Karaoke Kriminals sheds light on the clandestine dissemination of music since the 1979 Revolution in Iran and explores how music is used to shape national identity in post-colonial states in Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA). This work invites participation in two outlawed narratives: “128 kbt/s of Pixelated Dyed Blonde Hair” and “Dressed as Mannequins With Pupil-Less Eyes.”
    The first narrative delves into the underground world of illicit music and films that thrived in Iran through channels operated by distributors known as filmi, videoyi, and computeri. These illegal distributors of sound and moving images became a crucial link for Iranian artists in exile to spread their music within Iran. Their music symbolized nostalgia for a lost Iran and a longing for freedom, becoming a secret gathering point for Iranians worldwide, fostering a sense of collective identity.
    The second narrative addresses the history of education among the upper and middle classes in SWANA, where students are still taught in French and English-speaking schools, embedding them in Western European ideals. However, many students reject these colonial identities through music and search for a different identity, tired of being uniformly dressed like mannequins.
    Karaoke Kriminals is the third and final chapter of the project In the Shadow of the New Sun by artist Afrang Nordlöf Malekian and writer Nour Helou. This project explores how pre-modern, non-binary beauty standards in Southwest Asia and North Africa continue to influence practices in photography, architecture, dance, and music.


Beardless, moon-faced figures with silky skin, almond-shaped eyes, and crescent eyebrows, such were performers: dancers, musicians, and wine pourers – or saaghi in Farsi – depicted in poetry and painting when the Qajar dynasty ruled Iran from 1789 to 1925. It was a non-binary aesthetic, musical, and choreographic expression spread from the eastern borders of the Mediterranean Sea to Central Asia.
    With 19th-century British and French colonialism and imperialism in the region, the colonizers implemented a binary culture where men and women had to not only be portrayed differently but also sing, dance, and act in a new modern style. However, the non-gendered expressions still live in the region. Listening to Images shows a rare assemblage of reproductions of vinyl and cassette covers from the 1950s-90s from Egypt, Iran, and Syria. They bear certain expressions of the Qajar face and indicate how this culture still manifests itself through colonial aesthetics in everyday life. Borrowing its title from professor Tina Campt’s oeuvre “Listening to Images” (2017), these images urge us to become listeners of anti-colonial actions that have seeped through a colonial infrastructure, providing the potential of a decolonial language.