19 Apr 2013

Exhibition and open call - The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2

The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2
Carlos Noronha Feio, Daria Kirsanova and Sohrab Kashani
Sazmanab Platform for Contemporary Arts
19 April – 2 May 2013
Exhibition and open call for papers and visual material.

Sazmanab is proud to present The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2, a collaboration between London based artist Carlos Noronha Feio, curator Daria Kirsanova and Tehran based curator Sohrab Kashani. This exhibition is the second interpretation of the project the first one being the performance Instruction Manual Number One: Washing the Flags for a Peaceful Revolution in Vienna in December 2011. Conceived by Carlos Noronha Feio the work is a multimedia performance conducted via Internet that also includes an actual physical action/performance in the gallery space. The conceptual core of this project is constructed utilizing the protest action 'Lava la bandera' (Wash the flag) by Colectivo Sociedad Civil, but it is also rooted in the proposal by the socialist American Politician Norman Thomas. He called for an alternative to the burning of the flag during the Vietnam War, choosing a silent (non violent) protest - washing of the flag.

The project presents a matrix, modular flexible conceptual construction that can be shaped according to specific concerns relevant to the place where it is performed. This unusual structure operates on multiple layers of meaning and references. The most obvious reading would be to look at the project in light of the notions of authority and authorship. Yet, it is much broader in its critique. The use of Internet here, for example, is an attempt to construct multiple layers of detachment and separation within the cyber space. This action aims to create a distance, a conceptual detachment from the actual geographical locations of either participants of the action/performance. Through this abstraction Noronha Feio seeks to transcend well-known post-colonial theory concepts of 'centre' and 'periphery' of cultural production. Noronha Feio's practice is operating within the so-called post post-colonial theoretical field. He is opening spaces for an assumption that equality is a certainty and that constructed social environments have to be respected but not at the expense of creation of division. He is defending ideas of borderlessness.

The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2 is a result of few months of exchange of ideas where the artist's perspective and a knowledge related to the previous event have been transformed by all three intervenients. It is not just a one off performance, but a two-week exhibition that includes: sculptural objects – flag and bucket; a video – documentation of the process of making of the flag and a series of video instructions in English, Portuguese, Russian and Persian.

Sazmanab will host two collateral events during the course of the exhibition:

26 April 2013
Screening of a documentary AGAINST THE GRAIN: An Artist's Survival Guide to Perú
by Ann Kaneko (2008) color, 65 mins.

1 May 2013
Carlos Noronha Feio in conversation with Daria Kirsanova and the audience at Sazmanab. The event is conducted via Internet from London.

As part of the exhibition a book will be assembled, this work will be composed of archival information of the making of the exhibition, as well as being open to information gathered by the spectators and other collaborators. To this effect we are here calling for your contribution. The contributions could be in the form of any kind of text ( i.e: essays, found, poetry, comments...) or any form of visual information.

Please send your contribution via email to info@sazmanab.org,
by post to #2, No. 99, Pardis St., Ariafar St., Sazman-e ab St., Sheikh Fazlolah Nouri Hwy., Tehran, Iran, or drop them by the gallery.

A pdf and print on demand book will be compiled and placed on the Sazmanab website at the end of the show.