Written by: Moiz Abdul Majid
Posted on: July 21, 2020 | 
The City of Tales Skit at the Shiraz-Persepolis Festival, 1966-1967
One positive trend that has come from the current lockdown has been the plethora of informative talks online which help pass the time productively. Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) in particular has coped with the lockdown by hosting and presenting stellar talks by panelists from around the world, dealing with topics from books to current issues. Yesterday, the topic in discussion was about the memory of Iran’s past as a tolerant, culturally active space, and how that cultural vibrancy was slowly chipped away in the years leading up to the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
The moderator, Naazish Ataullah is a prominent personality of Lahore’s art scene. She was once the principal of the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, and has mentored the likes of Faiza Butt and Rashid Rana. As a member of the Women’s Action Forum in 1980, her work often features women and symbols of feminism.
The guest of the evening was Vali Mahlouji, a London-based art curator and historian of Iranian descent. He is the founder and curator of Archaeology of the Final Decade (AOTFD), a cultural platform that seeks to identify, excavate and re-circulate significant cultural and artistic materials that remain obscure, under-exposed, endangered, banned or in some instances destroyed. Mahlouji has participated in LLF for some time, and some of the exhibitions he mentioned in the talk have been shown at the Rohtas Gallery during the last few iterations of the event.
As an Iranian who grew up during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 and as a student of psychoanalysis, Mahlouji explained his fascination with what he calls ‘haunted sites’, gaps in previous histories which were forcibly removed, yet make their presence felt nonetheless. By revisiting and actively engaging with sites of erasure, viewers can bear witness to particular histories that can help explain present circumstances.
A Piano Performance in Iran, 1972
One of the projects from AOTFD which Mahlouji showed was a series of archives related to the Festival of Shiraz-Persepolis, a world festival that took place between 1966 and 1967 in Iran. Materials and evidence of this international arts festival have been banned and removed from Iran since 1979. A festival attended by 40,000 people at the time, it brought together all kinds of experimental artists from around the world (including Europe), to celebrate the Non-Aligned Movement(1), the end of artistic hierarchies and the idea that, “the essence of rhythm, can be felt by all humankind.”
Another project featured Kaveh Golestan’s photographs of the Red Light District in Tehran, which was mysteriously burnt down in 1977. Nowadays, there is a pool and a public park in its place. In remembering the workers and customers of the Red Light District, as well as the artists of the festival, Mahlouji comments on how the most marginalized members of society bear the brunt of censorship and authoritarian repression, by having their spaces “de-territorialized” for other purposes.
A Lady in the Red Light District of Tehran from Golestan's 'Recreating the Citadel'
Briefly, Mahlouji showed two other projects he had worked on, which dealt with themes of erasure and histories from below. The first was ‘A Cultural Atlas’, a panoramic mind map across a 30-ft wide wall. It features mostly non-European revolutionary thinkers, who sought to reimagine the world based on radical thoughts of emancipation from the 20th Century. It includes an Indian scholar like Tagore, along with anti-colonial thinkers like Fanon and black radical thinkers like Malcolm X.
A Part of 'A Cultural Atlas' Panorama
The second project involved is what he calls “the Battle of Baalbek”, a diagram of competing narratives around the multi-era ruins in Baalbek, Lebanon. His observations were not dissimilar to recent conversations about heritage preservation in Lahore, in light of the projects in the Walled City. Mahlouji expressed the desire to visit Lahore, to work on a similar project related to memory in Lahore.
The Battle of Baalbek Exhibition
Mahlouji’s talk was an interesting discussion about the issue of cultural erasure in societies which have gone through upheavals resulting the formation of an authoritarian state, as in Iran or colonized countries where the culture of the indigenous people is remade in the colonial mold, as Fanon discusses. Art, culture and literature enthusiasts should look forward to more such talks on LLF’s Facebook page. To find out more about Mahlouj’s work, you can also visit his website.
(1) An international organization of countries mostly from Asia or Africa, which was established in 1961, and refused to align with either USA or USSR during the height of Cold War tensions.
You may also like:
