How does a society deal with ist cultural heritage? How can approaches to identity, culture, tradition and history become a ressource? How can we give yesterday a tomorrow, as Le Corbusier put it during a journey in 1929? In Iran, a country that can look back at several millenia of high culture, and whose cultural identity has experienced highly diverse influences and ruptures over the past five hundred years, questions like these are being asked urgently – by architects, artists, authors and scientists.
The iranian contribution to the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, „Instant Past“, looked at different moments (and buildings) during the processes of modernisation in Iran in the 20th and 21st centuries, when a process of the recreation and reinterpretation oft he historical heritage was initiated.
The photos and videos by Mehraneh Atashi and Dadbeh Bassir and Mona Hakimi-Schüler’s collages and her installation explore traditional technologies, old legends and Persian poetry, looking at their significance in today’s social and political contexts and reflecting the transformation of traditional norms in a rapidly changing world. Both Iranian architecture and these artistic positions question seemingly binary categories of past and present, tradition and modernity, seeking to combine them and make them productive fort he future.
Programme
Friday 22. 07. 2016, 16:00
Discussion with the curators of the exhibition, Iris Lenz and Azita Ebadi, with the artists Mona Hakimi-Schüler, Mehraneh Atashi and Dadbeh Bassir.
Thursday, 30.09. 2016, 19:00
Workshop – Constellations #3: Poetry meets City – a lyric workshop
How can the „yesterday in tomorrow“ translated into sound? Playing with voice and rhythm, repetition and pause, breath and tuba, the artis Mehraneh Atashi explores the border zones of poetry and video art. In her works, she transfers Persian poetry into the contemporary urban space of Teheran. In a workshop we develop our own poetic forms.
Sunday, 11.09. 2016, 14:00 – 17:00
Excursion – Radius #2
The architectural excursion with Dr. Eduard Kögel invites to a vivid dialogue with the local urban context of Berlin. Whether private residential buildings, picnic restaurants or sports complexes – in the exhibition contribution „Instant Past“, building forms from three different eras n the history of Iranian architecture testify to the creative dynamics that is engendered when the yesterday encounters the tomorrow.
