will the feature-film of Women Without Men differ from the video installations?
Neshat: The video installations are inspired by the book Women Without Men, but do not follow the book closely. The film is also very different from the book. I have written a political narrative that develops throughout the film that is not in the book. In the book, the only chapter that is political is the last chapter. I have used the entire last chapter of the book in the film, exactly as it is in the book.

The film is a full-length feature film with a narrative and characters that develop over time. The characters also develop in the video progression, but these developments are more hidden. In the film, the character of Zarin, the young, anorexic prostitute, becomes an almost central character. Ironically, she becomes a redemptive savior figure; she has the hardest life, but also the biggest capacity to give. Also, the gardener becomes an important character in the film, as keeper of the garden of Karaj, a symbolic Garden of Eden.

But I shouldn’t give too much of the film away. You’ll have to wait and see it.



Neshat said to me that she hopes her first full length film " Women Without Men" will first be shown next January at Sundance. Something to look forward to in 2009 for sure.

A day like only New York can offer

Sometimes I wonder if I should leave New York and then I have days like yesterday and I think I should NEVER leave New York. The day started simply enough woke up, didn't move, and decided to forgo my usual trip to the farmers market at Grand Army Plaza. Stayed in bed for a bit. Woke up, drunk some juice, went and got my dry cleaning. Came back rocked out to some Northern Soul - especially this Wigan Casino segment in a BBC TV documentary called Dance Britannia. Then went out to Chelsea to meet a friend at the Gladstone Gallery for Shirin Neshat's new show.







What an absolutely fantastic experience it was - a small group of photographs were excellent - especially the one seen at the top of this post which when seen full scale is almost mystical but the meat of the event was the two rooms each showing a separate high definition film.

MUNIS follows the story of young woman and her magical encounter with a dead activist. FAEZEH sees a woman escaping the city to a magical orchard. Yes magical describes both movies and I don't want to give away the plot here.

I was blown away by the cinematography and spiritual feel of these short films. I know I will be going back for sure. Each film also includes a fantastic electronic soundtrack from the ever brilliant Ryuchi Sakamoto. If you are anywhere near West 24th St and 10th Ave go see this.

Here's an Interview with Shirin Neshat from July 2000 in The Guardian, Interview from Adriondacklife and a review of the new show from this weeks Time Out.

We also caught the show of Poul Kjærholm furntiture at Sean Kelly Gallery (way too dry, elitist and brittle in it's presentation) and a not so inspirational show by minimalist Japanese artists Atsuko Tanaka and Akira Kanyama. Maybe Shirin was just so good no one could compete.

To kill some time before dinner I went to the fantastic new, three floor Kinokuniya bookstore at 1073 Avenue of the Americas to pick up the new issue of Casa Brutus which I mentioned a few posts ago (more on it in another post). Of course I should have known I couldn't resist the store and I also broke down and bought a book I've been looking at there for the last 3 months - Electronic Music In The (Lost) World - a fantastic visual document of Synthesizer music in Japan. A few days from the end of January and I broke my no new books in January self imposed rule !! So much for my will power.



Staying with the developing theme, afterwards I went to Japanese restaurant Sakagura, 211 East 43rd St between 2nd & 3rd Avenues - a place wonderfully hidden in the basement of an office building (odd on the way in / fantastic once you're inside) - I ate:

* Fluke Carpaccio - Thinly sliced fluke sashimi drizzled w olive oil topped with plum paste, salmon roe and shisho leaf
* Satoimo Iridashi - Taro, potato, eggplant, and shitake mushroom fried and served with a broth
* Tori Karaage - Deep fried chunks of chicken marinated in sake Ginger infused soy sauce
* Pear Millefeuille - a desert of Earl Grey ice cream and Pear Millefeuille
* and a glass of Daishichi MINOWAMON Sake.

YUMMY !! I am not reviewing it. It was DELICIOUS and I am most certainly going back to Sakagura.



After that I went to meet my friend Kabir at musician George Lewis' house party. His upcoming book "A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music" is a title I mentioned in my very first post here (things I am looking forward to in 2008). I wasn't expecting to know anyone there and neither was I expecting George to remember me from the brief time I met him at Mills in Oakland but he did, and also old San Francisco jazz friends Bassist Lisle Ellis and Keyboardist Vijay Iyer where also there as was drummer Guillermo E. Brown who I hadn't seen for years. Lisle reminded me of a cover story I wrote on him for California Jazz Now way back in the early '90s and told me how the follow up article had only just came out recently - the cover of Cadence magazine - it only took over a decade !! We smiled about it and I told him that even though now I have been doing PR for many years that press doesn't matter. The people in the music who know the music are always the most important and then those who enjoy it - press or no press. Guillermo E. Brown told me about an upcoming solo gig at the Apollo in Harlem in April that sounded like it will be great.

House parties in New York can be a trip - first off it's just fascinating to see where and how people live - in this city it's so diverse and George's apartment was at Central Park West and 105th St not a neighborhood I'm often in. First conversation I had was with two Japanese women - turns out one of them improvised a special vocal piece by none other than Takehisa Kosugi a musician whose music has really been inspiring the hell out of me lately. The other lady works at Music From Japan - a cultural organization who are presenting a show of Toru Takemitsu music I just bought tickets for this week!. My Japanese theme had continued in and by itself !!

A few interesting hours later, after meeting a fascinating young Columbia University student working on a new controller device, I headed home with a bunch of people from the party. On the train I reached into my bag to show my friend Kabir (a electronic musician) the book I just bought - he showed it to an older couple next to him (also from the party) and the man said "oh - there I am !!" It was Morton Subotnick !! I was speechless. The book had an entire page showing 9 of his albums. He didn't know about the book and was curious where I bought it - saying appropriately "do they still have bookstores ?." He and his partner Joan La Barbara had been at the party but somehow I hadn't got to meet them. Hand shakes ensued and some smiles as we all realized just how wonderfully odd but captivating this city called New York can be. Bring on more days like this.

Funny thing I could have kept going too and gone either to No Ordinary Monkey or Matthew Dear at Minimoo. Suffice to say I decided the day had been perfect enough.