Two nomadic fabric chadors - blue (2007) and pewter (2008)

Kristen Alvanson

nonad

May 23–28, 2008

Azad Gallery is pleased to present nonad (of nines and nomads), a solo exhibition by the Iran-based American artist Kristen Alvanson, opening Friday, May 23. In Alvanson's first Tehran exhibition, a western artist reanimates her artistic experiments with an entirely new arsenal of conceptual and material resources.

Since leaving New York, Alvanson has explored the threefold of textiles, women, and the Middle East in all its formations, anomalies, enigmas, political speculations, and aesthetic conjectures. Her new work includes nomadic fabric chador (Persian veil) sculptures, abjad-9 drawings, and an animation from her Cosmic Drapery Project.

For the exhibition, Azad Gallery is transformed into a garden of hanging folds. Nine colorful chadors are hung throughout the gallery. As viewers weave through and interact with the installation, they discover implicit sociopolitical structures of these nomadic fabric sculptures as well as their nomadic persuasions in regard to art and creativity. At 350 cm x 190 cm, each chador contains nine panels, six made of different nomadic fabrics. The rest contain black fabric, the same fabric used for traditional back chadors.

On surrounding walls, the Abjad-9 drawings suggest collective shapes vaguely reminiscent of the patterns of traditional Islamic art. Drawn in Persian ink and calligraphic pen, the drawings reveal the affect space between women in veil or chador, and the forces, folds and movements between them. These elaborately nested structures include half-elliptical shapes, the shape of a Persian veil when fully spread out. These shapes represent women in chador as seen from above.

The animation ninefold is a further visualization of these complex, subterranean relationships and spaces. Like the chadors and the Abjad-9 drawings, it is structured by the number 9, standing for the occluded relations between textiles, women, and the Middle East. In the Middle Eastern occult, nine is the number of unceasing collectivity - worlds created through the hidden bonds of spells and collective tides.

Alvanson's nomadic fabric chadors explore the interactions between black and nomadic fabrics. These include the differences and compatibilities between patterns, textures, and weight; explicit folding lines; and the distribution of sequins. The potentials inherent in each fabric emerge as islands of alliance or as folds of opposition between state and nomadic art in the Middle East.

Kristen Alvanson (born in 1969 in Minneapolis) lives and works in Shiraz, Iran. She attended The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York and holds a degree from Sarah Lawrence College. Alvanson has exhibited in shows in both the United States and the Middle East. She will be participating in the upcoming International Roaming Biennial of Tehran. Her writing and artworks have been published in Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development, New Humanist, Frozen Tears III and will be included in an upcoming issue of Cabinet magazine.

For more information visit Alvanson's website at www.kristenalvanson.com or email Mohsen Nabizadeh of Azad Gallery at azadgallery@yahoo.com.

Azad Gallery | No. 41, Salmas Sq., Golha Sq. | Tehran, Iran | +98 21 88008676

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images



A preponderance of religious imagery differentiates itself from the background of a clear blue sky, as the area around the peninsula gives up its plague pits and industrial waste in exchange for luxury flats and tidy marinas.



In memory of the uncounted millions of animals who died not of foot and mouth but of the cure for foot and mouth

A gently satanic goat watches over the small animal graveyard near the Cutty Sark pub and Habour Master's Office.



Building materials fall steadily like manna from heaven. Cranes are the new churches, whose worshippers have not yet arrived, and even less understood how it is they should pray.



An Opus Dei lamppost, punishing the sky for crimes committed against the weather.



A Crown of Thorns splays outward from the locked gate, looking north towards a factory chimney.



The cross cannot be carried by one man. The Stations of the Cross meet at the intersection between a cement factory and a disused warehouse.



Golgotha, rusting away quietly, somewhere behind the Millennium Dome.

Whilst out walking in Thames Wasteland yesterday, as is my wont, I came across this piece of chalk graffiti. It was in the middle of nowhere, but strangely cheering for that reason.

The Theory Research Group is pleased to announce the visit of James Trafford (PhD researcher at the University of East London in Nanotechnology and Philosophies of Nature). James is presenting a paper on Thursday 29 May at 4pm in LO6 at the University of Chichester titled 'The Elimination of Selves' on the work of the controversial neuro-philosopher Thomas Metzinger. This is developed from research James has recently published in the latest issue of the journal Collapse IV 'Concept Horror'. Details of advance reading can be obtained from Dr Benjamin Noys (b.noys[at]chi.ac.uk). All are very welcome

I'm bored of 68. Here are some pointlessly black and white pictures from last night's protest at City Hall against BNP grand poobah Richard Barnbrook. Lenin's colourised take is here.

City Hall and anti-fascists.

Tower Bridge and anti-fascists.

City Hall. It's designed by Norman Foster, you know.

Lindsey German. She hates fascists and so do we.

Everything they do, the way they pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young, the blacks against the whites, is meant to keep us in our place.

The next Kino Fist will take place on Sunday 1st June at 2pm at E:vent Gallery, 96 Teesdale Street, E2 6PU.

We will be screening Godard's 1969 'British Sounds', made for but ultimately banned by London Weekend Television (see here for discussion), followed by Schrader's 1978 'Blue Collar' (see Mark on this from a while back).

If you would like to contribute something on the theme of either (or both) of these films, or on the theme of work and cinema more broadly, please send illustrations, photos and texts to infinitethought[at]hotmail.co.uk by May 20.

Thursday 8 May
'Time without Becoming'
Quentin Meillassoux (École Normale Supérieure, Paris)
5.30-7.30pm, Saloon, Mansion House
Trent Park campus, Middlesex University, Bramley Road, London N14 4YZ.
These seminars are open to anyone wishing to attend. Directions for getting to Trent Park are available here.


Friday 9 May
'Towards a Diasporic Citizen? Internationalism to Cosmopolitics'
Etienne Balibar
Discussants: Gilbert Achcar (SOAS), Alex Callinicos (KCL)
Room 2.40, King's College London, Strand, London
4 p.m.


Saturday 10 May
1968 and all that
10am - 10pm
Conway Hall
Red Lion Square
London WC1

Boris Watch has just been set up.

'Today marks the launch of Boris Watch. Over the next few years, we’ll be tracking the fall and fall of the Greater London Authority, under the leadership of Boris Johnson.

However, I need help. Volunteers are invited to become co-authors. Please leave a comment, if you’re interested.'

Wish it didn't have to exist, but a good thing that it does. Let's all watch the trainwreck in slow motion.

I have a horrible feeling that the Johnson election is all the fault of people between the ages of 18-30. As Don Letts put it: 'They used to say don't trust anyone over 30, but today I don't trust anyone under 30 - let's be blunt: today's young are spoilt motherfuckers.' Reared on warmed-over irony, children's cartoons, cynicism and celebrity medja, those puffed up bastards who work in the city and offices all over London are exactly the kind of person who'd think: 'wouldn't it be hilarious if Boris Johnson was mayor, huh huh huh'. You fucking idiots! My generation can go to hell, spawn of Thatcher and Hobbes, with their fucking egotism and 'what's in it for me?' attitude, trained like Pavlov's puppies to respond only to money and to, like, stuff. Wankers, the lot of them. When the housing market crashes and pension misery really kicks in, I'm holding out for the over-60s to be the real revolutionaries...the young are just irremediable right-wing fuckwits. The old idea of people becoming more conservative as they get older must be abandoned. All hail the grey vote! Bring back rationing for the under 30s! Take away their i-pods and Grand Theft Auto and make 'em clean up their own sick! Sigh...

Lenin has been brilliant on the extraordinarily depressing recent elections. And I liked this picture.

The new edition of Parrhesia is out, horrah! That is to say online and open access. It looks great, and includes a splendid review of Collapse. Not only that, but a copy of the English translation of After Finitude arrived on my (imaginary) doormat this morning. As soon as I've finished reviewing Number and Numbers, I'll read that properly. Adam Smith can wait...

Somehow, depressed. And accidentally messing things up, such as exam questions for my students, which only makes it infinitely, and even bigger than infinitely, worse. Despite, or perhaps because, I found an echo-chamber in my shrivelled heart and a waking pause in my patchy, pissy sleep to get up at 5am to write a piece on the incest taboo and communism over at the weblog, as part of a new series they've started.

Lately I keep thinking I need to read more liberal/right economics stuff (ha! I really am depressed). I own Gareth Steadman-Jones' copy of Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis, for some contingent reason, but perhaps I need to go further back...Smith, Ricardo....650AD and the invention of paper money in China? The dismal science seems a bit depressing already. Reading Michael Barratt Brown's Models in Political Economy, with its post-89 preface 'there were certain misjudgements...they concern my estimates of human capacities and the effect of these on the basically Marxist model of human society with which I was working', etc. I've never understood those Marxists who give up when it doesn't work out in their lifetime. Surely that's the most possessive, individualistic, commodified relation one could have to time, ever? I mean, fuck the whole Green 'what about our grandchilderen' thing, but, come on, if you really meant it, you'd be holding out for 2190, 3400, 799342 or, like the Posadists, for socialism on other planets. If you left a million Martians in a room with a million copies of Windows Office for an infinite length of time, one of them would type the Communist Manifesto. In Martian. Unfortunately, one of them would also type the script for the current world order in which it's okay to make fascist salutes on the steps of Rome's city hall and rape your own daughter for quarter of a century in the basement of your apparently respectable home. Piss-sticks.

Carl

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?

Drizzling, blustery and intemperate

Late frosts killed off the darling buds of May

White breath, red cheeks: August bank holiday!



Sweet climate change! How could the poets know?

Summer’s lease expired some time ago

Seasonal metaphors dealt a fatal blow

One verity unaffected: we're reaping what we sow.



Shall I compare thee then, to our own Summer days?

Fitful, mingled, fixless, gusted all ways

Can Nature represent us still, or are we too afraid

To truly see our broken state, in winter sun, in the high-summer grey?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David the Wrong (1142-1170)

Whate'er shall we do with IT? (an acrostic in three oar spasms)

Insidiously me search for the werds
Nullifying the songs of the berds;
Fankfully me remember how to spell
"Ingenious," "philosophy," and "'ell!"
Nightly me read her blog to me kittens
Inducing them to sew her new mittens;
Totally inept at writing these verse
Eventually me'll fall down accursed.

Tragically me see the dead pig bleeding,
"How 'tis such nasty knees!" say me, pleading:
"Out of the heart of your good, go eat cheese!
"Unfinite thought is guaranteed to please!"

Growing fond of death, I cast off from shore,
Hearing the stench of human-kind no more;
"This is end," say me; "where'er wend, I free."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MT

This is
the impossible
first line.

Next,
a memory—
I think.

Then,
from a long line
this short one.

Careful,

on these last few
the ending
balances.

Press it gently
to the surface of the thing-in-itself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bob Allen

Puke My Guts Out


when I pass by Holiday Inn,

or when I go to the town

or when I go to Missouri for any reason,
or see a cop

I want to puke my guts out.

when I put on a wifebeater
and go outside in the heat

I want to puke my guts out
I puke for people who like their jobs
I puke for real estate agents
I puke my guts out for personal responsibility

I puke both ways before crossing railroad tracks
I puke for Karen Carpenter
I puke for Barry Manilow and Ron Paul, together
I puke for American Idol
I puke for Wal Mart
I puke for Harley Davidson
I puke for sportscasters
I blow chunks at speeds approaching nearly 180 mph for NASCAR,
I hurl for Hillary, barf for Barak, and ralph Nader,
I puke my guts out for Sundays
I puke for rodeos
I puke for bars
I puke for guns
I puke for the death of irony
I puke my guts out in the name of home improvement
I puke for television
I puke for the power and the glory,
I puke for America


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ezra Mark

A poemthing in one word:

glost


***

It could be argued that you can't have a one word
poem; Richard Serra (I paraphrase) wrote "You draw a
line. Another makes a composition." So if I made the
word, I could put it with others, make a little
constellation:

glost. If so be

came then


***

but I think it has enough internal rift / elision to
hang there in the corner of the page by itself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Jon Shaw

VENTOUSE
(After Louise Bourgeois)

Cutting through petty murmurs

are stayed inhalations,

the spherical antitheses

of mother-tongue

finding their sanguine route

to the surface

of purist slate black -

indecipherable from its support,

its blocked form.


A light within -

which you grossly name catharsis -

offers no heat

only a shadowed step ironically upward,

a Virgilian invitation

past marble spines

and guttural transparencies

and systolic chambers.

All stitches outward

to a rough, milky line.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dominic

Nonsense Villanelle

I know this one. The answer's seventeen
black buttons, and a quart of castor oil,
assuming you mean what I think you mean.

Although the pole may splinter on the green,
the thread unspool, the ghost milk go to spoil,
I know this one. The answer's seventeen.

In coughing so, whilst buffing to a sheen
that ball of brass, that sheet of baking foil,
assuming you mean what I think, you mean

to ask me just how many years it's been
since last I cried, my temper at a boil,
"I know this one!" The answer's seventeen.

How many cornfields must the gleaner glean
before he reaps the gains of honest toil?
I know this one; the answer's seventeen,
assuming you mean what I think you mean.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dominic (an older poem, not entered but included here regardless, primarily for reasons of cleverness)

(Every line is an anagram of the first line; and thus, an anagram of
every other line)

This is a poem about language
(august, hospitable egomania):
a beauteous, gloating mishap.

"Manageable utopia sought." Is
this a poem? Language is about
tautologies, an "I AM" bush. Page

gaps. The ambitious analogue.
Stage phobia, mutual agonies:
"Situation Omega! Plague!" (Bash!)

An ultimate big oesophagus, a
biasing gaol-house. Amputate
sub-human. Apologise. Agitate.

I, alphabet - I, nauseous maggot,
inestimable - oughta go up as a
gaseous, glum ape-habitation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Results

Now I know why they have committees of people to do this, it's like a firing squad, best not to know who decided for or against you. I don't actually want to pick one....gulp....but after much deliberation, I'm going to say Bob Allen for the line 'I puke both ways before crossing railroad tracks'. 'Glost' is brilliant, Carl and David are funny, in both senses, and Dominic, Jon and MT can actually write poems. You see the difficulty here.

I've received several really rather impressive entries for the competition, but I'll put them up tomorrow, just in case more arrive by the latest interpretation of the 'Monday evening' deadline.

This story about Houellebecq's Mum getting in a strop over her portrayal in Atomised reminded me of the time Nick Cohen's Mum gave him a slap for calling her a Stalinist. The moral of the story is perhaps not to mention one's mother in print until such time as she is no longer in a position to do serious p.r. and/or physical damage to you.

Honoured to have an invite to a party on the Dorset Estate the other night. Whilst lifts are a bit scary, staircases are always good. Am beginning to work out how to use my new camera (mmm, credit, it's like money without matter), but it's going to take a while.

Love Music Hate Racism a lot of fun today, despite occasional patches of fascist rain. Poly Styrene just brilliant doing Oh Bondage Up Yours!, Jay Sean, Wiley/Roll Deep also exciting. I dunno if Mark E Smith did turn up in the end, as we went off to play 'guess that lyric' in the pub instead.

I do believe that Patrick Keiller is Britain's greatest living director. There's nothing a viewing of London or Robinson in Space won't cure. He's speaking here too.

On a Cine tip, Kino Fist will most likely be back on May 31st. It's a busy month for film, what with all the 68ery, so we'll turn up at the end. The theme is 'work' and we'll most likely be screening Godard's very rare 'British Sounds' and Schrader's 1978 Blue Collar. Contributions on either of these two films, or the theme of work more broadly, welcomed (illustrations, texts, photos). Please email to infinitethought[at]hotmail.co.uk.

Lately I seem to be receiving a disproportionate amount of poems, both by email and at work. Does the warm weather stimulate some dormant linguistic impulse? Do I look/read like the kinda gal that would like a good poem? I can only assume oui.

In fact, let's have another competition! Best poem (according to me) wins a book and a CD of my choosing. I'll publish all results on the blog (unless they're fucking offensive), so sign your name at the end of your entry in the way you want me to put it up here. You have until Monday evening! [Hmm, thinks to self, wonder if anyone will enter. Ponders how long it would take to make up several poems.] I am particularly keen on nonsense verse, acrostics, palindromes, burlesque, epigrams and poetry written in the shape of an object.

Undergoing a seriously bad bout of insomnia/jetlag coupled with excruciatingly unpleasant dreams, I start to wonder what cinema would look like if dreams were not a common feature of psychic life. Dreams are extraordinary lies: the death of a friend, the disintegration of teeth, the taste of blood, the guilt felt at the accidental death of someone in your care are real, physically felt phenomena. The tears cried in dreams create the same exhaustion as tears cried in waking life, and the unpleasantness and terror that lingers after witnessing a violent death or spending what seemed like several hours wondering around with a mouth filled with vomit, blood and broken teeth remains with you during the day. You can taste it. Just as the false movement and emotional wrench of much cinema creates a kind of depthless empathy and pity for the reflection of a world which doesn't exist, dreams too invent pathos for a nonreality, but one which is unfortunately, and tiresomely, caught between the confines of your own skull. The combined boredom and discomfort of listening to the dreams of another is a kind of fear of this confined subjective illusion, the infinite space of a claustrophobic...nutshell.

Oh, yes, it's good to be back...normal service resumed shortly...