LIMITED ACCESS II

VIDEO | SOUND | PERFORMANCE

Organized by Parkingallery in collaboration with Azad Art Gallery and Mooweex.com

Azad Art Gallery No 5, Salmas Square, Golha Square, Tehran
31 October – 4 November 2009
Daily Visiting Hours: Fri – Wed 4-8 pm
Opening night and performances: Friday 30 October, 4-8 pm
Curated by
Miha Colner / Ida Hirsenfelder (Ljubljana/SL) | Amirali Ghasemi (Parkingallery/Tehran) | Arash Khakpour (Mooweex/Tehran) | Bita Razavi (Helsinki/FI) |Sarah Rifky (Cairo/EG) | Shirin Sabahi (Malmo/SE) | Rozita Sharafjahan (Azad Art Gallery/IR)

Access to what? What limitations?

LIMITED ACCESS sounds like a disappointing title for a project, but in fact it’s not really true, it has a kind of ambiguity within it, which is a characteristic of Parkingallery projects. One should ask : “Access to what?” and “What limitations?”
In the past decade, Iranian Contemporary art and specially New Media Arts has been through many ups and downs, either in the time which was temporarily celebrated by the authorities and officials, by a considerable budget and space, without necessarily establishing a constant and appropriate structure for its survival in future, or when it visibly slowed down its development at least outside of the unofficial and private circles of artists in the recent years. And as we speak the numbers of curators and art lovers who are frequently visiting Tehran, for various reasons and intentions is highly increasing, specially now when the international Media zoomed more than ever, on Iran. The Art Market despite recent hiccups is heating up by its discoveries of middle eastern and Iranian art shows from LA to Dubai, filled with repetitive names of superstars. Meanwhile there is an independent creative scene which is emerging and is undoubtedly hard to track and describe, as its variance and its continuity lies in its anonymity. In the absence of an inclusive reference for a proper research on multi fragmented Tehran art scene, most of the attempts which has been done to map and document the scene, remained unfinished and to some degree clueless because of the intentional shifts toward the art market and/or falling into the traps of tribal self promotional concerns of few.
LIMITED ACCESS therefore tries to gather and reconnect the artists from all disciplines to each other and reestablish their link with their emerging audience. As we believe that what is labeled and being marketed as “Iranian contemporary art” to the art world is quite known and accessible despite all propaganda, as many individuals and collectives are paying their dues for its exposure and growth internationaly, even by conflicting objectives and means. What is really missing here is a local platform, which though its structure, experiments in New Media can be seen and discussed , beyond the closed circle of the artists practicing it.
As delayed echos of such phenomenon, often passing through mediums like Internet, books and other medias might turn the viewer into a passive consumer rather than a critical observer.
These limitations could be caused by many factors, from the imposed sanctions to unofficial boycotts, to the emergence of market-oriented attitude among artists as a result of periodic temporary reception of Iranian art all around the world, beside as some other may put it, the fact that contemporary art is being rarely mentioned in the mainstream media, ignored to some extent and not supported any more. All these excuses are not enough to prevent us from taking the current moment for granted even if it would seem hopeless to many, and shape the future by observing and learning from it.
Amirali Ghasemi, Parkingallery Oct 2009

Jazire-ye Sargardani (The Wander Island)

8513 hours in Helsinki

(one)self as (an)other

Intelligent Systems

Whoever I Like Turns out to be a Weirdo, or Performative Narrations

Parkingallery is changing from an E- gallery/ nice looking static website to a multifunctional blog / news portal on Iranian and international contemporary arts and design… this decision has been made through around a year of less frequent activities on our website focusing on other projects including the our monumental mega exhibition in a suitcase: URBAN JEALOUSY/The roaming biennial of Tehran . There are other reasons to shift our activities from plain showcasing up and coming artists to a more advanced way of paying our due to the community of Iranian involved with arts, to name a few:

1st of all because of the fact that the way we Iranians are dealing with Internet phenomenon and its fabulous growth in Iran despite obstacles raining from everywhere (!), we are encouraging our artists friends to setup their own personal websites and try our best to help them both as design studio and a project space to promote and maintain their website while benefit from being linked and featured in our refreshed website.

Secondly despite we’ve never have been acting as a commercial gallery, an increasing numbers of the artists used to work with us did or about to sign restricting contracts with individual, institutions and galleries,which made us think to refresh what we has been showing on our website for over a decade, to be experimental and less conventional and more and more away from sophisticated mainstream trends, and more importantly focused on new media art projects and knowledge production it the field of interdisciplinary practices.

we believe that current circumstances forces by various players in the scene made circulation of the art and its makers and contributors in Iran going through severe unfair issues, caused many talented young artist to be ignored to to fall into early professionalism which kills their interest and reduce their intention for experimental projects and practices, having said that what is really a nessesity of our time is building up an news portal/idea exchange pool which aims to track what’s happening now in the art scene by documenting see-worthy happening and events and what has been through by interviewing the key figures in the field, helping us to discover the lines between the lines of unwritten history of our own! ( wow what a big claim!)

Finally to find practical way to make parkingallery’s archive on contemporary arts, which has been evolving through the years, available online and to public.

To make all this happen, we are looking for contributors from around the world who are interested in the arts and its universe to join our team and/or help us as freelance reporters and photographers, we will write more about this call, very soon.

That’s all for now…

Warm wishes from Parkingallery’s Headquarter

Parkingallery Team

Parkingallery News

Thursday, October 29, 2009