Shahid

Forget everything you think you know about storytelling! And get ready for a very surreal trip. Narges Kalhor plunges us in a funny and deconstructed joyful apocalypse of a web of stories while following four characters who moved to Germany in order to escape the dire and dangerous political situation of their countries.

Lake Urmia in Northern Iran was once the largest lake in the Middle East. Human influence brought upon a devastating drought that the lake could not withstand, and today, just 5% of the original lake remains.

In his video installation Philipp Gufler is carrying on his engagement with political, artistic and social movements. In this work, Gufler focuses on the Munich based performance artist Rabe Perplexum, imitating or subverting the stylistic conventions characteristic of the 1980s. The video performance is derived from archival research and includes the original props and costumes used by Perplexum.

Cheekily inverted gender roles, history revisited, empowerment. The weapons here: long fingernails and AI counterimages that serve to expand the visual canon of imagined collectives. Things never archived become visible and culturally imaginable.

Iran, 16 September 2022. Mahsa Amini dies after being beaten by the morality police. Demonstrations follow, bringing together thousands of women severely repressed by the regime. Narges Kahlor explores the videos of these revolts published on social media, paying tribute to these defenders of the people armed with telephones.