Mammad Aidani, Omid Movafagh, Mike Fard, Mohsen Panahi & Hoda Kazemitame – PERFORMING MOBILITIES http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net Sat, 13 Aug 2016 01:03:35 +0000 en-AU hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.2 http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net/wp-content/uploads/webFiles/cropped-PM_ico_02-32x32.jpg Mammad Aidani, Omid Movafagh, Mike Fard, Mohsen Panahi & Hoda Kazemitame – PERFORMING MOBILITIES http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net 32 32 A FEW STEPS NOT HERE NOT THERE http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net/symposium/traces_gallery/a-few-steps-not-here-not-there/ Sun, 02 Aug 2015 05:23:22 +0000 http://2015.performingmobilities.net/?post_type=traces_gallery&p=1254 In 1988, soon after arrival in Australia, Mammad Aidani wrote A Few Steps Not Here Not There. The text is bound by an exilic narrative of displacement, of being a stranger experiencing invisibility and an interloper in a foreign country, of being neither here nor there. The text later became a play, first performed in 1997 at La Mama in Melbourne, with a second production in 2002 at Arts House Meat Market in Melbourne, and a third production due at La Mama again in late 2015.

Aidani has been working with Iranian asylum seekers and refugee artists who have recently arrived in Melbourne. With backgrounds in Iranian film and theatre, Omid Movafagh, Mike Fard and Mohsen Panahi formed a small group that became immersed in Aidani’s text as a prism through which to find locations of affinity and belonging. Together the group made a short film.

This new installation of A Few Steps Not Here Not There creates an intimate setting for experiencing the looping film and encountering the original text. Together, these layers of the installation reveal two generations of asylum seeker experience endeavouring to come to terms with trauma, hopes, movement of identity, and forms of self-authorised creative expression that negotiate cultural displacement.

> The third play production since 2001 of the text A Few Steps Not Here Not There was presented at La Mama 18-29 November 2015, directed by Lloyd Jones >

]]> In 1988, soon after arrival in Australia, Mammad Aidani wrote A Few Steps Not Here Not There. The text is bound by an exilic narrative of displacement, of being a stranger experiencing invisibility and an interloper in a foreign country, of being neither here nor there. The text later became a play, first performed in 1997 at La Mama in Melbourne, with a second production in 2002 at Arts House Meat Market in Melbourne, and a third production due at La Mama again in late 2015.

Aidani has been working with Iranian asylum seekers and refugee artists who have recently arrived in Melbourne. With backgrounds in Iranian film and theatre, Omid Movafagh, Mike Fard and Mohsen Panahi formed a small group that became immersed in Aidani’s text as a prism through which to find locations of affinity and belonging. Together the group made a short film.

This new installation of A Few Steps Not Here Not There creates an intimate setting for experiencing the looping film and encountering the original text. Together, these layers of the installation reveal two generations of asylum seeker experience endeavouring to come to terms with trauma, hopes, movement of identity, and forms of self-authorised creative expression that negotiate cultural displacement.

> The third play production since 2001 of the text A Few Steps Not Here Not There was presented at La Mama 18-29 November 2015, directed by Lloyd Jones >

]]> FINDING MY CITY IN YOUR CITY http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net/symposium/assembly_symposium/finding-my-city-in-your-city/ Fri, 24 Jul 2015 07:32:53 +0000 http://2015.performingmobilities.net/?post_type=procession_symposium&p=1060 Mamamd Aidani has been working with Iranian asylum seekers and refugee artists who have recently arrived in Melbourne. They are working to make a film from Aidani’s text ‘A Few Steps Not Here Not There’, written in 1988 soon after he arrived in Australia.

The text is bound by an exilic narrative of displacement, and has been used by these artists as a prism through which they find locations of affinity and belonging, as well as aspects of being strangers experiencing invisibility and that of interlopers in a foreign country. These artists have been employing the text as the site for negotiating how to create a dialogical process through which the refugee – and the displacement of being neither here nor there – may navigate bodily landscapes and temporal familiarity.

In this presentation, Aidani will provide an overview of the dialogue between the artists and himself, and the developmental process behind the project. They will show a short screening of the film and engage in an open discussion between Aidani and the filmmakers. They will highlight the implications this creative dialogue has for them, within their recent emigrational experience and multi-layered ‘journey’, and explore how the text and the process of making the film have affected their relationships with the city.

]]> Mamamd Aidani has been working with Iranian asylum seekers and refugee artists who have recently arrived in Melbourne. They are working to make a film from Aidani’s text ‘A Few Steps Not Here Not There’, written in 1988 soon after he arrived in Australia.

The text is bound by an exilic narrative of displacement, and has been used by these artists as a prism through which they find locations of affinity and belonging, as well as aspects of being strangers experiencing invisibility and that of interlopers in a foreign country. These artists have been employing the text as the site for negotiating how to create a dialogical process through which the refugee – and the displacement of being neither here nor there – may navigate bodily landscapes and temporal familiarity.

In this presentation, Aidani will provide an overview of the dialogue between the artists and himself, and the developmental process behind the project. They will show a short screening of the film and engage in an open discussion between Aidani and the filmmakers. They will highlight the implications this creative dialogue has for them, within their recent emigrational experience and multi-layered ‘journey’, and explore how the text and the process of making the film have affected their relationships with the city.

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