Sadegh Aleahmad’s (27) artistic endeavor and his lifelong pursue of an alternative understanding of

knowledge and its production stems from many issues across the cultural and philosophical
platforms rooting in his history as a former devout Iranian Muslim who was brought up by a unique
fusion between Islamic philosophy, and an Islamised version of western rationalism in post-
revolutionary Iran. Later being fascinated in Physics and scientific methodology as a model for his
own understanding of the universe and himself, resulted in studying Physics at BSc level at Durham.
At the age of 18 (2008) and while he was studying physics, he began taking photographs in spare
time. Progressively he found out more about art as an alternative form of knowledge production.
This resulted in studying MFA at Kingston. He has been practicing art professionally since 2011.

Jamal Sterrett (19) is a self-taught dancer from a small area of Nottingham called St Ann’s. Typically
labelled as an area of hard work, low pay and high crime rates St Ann’s. His practice has its roots in
Flex, Mutation and Bruk up dance. He Started his practice in 2011 using YouTube dance tutorials and
have been developing his own style of dance since.

Jamal got to know people from all parts of St Ann’s through his father’s place of work: community
recording studio. which is the heart of the area for all artists. It’s people’s stories that inspire his art
form, and the emotional rawness of its people that makes his art so heartfelt

Jamal Sterrett is a movement artist. His practice has its roots in Flex, Mutation and Bruk up dance. He
Started his practice in 2011 using YouTube dance tutorials and have been developing his own style of
dance as well as developing a methodology. His practice links to memory and emotions that drive to
different parts of himself to explore emotional depth in his performances

As a young Iranian artist, and former Muslim devotee living in the UK, the examination of my position
in the cultural space that exists between the West and the Middle East is an instrumental voice in my
research. In order to address and disarm the habitual notions of Islamic Identity I have adapted
subversive approaches to my practice including Maddahi singing, choreography with mirrors and
cameras, and performances with fake explosives to explores underlying assumptions and clashes
between artistic intensions and viewer’s perception. This is stimulated by the tension present
between the presumed role of an active artist being mistakenly recognised for a ‘terrorist’.

Introduction:

Bio from Jamal

Bio from Sadegh

As a former Muslim devotee, and a Physics graduate, I have found art as the most powerful and self
critical endeavour to understand myself through my relationship to the world. This has stemmed
from my history and status as a male Iranian immigrant.

On my practice practice (artist statement)

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Outline how you propose to use this opportunity including ideas and starting points for the new
work you would like to develop, and your approach to making work across three exhibition
moments and working with three organisations.

This project consists of two parts;

1- This is a continuum of an on-going collaboration project with Jamal Sterrett. We met each other in
Derby and did a test together. We are presenting this research in the format of two performances in
Tirana (18 young Mediterranean artist biennale) [NAME OF THE WORK].

Our research is site-specific, hence we are very excited to investigate new sites and see how this Commented [s1]: remember to include different images of
project evolves the performance from the garden, green screen, and the
one in Derby,

[DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTION]

We have been working with integrating the visual documentation of the performance simultaneously
to the live action. This has been achieved by strapping cameras to the surface of our limbs to
generate peculiar perspectives and angles. Additionally, we also have been strapping cameras to the
limbs of selected viewers in our performances. The captured footage from these perspectives will
also be integrated and presented simultaneously to the live action.
One of the reason for such a decision (apart from addressing discourses of surveillance and power-
relations) is to displace the gaze of the viewer to align formal ideas of displacement within the work
with the symbolic ideas of displacement that alien and immigrant individuals represent socio-
politically. This displacement of the viewer’s sense if what and where they’re looking allows him/her
to challenge and re-negotiate his/her perception and hence emancipate the action from its pre-given
connotations.

We are intending to produce 3 different and distinct series of collaborative live performances specific
to the location and genus loci of each of the galleries and/or their surrounding space. In addition to
this, I will be continuing on producing more poems from selected chapters of the Quran. Each of
these will be assembled and performed for the camera inside a mosque nearby the performance
space. The outcome of this project will be a collection of printed stills that will accompany each
exhibition. Each exhibition will be accompanied by a publication that uses stills from the
documentation of these two separate performances

In this on-going project, we use and appropriate variety of dance movements and gestures ranging
from Flex dancing to the conventional form of Iranian dancing (with which I grew up and later
abandoned due to religious fatwas). In addition to dance, I also perform the poems that I have
produced by appropriating different chapters from the Quran, using multiple translations of words
from English, Farsi and Arabic. The final language of the poems are mostly in English. The method of
the singing is a subversive appropriation of Maddahi; an exclusive and male-dominated genre of
Shitte religious singing and praising.

For this proposal, We are intending to produce 3 different and distinct series of collaborative live
performances specific to the location and genus loci of each of the galleries and/or their surrounding
space. In addition to this, I will be continuing on producing more poems from the Quran. Each of
these will be assembled and performed for the camera inside a mosque nearby the gallery space. The
outcome of this project will be a collection of printed stills that will accompany each exhibition.

OUTCOME of this research

This body of research is part of an on-going site-specific project that addresses multiple discourses
around the notion of difference and ‘the other’ that are not only gender, race, or culture specific, but
also as the moments of clash between two modes of presentation and perception; one being the
representation of an entity with its epiphantic connotations, and the other ; the re-presentation of
the same entity that aims to de-localise and challenge its own recognitional elements. This can also
be expanded to the discourse of performance VS documentation of a performance. Furthermore, this
research aims to deal with different registers brought by collaborating with another artist to
understand rhythm as an assemblage of fluctuations and between chaos and order, as well as
investigating the distribution of control and power in performance practice.

A central question developing through this research is that of if the viewer is not just a passive
consumer of art, but is also the producer of knowledge that is induced by interrogating and
interpreting an artwork in a live context. A further question this research proposes is how this private
experience, can be incorporated to affect the production of the subsequent performance and its
documentation.
This research is a derivative of a dynamic and ever-changing methodology and the artist’s own
understanding of the world, his/her fields of inquiry and interests, and his/her own history, all of
which is being interrelated, resulting in a unique gathering of concepts, materials, and emotions to
be put in a very particular context and order.

Furthermore this project allows me to purely investigate further the application of my main
methodological tools such as appropriation and subversion in collaboration with another artist.

Investigating the position that the viewer takes in the production of the documentation of the work
(as a piece of work in its own right).

I am very interested to experiment how collaboration can affect artistic inquiries that are dealing
explicitly with different dimensions/aspects of identity such as race, gender, and culture, and how
the collaboration between these practices can conceive a new rhythm that rejects the ideas of the
self expressed as I, him, or her, and instead re-produces the self as IT; a 4th dimensional entity that is
not bound to time or geography.
This project as a whole allows me to investigates further the application of my main methodological
tools such as appropriation and subversion. The movement present in this body of research is a
mixture of gestures and appropriations ranging from Flex dancing to the conventional Iranian
dancing, with which I grew up and later abandoned due to religious fatwas.

Alongside these series of collaborative researches, I am also very interested to work further with my
poems and produce more poems. They will also contribute to each exhibition in one form or another
(Image from Poetry of Skin). They are aimed to be assembled in particular sites; Mosques within the
around the location of each galleries.

Therefore this project is split into two: 1- live performance with Jamal at the site of the exhibition
(test with collective, power-relations etc.)

2- performance for camera (including the process of construction of poems in different sites -->
related to the location of the gallery)

in terms of the outcome: exhibtion (live performance) - Publication (book constisting of stills to re-
narrate the event as well as experimneting with physicality of a book and the ryhthm of the
performance) - Stills from solo performance for the camera. In the long run I may also write an essay
based on this work.