Keeping up with the Iranians
پا به پای ایرانیها
Shortly after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the new leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, banned music in Iran, equating it to opium. Consequently, many artists relocated to Los Angeles to find new ways of making a living and pursuing their artistry in exile without the previously provided governmental support. This often happened through recordings or concerts of the musical genre dāmbuli dimbol since it was what people would dance to at mehmooni (a social gathering by invitation to someone’s home, e.g., dinner, dance party, celebration, etc.). It is a fugitive culture of dance, music, and joy, which has long been discredited by intellectuals, Marxists, Islamists, and Westerners as apolitical and poisoned art. However, through illegal sound distribution, it found its way back to Iran and resurfaced in the domestic sphere as mainstream culture. Repression has made this music the signifier of secret collectivity and freedom—a catalyst for realizing dreams.
The performance and exhibition Keeping Up with the Iranians emerge from this music history by reconstructing a mehmooni starring world-famous singers Setareh and Poupak, number one charting pianist Fereshteh, and renowned choreographer Dancing Dina, visiting all the way from Los Angeles, California. To the rhythm of dāmbuli dimbol songs, they invite the audience to an unforgettable evening of dance, music, cake, and joy. The leftovers of the performance are then what becomes this exhibition; video documentation of the performances recorded by the audience itself, stale cake, the paper plates I Have a Heart, I Have a Stomach, the New York Times best-selling book Keeping up with the Iranians, and last but not least the overhanging question: a girl can leave Iran, but can Iran leave a girl the fuck alone?
Concept: Afrang Nordlöf Malekian
Co-produced, performers: Mia Herman, Sepideh Khodarahmi, Afrang Nordlöf Malekian, Edwin Safari
Graphic design: Agga Stage
Host: Samuel Girma
Poster photographer: Jean-Baptiste Béranger
Event photographer: Malin LQ
Singer & songwriter of Bous El Wawa: Nour Helou
Baker: Nour Helou
Driver: Poya Livälven
Interlocutor: Mehregan Meysami
Light and sound technician: Astrid Braide Eriksson
Big Facts, Bigger Fictions
حقایق عظیم، داستانهای عظیمتر
Books at the closed art library at Nordic Culture Point are camouflaged with the
iconic book cover Keeping up with the Iranians: Big Facts, Bigger Fictions. Departing from
the performance, Keeping up with the Iranians, the cover depicts the four fictional
divas in all their glory. Inspired by celebrities’ autobiographies, the installation also
alludes to the rugged terrain between reality and fiction of our times.
Keeping up with the Iranians: Big Facts, Bigger Fictions, poses the following
questions: what stories do we bear with us? How do we narrate our lives? It points
to the fact that we live in an increasingly absurd time where life sometimes feels
like a book of fiction. In this way, Keeping up with the Iranians: Big Facts, Bigger Fictions
riffs on the strings of joy and enthusiasm while giving a playful introduction to the
theoretical and historical framework of the performance.
A girl can leave Iran
but can Iran leave a girl the fuck alone?
یک دختر میتواند ایران را ترک کند
اما آیا ایران میتواند دست لعنتیشو از
سر اون دختر برداره؟
As simple as it is, this work depicts the singer Giti from her vinyl album cover “Yeh del daram” (I Have a Heart), 1969, and “Beh man nakhand” (Don’t
Laugh at Me) from the same year, as well as Googosh from the vinyl cover of “Jomjomak Barge Khazoon” (The Shaky-Shaky of the Autumn Leaves)
from 1970, collected and documented by artist Afrang Nordlöf Malekian and writer and researcher Nour Helou.
Giti and Googoosh, like many other artists, had to leave Iran after the revolution in 1979. Googoosh stayed in Iran and was sentenced to silence
until she left the country in 2000. The ban from practicing her artistry became the voice of absent singing females in the Iranian public sphere. On a broader scale, this silence translated into a metaphor for the oppression of the people in Iran. Until the present day, this ban on female singing in
public spaces remains. The question addressed in this work is taken from Afrang Nordlöf Malekian’s Master’s thesis, Keeping up with the Iranians (The
Dutch Art Institute, 2022), on Iranian music production in Los Angeles. He follows the fictive artist Setareh, who faces this very issue in her search
for success in Dubai and Los Angeles.
I Have a Heart, I Have a Stomach
یه دل دارم