TEHERAN – Iran
Daten: 1. Oktober – 1. November 2019
Künstler: Kathrin Lambert, Lorenz Pasch + Kaveh Sattari, Ali Hashemlou
Mentor: Mate Behbudi (sound artist, Tehran)
Events: 2nd October – Project Presentation, 7pm @ Kooshk Residency
30th October – Open Studio, 12pm – 9pm @ Deegar Platform, Darbast
Platform and Tehran Navab Bath House
Partner organisation / residency location: Kooshk Residency
Supporter: Cultural Section of the German Embassy in Tehran
Last Weeks of Pre-Covid Tehran
an introduction by Mehdi Behbudi
Finding a chance to explore your city together with a group of enthusiastic sonic explorers is an amazing experience. On the first day of the residency in Tehran, I found that chance to go on a sound walk in the middle of my noisy crowded city, together with Kathrin, Ali, Lorenz, Kaveh and Carsten Stabenow.
It was a beautiful start. Carsten left a few days later and I was left with 4 artists who each had a special view of the world. Ali and Kathrin were more into exploring the city. Kaveh was obsessed with the acoustic qualities of an old bath-house in Tehran. And Lorenz was experimenting and working inside – paying attention to details and interactions. As a mentor, being involved in 4 parallel lines of exploration and realization of different ideas is like trying to be a kind of Buddha: observe, observe, observe, be calm and help.
With Kathrin we had 2 kinds of explorations: exploring the city for water and exploring the bazaar of Tehran to find materials and mechanical parts for making a sound sculpture working with the city channels‘ scarce water flow. It was an amazing journey. At some parts of the work we had to go and search for a water source that could feed our intended channel. In the middle of working on Kathrin’s idea, she was busy the whole time with taking photos and making field recordings that were presented beautifully on the open studio day.
With Ali development of an idea was very quick. On the first day’s sound walk he somehow fell in love with metal ventilation channels that are very common in Tehran. These channels are usually made to route the cool air from water cooling systems on the roof top to different parts of the house. Because air flows in these channels, they always contain vibrations and sound. Realizing Ali’s idea involved a lot of metal and electrical work.
With Kaveh we were most of the time just listening. He had his idea ready from the beginning: remaking the sonic ambience of a bath-house. But the exploration of the bath-house acoustics changed the outcome of the idea. In the end we had to listen to the way that the building was responding, resonating and giving feedback.
Lorenz’s RROOOOMM was like a small-scale, deformed Tehran in a room. The most important part of working with Lorenz was talking about ideas. With him my main acts were: listening, observing and enjoying.
Kathrin
Tehran commands an expanded system of water channels all over the city. Most of them had ran dry by the time we arrived, but some conduct water all year long. A few are even quite powerful. Roaming our neighbourhood, I fortunately found one of them at a street called Nirumand, which actually means “powerful” in Farsi. That’s the origin of my sound object.
artist project page >>>
Kaveh
My initial idea was to transform the environmental sounds in one of the oldest bath-houses in Teheran (Navab Bath-House) based on the historic and mysterious background of the public bath-houses. In the midst of efforts through this approach to prepare a circle of feedback through a combination of environmental reverb and digital audio effects, I explored the monument’s particular way of sound editing caused by the unique architecture and its acoustics.
artist project page >>>
Ali
My work is a reflection on the environment of Teheran’s city centre, and particularly its central squares. When you walk through these areas you can see the heavy traffic, the crowds and the tall buildings with cubical shapes and sharp corners. You can hear the powerful sounds, which move like prolific clouds through those huge squares; many cars and people are moving and making massive, continuous streams. For me this situation is strongly affecting, and my reflection to this effect is to find a way to appreciate that situation with artistic methods.
artist project page >>>
Lorenz
My investigations in the residency were primarily devoted to spatial lines of inquiry: questions that were addressed in particular to the psychological quality of architectonic, urban planning and social spaces, and how one moves through these spaces. For what quickly became apparent to me was a certain difference, an otherness, something unfamiliar in the familiar. And this unfamiliar part struck me first off in how space is organised. Private and public spaces are structured in an almost diametrically opposite fashion, and yet they constantly overlap.
artist project page >>>