7th January 2025, Gent
"I'm working on how to not lose my sanity," I wrote down in my notebook at the beginning of this project.
putting it in academic terms:
"It investigates how the occupied regime of image and language produced by state and institutional media toward concepts such as resistance, homeland, solidarity, and war has shaped collective memory, ethical positioning, and ways of knowing and imagination."
But neither of these strands of words describes my current state and feeling about this subject.
The truth is that, as an Iranian (I have always tried to refuse starting sentences with this kind of identification, but here I am), I have found myself and everyone around me always drowning in news. not because we are necessarily in love with politics or have been born with a crazy activism desire, but because of our daily life, and by daily, I mean it: DAILY: EACH MOMENT has been affected by "the news".
What is the news in this context? who won the election in the U.S., what happened with the yellow vest protest in France, what Putin's strategy is for invading Ukraine, and so...
And we are following all these details just because, believe it or not, these details, all these details, affect the price of milk and bread and rent and accessibility to the internet and the chance of being able to travel or the chance of being alive for us.
At this point in my life, at this point in world history and at this point in my country's history, I feel like "I AM THE NEWS".
Less than 5 months ago, when I started writing this proposal, I was collapsed after the "Israel" attack on Iran and experiencing real time war from a distance. I remember thinking about how I prefer to be there, living the cruelty of the world instead of watching it from a distance, tracking it in the news and shivering in the fear of not hearing from my family again.
Today, 5 months after working on this research, another massacre is happening in the country. I have started my day with watching the people in Greenland protesting against Trump and analysing with myself how the possibility of a Trump invasion of Greenland might affect the change of the game in Iran's regime. and the European intervention as NATO, how might it affect my visa situation? So where would I end up in 2 years? And so, isn't it better to just now, tomorrow, get my ticket and go back to Tehran and, at least, not have access to the internet or the news, hold my loved ones and live the brutality of the world with my own flesh instead of loosing my sanity here and selling my soul to the shadow of "safety"?
And I think this is the core of this practice. my forced obsession with the news, analysing, keeping track and trying to understand what all these are about?
February 3rd, 2025, Gent
The collision between working on this subject and the current situation in Iran is making things harder than I could imagine.
When starting this research, I was sure that this research, most and foremost, is about my relation (as a subject: civilian) with "the state" and "power structure", and I was aware how this relation has taken different shapes in the history of my understanding of my social political existence.
At this point also, the core struggle has not changed: "the state", the power, the big Satan, is stealing the narrative, the image, the names, the lives, and the bodies, and my attempt is to look at ways of claiming back the narratives. How to make new relations and definitions?
But I was blind to one specific aspect when I started doing this research: my inner drive for working on this matter was coming from a state of resistance and strength. a will for change and reclaiming agency. At this moment of my process, I feel like I have lost that strength. The resistance has been replaced with rage, the hope has been replaced with rage, and even the subject of my focus has been replaced with my rage.
Talking with ن this morning, I was telling him I feel like it's been a month since I've been stuck in those 3 seconds before you open your mouth and shout loudly. so loud that you threw up all your inner organs. He says, 'What if these 3 seconds last for 1 year? Or 3 or 5? We need to find ways to survive. I say, actually, I have found a title for this chapter of our life: "تو در هیروشیما چیزی ندیدی" (you did not see anything in Hiroshima).
He says, 'Shit, that voiceover is so painful and beautiful.
: Do you remember in what scene the narration is echoing?
: on the scene of footages from Hiroshima?
: no, on the juxtaposition of footage from Hiroshima with footage of them making love. That's why I think it is the best description of these days. I feel like my brain and imagination and thoughts and words are so saturated with horror that I can't even unconsciously stop seeing it in everything.
My whole point is that my bodily experience of what is unfolding in front of my eyes is actually leading my research at this point. I can write about all my findings and notes and edits I've done so far, but I can't deny that the most powerful inner motivation leading my work right now is the shadow of the shock and rage that has attacked me (us).
So, here I am again, trying to articulate what I am doing and why and how, and feeling stuck.