Shirin Sabahi

Title in Original Language: Untitled [District Sixteen]
Translated Title: Untitled [District Sixteen]
Year Created: 2010
Material: Slide and sound installation
Dimensions: Dimensions variable

Untitled (District Sixteen) revisits the former Tehran slaughterhouse, one of the sites that Jan Edman was working on during his time in Iran. By means of a narration and a slideshow of the site’s current condition, a photographer documents a visit to the site, accompanied by a former worker of the slaughterhouse where each of them take a tour of their individual memories of the place. After recalling detached memories of the site, their parallel routes meet in the future that they cannot foresee. In the installation of the two latter works together, the audience can choose between the two narrators: one is Edman himself giving a commentary on his films; the other is the artist's alter ego; a photographer whom upon visiting the site of the former Tehran slaughterhouse unfolds the history of the piece of land that the slaughterhouse was once located on. Edman's narration is linear and often corresponds to the image whereas the other narration is more detached. The work follows the transformation of the slaughterhouse to a culture house after the 1979 revolution and a target of the systemized land grab in the Tehran of the millennium. While the cameraman's narration addresses the longing for past and the arbitrariness of memory, the photographer's narration employs the location of the slaughterhouse for the transference of this non-lived past. In the joint installation of these works, past and present and real and fictive come together and this charged space becomes the face of the continuous reconfiguration of national identity.

Artist's Statement

My work addresses the materiality of time by exploring the representations of the past in the present moment fabricated in circulating photographic and filmic images. In my image and text-based projects, I employ both narrative fiction and documentary approaches and I investigate competing interpretations and identifications encouraged by language and image. Since 2008, I have worked with the personal archive of a middle-class Swedish family which includes almost 60 reels of 8-mm films shot by Ellis Edman [1899-1988] and his son Jan Edman [1928] between 1935 and 1988. Each chapter in this body of work deals with related concepts, emerging from history and memory, and finds its way from and into my objet trouve the Edman archive. In Present Perfect Tense, I reconstruct Ellis's life, his interest in filmmaking and his career as a journalist during the World War II. In Swede Home, I work with Jan's films and his memory as a visiting engineer working in Iran during the '60s and the '70s. In Untitled [District Sixteen] I revisit one of the sites that Edman was working on during his time in Iran. In the installation of the two latter works together, the audience can choose between two narrations: one is by Edman himself giving a commentary on his films some thirty years later; the other is by a photographer whom upon visiting the site of the former Tehran slaughterhouse which Edman's company was involved in its construction unfolds the history of the piece of land that the slaughterhouse was once located on. It follows the closure of the slaughterhouse in the early '80s, its transformation to a cultural house in the early '90s and a target of the systemized land grab in Tehran of the millennium. While the cameraman's commentary addresses the longing for past and the arbitrariness of memory, the photographer's narration employs the location of the slaughterhouse as the space of the transference of her non-lived past. Accompanied by a slide show of the site's current condition, past and present, real and fictive come together and this charged space becomes the face of the continuous reconfiguration of national identity. Dealing with identity as such, Geography Test for People in Pictures playfully invites the audience to measure their knowledge of Tehran. It formulates a diverse reading of urban life in this city, exploring both the national intensities and the homogeneous look as an inevitable part of international capital.

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