parallaxing (i) : a story of a practice
setareh fatehi
Listen to voiceover
This is a story
of a practice
a gathering
of words that came out through worlds meeting each other,
the worlds that although they might seem close, they feel pretty far
It is a choice
a temporal way of living through the conditions that (i) have been born to
(i) so far have called it parallaxing (i)
This text is written
to be recorded
to be listen to
while walking
or somehow traveling from one spot to another 1
This text is written to be listened to in different places at the same time2
Thank you for being here,
thank you for being somewhere.
Salam
I am setareh,
my pronoun is او .
There is no such word in English so I mostly remain unidentified or
mis-gendered when I am referred to as the other (i)
I’m sitting on a balcony of an old house in the mountains around Polour
(I’m sitting behind my desk in my studio in Ekbatan complex in west Tehran)
(I’m sitting infront of a microphone in andisheh studio in Villa street)
It is few minutes to 7:00 AM
(It is few minutes to 12:00 PM)
(It is a few minutes after 6:00 PM)
I hear the sound of a bird, like a rusty bicycle going up some hills in the far
(I hear the highway, like a white noise from a river in the far)
(I hear my own voice through the headphones that I am wearing)
I feel the morning mist on my skin
(I feel the cool air from the AC)
(The air is very still but not too hot)
it must be around 20 degrees in the altitude of around 1200 m
(it must be around 20 degrees on the 3rd floor of a 9 floor building)
(it must be around 20 degrees in this wooden room with the wooden walls)
Today is 7 of August 2024
(Today is 22 of August 2024)
(Today is 28 of August 2024)
Day 321, or 903, or 3
Today is just another day for some but certainly not for all.
17th Mordad 1403
۱۷ مرداد ۱۴۰
(1st of Shahrivar 1403)
( ۱ شهریور ۱۴۰۳)
(7th of Shahrivar 1403)
( ۷ شهریور ۱۴۰۳)
Today I am here on your screen and your speakers or headphones, as a vibrating light and sound that is allowed to touch and be touched from far.
Let’s start with a minute of stillness from wherever you are.
Listen to the space around you
Hear the sound of your heart,
Think of the ones who were not allowed to walk where you are.
(1 min silence)
And now parallaxing (i)
a choice
a research
Introducing a practice of remote hosting across localities that are
separated, against their wish, by the borders that have ignored their
presence once and for all!
Hoping to counter the debilitation caused by the alienating forces that
are separating (i)s and We,
countering projects that are benefiting from separating Them from Us
It has started with a question,
Where should my body be?
It has started with a frustration of having to answer,
Where are you based at the Moment?
for which the answer I do not know and I know why!
It explores the conditions of hosting the entangled presence of remote bodies
It is a way to understand what is it that I call other and what is it that I call (i)
It is an anti-microcosm
meaning that it does not encapsulate in miniature, the characteristics of something much larger.
It is a miniature world made by (i) and the other (i).
An exercise of gathering with remote bodies that (i) know(s), bodies that hold ‘knowledges’ that do not fit in the dichotomies of practice and theory, body and mind, movement and stillness, presence and absence, digital and physical, virtual and real, thinking and doing, life and art.
Parallaxing (i) is a practice that hosts practices of few of the many bodies who had to leave their so called “unlivable” motherland to be a part of the making of the future of this planet,
to get rid of their Colonial Fomo
and to be heard by the ones who have created that fomo.
It borrows the definition of “body” and “presence” from discourses where body’s agency and right to be fluid and opaque is valued.
It hopes to point out the ‘entangled presence of bodies’ that are kept far, by fearing them of their differences from one another
What defines the border of my body in relation to others?
What constitutes a collective body beyond the borders that their transgression is the most punishable of all?
How can (i) relate to Them?
How can they relate to (i)?
What measures of presence are at stake when my body consists of all the cables and electricity and screens that connect them to (i)?
I am trying to find an answer by hosting their story in the story of the (i)
DAY 1
Multitudes of (i)3
Many Moons ago
with Ogutu Muraya in Nairobi and (i) in Amsterdam
he is here with his words and with his eyes
Twende kazi {It’s in the going}
Let’s go بریم.
Where
Is
Where can it go
Where should it
It
It the body
It the (i)
It the presence
Where do you think you are now?
Make a frame with your hands in front of your eyes.
Hands being the frame
Close to the face
Face is a frame
If (i) would favor looking outside of the frame, what would you be against?
Parallax vision
Two images that do not match each other
Two different conditions existing in the same world at the same time
If (i) would favor being in the pain of seeing the parallax, what would you be against?
“Being in contact” is the only way to be affected by anything, she says.4
Distance
Distance from the image
My distance from your image
Distance of the eyes
Distance of the hands
Distance from the other
The number of steps
Distance between the shoulders
Distance between you and them
Distance of the lenses
Focal distance
Legal distance
Social distance
Emotional distance
Class distance
Economical distance
Thickness of a thread
One millimeter
Thickness of a wall
Air distance
4500 kilometers
Five days by car
Forty days on foot
Time distance
Let’s pause
It is early morning in Tehran
It is a bit earlier in Nairobi
It is late night in Bogota
It is early morning in Lisbon
It is a bit earlier in London
It is a bit later in Diyarbekir
It is the same time in Ashdod
and, the same time in Rafah…
It is early afternoon in Tokyo
It is a bit earlier in Hong kong
It is early morning in Samara
It is late night in la Serena
How’s your time over there?
Where is it going?
(i) once lived for a second and died
It was not long ago, in my understanding of time
Can you enjoy the liminal?
Can you enjoy the limbo?
(i) can enjoy confusion
(i) can enjoy dizziness
But maybe not for too long!
DAY 2
(i)’m going crazy here
So much noise
Noise makes me nervous and sad
Loud noise
Loud one-(i) do not know why (i) should hear
(i)’m going crazy here
So much dust
Dust makes me anxious
Thick dust
Thick one- (i) do not know why (i) should inhale
If (i) would favor taking a deep breath here, what would you be against?
So, tell me, where are you based at the moment?
Can (i) refuse to answer?
Can (i) at least wait?
Whose time am (i) consuming?
She said in a very funny way:
“As if Brussels is in Brussels
Congo is in Brussels
Both the labor and the earth”
(i) repeat:
As if Amsterdam is in Amsterdam
As if Tehran is in Tehran
As if Nairobi is in Nairobi
As if my body is in (i)
As if (i) is in my body
Both the time and the resources!
Ah darling, don’t be scared of the walls that make wars, you’ll be fine!
Coming and going
Here and there
repeat it as much as it loses meaning in every language that you think
you understand
There here coming going
اینجا اونجا اومدن رفت
hapa, kule, njoo, twende
He says that At those borders the unconditional hospitality that he has learned from his grandmother turns into the “dialectic of welcoming and exclusion”
At those borders generosity can easily and with no understandable logic turn into sovereignty.
This is when they can call the body a risk, or a source of contamination
At those borders they can call you a virus, depending on which economy you belong to!5 6
When you call me that, that is all (i) want to be!
A virus
It’s amazing. I don’t even know if I am dead or alive as a virus!
Have you ever thought that the virus didn’t even want to go anywhere but it was forced to?
DAY 3
(i) think you are very far
What does distance mean when there are no papers?
What if inclusivity was about how to exclude?
What if hospitality was about how to be homeless?
What if belonging was about how to lose?5
He asked: Would you work with European money?
(i) said: As if Europe is in Europe
As if you is in you
As if money is in money
Have we decided if we like the virus?
Have we decided who is in and out of this “we”? Who gets to decide?
Should we make a decision and post it online?
(i) asked him to be my avatar.
He could choose between the purple eggplant and the armadillo lizard
(i) was gonna be online.
(i) told him that
(i)’ll be glitchy, cutting in and out, that (i) won’t be able to hear properly, (i) will only see the things that come to the frame, (i) might feel claustrophobic at times,
(i) told him that we will need to trust each other.
He said: “I mean of course I trust you”.
Do you trust me?
Can they trust us?
This question of where my body is,
could be, should be
Is it actually about me?
Is it actually a question that can take multiple answers?
Is there a choice to be made?
(i) want to be able to live the afterlife of “nomadism”, “homelessness” and “homesickness”.
Maybe that’s what this practice is about!
Day 95
(i) a diasporic parallax7
With Kamran Behrouz in Alpenhof and (i) in Tehran
Kamran made Kl!tar – a 3D talking head out of our faces – and
We haven’t spoken since, and I’m not sure if I know why!
We wrote a poem for a panel that was called: “Is there a middle eastern body?”
Which middle?
Which east(ern)?
Which body?
In fact whose Middle East? and Middle of which fucking East?
Natascha uses the notion of parallax
to observe the techniques of ‘looking awry’
Parallax as an impalpable sensation of absence or confusion in telecommunication devices,
a feeling of absence as to where the other person is actually looking and whether they are paying attention or reading their emails on the side.6
Parallax overexposes the void that exists between the images of two locations, two bodies, two actualities that are distanced by the forces that make wars.
Once upon a time there was a body that wanted to be able to chose
She wanted to be mobile
But not to be mobilized
She wanted to be seen
But maybe not be visualized
She lived in Tehran, Malindi, Chania, Amsterdam, Istanbul, London, Ebesh, Karaj, Uidong valley, Frankfurt, Pol-e-Moon, Rome, Sydney, Bogota and Qeshm;
She came from the past that was forgotten and she was walking backward towards what might be her future
She refuses to identify with
She refuses to identify with
She refuses to identify with
Day 255
(i) disabled IRL (in real life)
with Shahrzad Irannejad in Istanbul and Babak Amrooni in Tehran
(i) am here
A ‘legal’ citizen of two cities,
One situated in the Middle of someone’s east
And the other in the West of that so called East
Two ‘distanced’ localities that are few hours of air distance apart
Two cities that may seem as absolute opposites, but my body felt them otherwise.
Their differences are apparent but their separation can not be excused by those differences at all!
Two cities that although they may not seem in a war, but their border function as a front line!
I have lived back and forth in between their lands and languages,
fighting not to have to decide where my body should be.
My body, the inseparable glitching software and “wetware”, has been trying to make sense of this mobile materiality to be present in their double standards.
(i) am here
(i) in lowercase and in between parentheses,
looking for the meaning of individuality and authorship ,
let the third person singular Other define the borders of its first person singular.
Similar to the “I” in Aymara.8
The language that ch’ixi is used in the place of I.
Ch’ixi as a collective subject forged through the negotiation of the individual “I” and the collective “we”.
She quotes : “To exist as me, I need someone else to point to me, to recognize and acknowledge me. In other words, to be me, I have to walk and talk with others”.9
(i) am here
Critical of “digital dualism”, that almost antiquated discussion when we assimilate digital and virtual and oppose virtual to real.10
(i) am here
skeptical of the debilitation caused by the mandate of physical presence, where the only way to be considered ‘Real in Life’ is to exist under the same roof;
Where, as they put it “biopolitical ruling benefits from the separation of debilitation and production of disability;
Where “targeting to disable” and “targeting the disabled” are put against one another.11
(i) am here
With my dis-locating, ghostly, encrypting, errant, viral and mobile body12
And (i) can not agree more with this sentiment that
in case (i) is present in any form possible
everything around that presence is real,
in whatever form it manifests that (i)
Let’s have a pause
Day 415
tamasha: hosting you hosting (i)
With Katerina bakatsaki, Ayda Alizadeh and Saina Salarian in Arti gallery in Amsterdam and Reyhaneh Mehrad and (i) in my neighborhood park in Tehran13
Anything can disappear and reappear at any time
The image on the wall
The wifi connection
The mirror
The battery charger
They might cut out electricity and internet again
The price of everything went high!
People got killed again. Executed. Genocided.
Anything can disappear and some might never reappear again.
Bodies, stories, hopes, smiles
The sound of your steps
Her voice
Your motivation
And mine
She said:
Space is a skin
and
Screen is a space 13
There in the space,
somewhere between your skin and my screen,
the borders disappear.
Those borders that are constantly afraid of our bodies transgressing them;
Those borders that made countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in consequence of Colonial adventurism;
Those borders that protected the monopolization of the dream of being “the first, the best, the most, the only one”, by internalizing the self-degrading belief of the un-livability of all the other lands…
The lands that have been the playground for their looting adventures for centuries and now being the abject to build their identity against!
There in the space,
somewhere between your hands and my eyes,
we can see very clearly that in the stories of (i)s, there is something that is you as well as it is (i).14
Notes and References
(1) Recorded by andisheh music studio.
(2) The first iteration of this text has been published in Corea#8 magazine in Portuguese by Patricia da Silva in 2023.
(3) Muraya, O. & Fatehi, S. (2020). Multitudes of (i) at Veem Huis voor performance Amsterdam.
(4) Povinelli, E.A. (2016). Geontologies A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Duke University Press.
(5) Khosravi, S. (2010) ‘Illegal’ Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders. Springer.
(6) Tasche (2015). parallax. [online] Possest. Available at: https://possest.de/2015/05/04/parallax/ [Accessed 30 Jan. 2024].
(7) Behrouz, K. & Fatehi, S. (2022) (i) a diasporic parallax at Orient institute CME conference Istanbul.
(8) Taylor, D. (2020). ¡Presente! The Politics of Presence. Duke University Press.
(9) Diana Taylor asked Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui a feminist sociologist and activist from Bolivia, how to say “I” and “me” in Aymara.
(10)Jurgenson, N. (2011). Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality. [online] Cyborgology. Available at: https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/24/digital-dualism-versus-augmented-reality/
(11) Puar, J.K. (2017). The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Durham: Duke University Press,
(12) Russell, L. (2020). Glitch Feminism. Verso Books.
(13) Bakatsaki, K. & Fatehi, S. & Mehrad, R. & Salarian, S. (2022) TAMASHA/ hosting u hosting (i) Performance-installation FLAM festival of live art Amsterdam.
(14) Thanks to performingborders for their invitation and thoughts and to Neda, Ogutu, Tanya, Naghmeh, Yalda and Hikaru for proof reading.