THE FLAG: Instruction Manual #2

Carlos Noronha Feio, Daria Kirsanova, and Sohrab Kashani
Sazmanab

Sazmanab presents THE FLAG: Instruction Manual #2, a collaboration between London-based artist Carlos Noronha Feio, curator Daria Kirsanova, and Tehran-based artist and curator Sohrab Kashani.

This exhibition is the second interpretation of the performance/event titled “Instruction Manual Number One: Washing the Flags for a Peaceful Revolution,” which takes place in Vienna in December 2011. Conceived by Carlos Noronha Feio, the work operates as a multimedia performance conducted via the Internet while also including a physical action within the gallery space. The conceptual core draws on the protest action “Lava la bandera” (Wash the flag) by Colectivo Sociedad Civil, and is also rooted in the proposal by American socialist politician Norman Thomas, who called for an alternative to flag burning during the Vietnam War: a silent, non-violent protest through the washing of the flag.

The project presents a matrix-like, modular, and flexible conceptual structure that is shaped according to concerns specific to the site in which it is realized. This structure operates across multiple layers of meaning and reference. While one reading foregrounds questions of authority and authorship, the project extends beyond this to a broader critique. The use of the Internet, for example, functions as a strategy for constructing layers of detachment and separation within cyberspace, producing a conceptual distance from the geographical locations of the participants involved in the action/performance.

THE FLAG: Instruction Manual #2 emerges through months of exchange, during which the artist’s perspective and knowledge from the earlier iteration are transformed by all three collaborators. The project unfolds not as a single event, but as a two-week exhibition that includes sculptural objects (a flag and a bucket), a video documenting the making of the flag, and a series of video instructions in English, Portuguese, Russian, and Farsi.

Venue: Sazmanab (Sazman-e Ab St.)
April 19 – May 2, 2013 – 4–8 PM
Opening reception: Friday, April 19 – 4–9 PM

Activities

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