Conversations: Iran

Sohrab Kashani took part in the IRAN 101 seminar: Contemporary Iranian Art and Culture in 2018, contributing to a talk and panel discussion on alternative art scenes and platforms at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). The session focused on artist-run initiatives, independent infrastructures, and modes of self-organization within contemporary Iranian art.

Sohrab Kashani took part in a panel and presentation at the Digital Art Center Taipei in 2018, focusing on Sazmanab’s use of digital infrastructures and new media within the contexts of West Asia and South Asia.

Sohrab Kashani spoke at Taiwan Annual 2018, presenting perspectives drawn from artistic, curatorial, and artist-run practices developed through Sazmanab and related projects. The talk reflected on alternative models of organizing, archiving, and collaboration, addressing how artistic practices respond to shifting political, social, and institutional conditions while creating spaces for exchange, experimentation, and collective knowledge production.

Sazmanab presents works and video pieces by Iranian artists at the 2018 Taiwan Annual, drawing from its Video Library and broader programme.

Sohrab Kashani took part in Understanding the Codes, a workshop at BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels focused on setting up artistic collaboration between Europe, Iran, and Armenia. Organised by Flanders Arts Institute, Mondriaan Fonds, and BOZAR, the workshop explored practical, cultural, and structural frameworks for transnational collaboration, addressing questions of access, translation, and working across different institutional and political contexts.

Sohrab Kashani presented Sazmanab at Nest in The Hague as part of the Mondriaan Fonds’ first Visitors programme. The presentation reflected on Sazmanab as an artist-run platform, focusing on its curatorial approaches, international exchanges, and the role of alternative infrastructures in sustaining artistic practice across different political and geographic contexts.

Sohrab Kashani took part in the Res Artis Conference in Tehran in 2016, speaking on the panel Funding the Field, held at Mohsen Gallery. The panel brought together speakers from organisations in the region and abroad to discuss support structures for artist residencies, available funding opportunities, and the tools and guides accessible to the field. The discussion also addressed barriers and challenges in creating truly reciprocal and collaborative funding approaches. Alongside Kashani, the panel included Jaïme-Faye Bean (ArteEast, US), Angie Cotte (Roberto Cimetta Fund, France), Marie Le Sourd (On the Move, Belgium), and Philipp Dietachmair (European Cultural Foundation, Austria).

Sohrab Kashani delivered a lecture at Stanford University reflecting on alternative art spaces and practices in Iran, with a focus on Sazmanab’s methodologies, infrastructures, and forms of collective work. The lecture was introduced by Dr. Abbas Milani and Ala Ebtekar and was sponsored by the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University as part of the Art, Social Space and Public Discourse initiative.

Sohrab Kashani gave a talk at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, organised by Et al. The presentation focused on Sazmanab and its approaches to alternative space-making, international exchange, and sustaining artist-run initiatives across different political and geographic contexts.

Sohrab Kashani gave a lecture at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), reflecting on Sazmanab and broader questions around alternative art spaces, artistic practice, and cultural production in Iran. The lecture was organised by the Jordan Center for Persian Studies at UCI.

Wiki-Women-Middle East activates a translocal editing network to write Middle Eastern women cultural practitioners into Wikipedia, using collective authorship as a feminist intervention in historical visibility.

Shattered Frames foregrounds experimental video as a lens through which artists articulate fractured realities, lived contradictions, and subjective experiences within contemporary Iran.

YARAT Contemporary Art Centre hosted a talk by Sohrab Kashani titled Sazmanab: Establishing a Link With the Outside, in which Kashani reflected on the development of Sazmanab as a not-for-profit art space in Tehran. The talk focused on Sazmanab’s programming over the years, with particular attention to its international collaborations and residency programs, tracing how the space built sustained relationships with institutions, museums, galleries, and curators beyond Iran since its founding in 2008.

A performance presentation examining the relationship between everyday life and artistic practice, developed through dialogue with local contexts and realised collectively at Sazmanab.

A public conversation reflecting on Metaphor and Politics: The Tehran Retrospective of Harun Farocki, examining Farocki’s work through questions of image-making, power, and political representation.

A retrospective of Harun Farocki’s film and video works, examining images, labour, warfare, and the politics of representation, marking the final exhibition at Sazmanab’s Khaghani venue.

An artist talk reflecting on Freund’s recent exhibition at Sazmanab, addressing historical memory, testimony, and the role of fiction within documentary and video practice.

A presentation of three video works by Peter Freund examining translation, testimony, and historical memory through entangled narratives of Iran and the United States.

An artist talk by Stephen Young reflecting on the exhibition Macro or Micro? Misinterpreting the Unfamiliar, exploring scale, perception, and the consequences of mistaking individual details for broader cultural truths.

An exhibition combining satellite imagery and electron microscopy to explore how patterns repeat across scales, examining perception, misinterpretation, and the ways unfamiliar details are mistaken for broader truths.