Amak Mahmoodian - On Dreaming

In artista Mac Mammodian's latest body of work, 120 minutes, which refers to the average time a person spends dreaming each night. She examines the experience of dreaming for individuals living in exile. Working with 16 collaborators, a Mac uses photography, poetry, drawing and video to explore the new lives created through dreams, as well as the ways in which dreaming enables individuals to return to a past that cannot be reached while they are awake. In this episode we do a deep dive into the project, exploring it as a conduit to unravel a Mac's process and thoughts about art making, which are open and expansive in their influence. Music is really important in my work too. It has a huge role. I cannot take even one photograph or I cannot do few lines of my sketches or drawing without listening to the music jam. So I think that is something which is creating and helps me to create those layers of consciousness and subconsciousness as you said, because it is a word and the word of music, the word of art, poetry, photography, video, it's just they create a language which is a universal language and in a way simplify our connections as human beings together and connect us together. I'm Jen Fletcher and you're listening to the Messy Truth, Conversations on Photography. Bristol based artist, a Mac Mammodium, works with photography, text, video, drawing and archives to think about and explore the representation of gender, identity and displacement, weaving connections between the personal and the political. She has published two books, completed a practice-based doctrine photography at the University of South Wales and currently works as a senior lecturer at the University of West England. Let's jump into my conversation with a Mac. I wanted to actually start with your relationship to photography because I've watched a really moving talk you did. I think quite a long time ago now. I think it might have been 2019 or something and you were describing how photography became an important part of your life in particular this relationship you had with an image of your father and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about your connection to photography and that photograph and how this sort of relationship with images began. I am originally from Iran, and Jen as you know, and in Iran the revolution happened in 1979 and it was established by 1980 and I was born in 1980 and by that time many of my family members unfortunately they had to leave Iran because of the different reasons, political reasons or some of them because of the historical and family reasons that we had. So the main introduction for me as a young member of family, it was through the photographs of my family. While they were not there, I had the opportunity to meet them and to have conversation with them through the photographs. I can remember when I was seven and it did include the photograph of my father because unfortunately he was in prison, when I was seven years old and it was seeing the photograph and say this is the evidence that your father is here. He is not here physically right now with you but this is his photograph and he will be back home and I learned how to have conversation and to build up my relationship with the photographs from a very young age and I cannot say it was a word of fantasy and it wasn't for those particular time of my life, it wasn't that beautiful for me because I wanted to be with those people and to see them but I understood that this being, the evidence of being could be within the frame and within the photographs too. Another reason of that the relationship with the photographs and how I was fascinated with that it was later on when I started to study photography obviously when I was at secondary school and then higher school, I was quite a really, I was a good student and at the end when we had the exam I could choose art and also I could choose any subject that I was interested in in biology and those days we were just thinking should I become a dentist or a photographer because I had the points for both in art and in biology but then I decided to become a photographer and later on when I started doing my contextual recession photography I became familiar with this assertion by Roland Bart who says photography is more akin to magic than art and it can hold something, freeze something and repeat something which is not existentially repeatable and you cannot repeat it in real life and that was that moment of understanding more deeply about this connection and thinking about so that is that is those conversation and repeating of those dialogue and relationship with the family was something which hooked me to this media and that is how he started and later on after doing the PA and MA which was more the academic learning of photography, understanding the visual references and also contextual references I moved to UK in 2007 to complete my PhD in photography knowing that I was going to explore the notions of identity, gender, displacement and memory and very recently I have worked and I am more interested in understanding and exploring and analyzing the notion of exile within and through the photographs. Yeah it's really interesting hearing you talk about how your relationship with picture making has evolved because it feels like in many ways your projects are sort of chapters of your life because they're all rooted in these very personal investigations or personal very very deep personal collaborations with people as well as obviously interrogating and thinking through things that are happening in Iran. I was curious if you could talk a little bit about how things spark for you like how do you get curious about things? What drives the impulse to do the work that you do? You explained it and you mentioned it in the best way they are chapters of my life and this is the narrative of my own life. Each of the projects and I can say I have mainly 14 projects but among them four projects perhaps they are more research based I can say and it is more about the collaboration I always collaborate with people but four projects in specifically recent works they are more about working with communities collaboration and what can I learn from working with communities and how I could share something and how to become the speaker of those communities. Be sure most of the time marginalize communities. Therefore the projects are quite personal they are chapters and narrative of my life but they are strongly connected and they are pertaining to their larger social issue, wider political or social issues so although they are personal and I started with something which is as always the beginning is starts with my own narrative but then the collaboration conversations and dialogue with different communities helped me to build up and to develop and to understand better and to find the context for the projects. Are you quite an obsessive person? Do you really obsess over your work? I can't say that in a complimentary way. Yes. And that says a lot the number of sketchbooks that I have Jim. You might have seen some of them as part of 120 minutes exhibition but yeah I am and it is about the layers that I can find and how deep I can go with each project in understanding what's happening around me and what's happening within and without. It's interesting you bring up sketchbooks. Sketchbooks are these really personal things right I feel like they're so formative in our education and then for some people it becomes a lifelong practice and for others they just abandon it but for you you mentioned it just then in terms of yeah I got to you know experience some of your sketchbooks as part of your recent show but in terms of thinking about like research and development it feels like your sketchbook activity is just so productive and so vital to your practice it's almost like they feel like they hold this physicality, this physical material energy as much as it is your art practice is emotional and cognitive it feels that there's a physical nest to it which manifests in part through the sketchbooks and just looking at the way that you draw and the way that you write within them there is this intensity happening in there could you could you talk a little bit about why sketchbooks are so generative for you and that sort of physicality of the way you work. Sketchbooks are helping me to understand more about each project and its object because as I explained before most of the project they are related to larger communities and they are collaborative projects and the sketchbooks they help me to go through the journey with having some documentation for me. Something to look into, look back and something that I could even sometimes, when I go through the sketchbooks, reading them, it helps me to even look forward to the process of building up and developing the project. That comes from, as you said, the physicality of the sketchbook, which is related to the visual research that I have. But I believe in how photography functions in so many different ways, as we all do, as photographers. It functions in political, social, personal, in so many different levels, but there are so many different levels that photography cannot and it does not function within these, within different projects. And that is the place that I think I invite different mediums and different formats within the project, within the process and sketchbooks are helping me to document them and to bring them together and to blend them together. For instance, as you mentioned in a sketchbook, very often I draw, I write poetry and recently I find myself to write poetry a lot because they are moments, they are those photographs that you cannot envision them and I cannot describe them through the trace of light, which is photography on paper. And I need to bring it through the walls or the lines of my drawings or the paintings or bringing some sketches. So that comes to the physicality of the sketchbooks and that is talking about the journey and the process and how we can connect all these materials together to understand and have a better understanding of the layers of each issue or each subject that we are interested in. And for me, another thing which helps me, as I said, most of my projects they are long term and research based, for instance, for 120 minutes, which I will explain later again more. I worked, I had a privileged work with 16 different individuals from 14 different countries jam. And the conversations talking about the dreams and talking about the private life, it was quite interesting, but it did give such a huge responsibility and I did feel the responsibility on my shoulder because I was responsible to translate these dreams to something which is understandable for the viewers and it is not far from the core and the reality of their dreams. Therefore, I had to have understanding about the culture of that person, the religion in their country, the history of that place. And that is how the sketchbook helped me. It did feel like it was a recessed dossier for me to bring all these understanding together to help me to get to the final outcome which was the photograph or drawing or the poetry. You just said so many things that I want to pick up on, but I feel like we should talk a little bit about 120 minutes because we're walking all around it and it might be nice to give people a bit of an insight. So can you talk a little bit about sort of the genesis of that work? 120 minutes, perhaps it would be better to start with the explanation of the title. The title of the project refers to the amount of time each of us dreaming every night. Gen. You probably had two hours dream last night similar to me and some of us might remember that and some might forget it. And I began working on this project in 2019 in very strong connection again and relationship to all my own life experience. I made two books before I have published two books, Shen Asnamaya and Sanji. Shen Asnamaya in 2016 and Sanji in 2019. Shen Asnamaya is a collective work of ID photographs and fingerprints and talking about as I mentioned before, how photography functions in different levels and what else come in to be invited into the art to complete that medium, which is for Shen Asnamaya. They were fingerprints of people who I work with. And Sanji which was published in 2019, it is an imagined conversation between me and a Persian princess activist, writer and artist who did live 156 years before me. And through this imagined conversation, we are talking about displacement and memory. Those two works, they were quite political and they were received as political, especially Shen Asnamaya was a testimony for me, to females of Iran, females and males and all those battles and all those fights that is happening for decades in Iran against the dictatorship and what is happening through the SNDARDS that has been proposed by government on people's lives. So these two works, they were political and before that as I mentioned because of the history of my family, I cannot go back home. I cannot go to Iran. And I live in exile now in last 15 years and I haven't seen my homeland for 15 years. That became the main corner store of 120 minutes. I will go back to that. I might be confusing but it is related to those two projects because of exile and because of my family at home. I started to have these dreams and it started in 2019, these recurring dreams of my mother being my baby. As 2019, it was the time that I was trying to go and see my mother in Turkey after 10 years and then unfortunately the pandemic happened and we couldn't go and see each other. I was quite heartbroken and I started to have these recurring dreams of holding my mom as my baby in my hand. And in my dream I knew that she is my mother so why this role had changed, why I'm carrying care, I'm looking after her why she doesn't look after me. From this dream, even without knowing what I was doing and sometimes the pain I can say it is somehow having a level of sorrow and pain and feeling and knowing about those feelings help in understanding yourself and to work on a project. But in the other hand it could be quite disturbing when it is quite deep. And those days this pain was quite deep for me and I didn't think about working on a project related to that. I just wanted to have conversation with people who are going through the similar experience as me. And I started this conversation with a very close friend who lives in London and in Cardiff and she lives in exile in last 18 years, even 3 years more than me. And also my brother who is in exile in Austria and he cannot go back home either. I talked to them and I told them about these dreams and it was really interesting because it was a really friendly conversation and it wasn't even feeling like it was a research or it wasn't formal, not at all. It was a very friend to friend and brother to sister conversation and they told me in fact we have very similar experience with our dreams and very often we dream of home on Mac. And that was, I can't say the corner store, it was the foundation that I started to think about how and why we have these connections with our home or past through their dreams. And I am always fascinated by mythical stories. I love myths, I love knowing about what has happened in the past and especially in philosophy what's how was the foundation of all these ideas that we have. And I came across this association by Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher who said, "When you are awake, you share the world together right now. We have this conversation gem together. We are awake. We are aware of what's happening, the storm happening, we have this conversation. Everything is similar for both of us. But if one of us decide to sleep, Heraclitus says, "As soon as you close your eyes, you create a private world and that world belongs to you. Nobody can enter and nobody can live without you." And that was quite deep and strong and beautiful for me. Knowing that dream, it cannot be any how limited by any power, any politic, any regime. And nobody can decide for you what should be your dream. Nobody can take it away from you. That was this mythical connection that I had with the idea of dream after the conversation with my brother and friend. And after that, I started to perhaps, I can say, because I don't, I didn't have any knowledge about dreams. I started to educate myself about the science of dreams. And I started to learn more about rapid eye movement, the time that we're dreaming and how much it is related to our very strong imaginations and emotions and our past. Going through this contextual research, I was witnessing as all of us. And unfortunately, in shadow of what's happening in the world, I guess it would be even worse in next four years, for many of us. I was witnessing how immigrants and people who lived their country and arrived to other countries, the power, people in power, how they identify them by numbers very often. 250 people arrived by boat, 60 people they arrived by land. And they reduced their identity to these numbers. Without knowing what remains in their country, what are the reasons that they are living their land and coming to this place to seek and to look for a safe place. And all these conversations and contextual research became the corner store and foundation of 100 and 20 minutes. And it became the very starting point of this project. And talk a little bit about how the project expanded because you said that a friend and your brother were sort of the initial people that you had conversations with. But as you talked about earlier, your very community driven and this became a much bigger project with 16 different participants. Like how did those relationships and connections form and sort of evolve over the period of making the work? While I was expanding my research, understanding what is the context, why do I need to know about these different aspects of this project, I had a privilege and I had a really great opportunity of having conversation with multi-story. They are based in Birmingham and they invited me to work with them, to collaborate with them on a project. And after having the conversation because very often it is in black country and you go there and you start your research and working on a specific subject or project which is related to that area. But talking with Emma and Becky from multi-story, I did explain to them and it was 2020 when we started to have our conversation. I told them I had already started one year of research on this project on dreams and I asked them if it would be possible if there is any opportunity for me to build on this specific project and work with them and with their community on this project. And they are absolutely amazing and they said yes and they started to look for the charities and communities working with immigrants. And they introduced me to a place which was family hub, it calls and they are these amazing individuals, five individuals, they live in exile in Birmingham from five different countries. But when they afternoon they get together and they bake bread. Why they bake bread? Because we know when people arrive very often they send them to hotels and the hotels they are not hotels, they are, we call them hotels but we've been there, I have been there, it more look like a really, I don't know hotel like prison because you are really much limited in the number of times you can leave that place or what time you should go back to the hotel and the food that they serve to them, it's very often the food which is not even warm and you cannot have your kitchen there and there are many families living this hotel. What did these remarkable five people do? They would get together on Wednesday and bake bread and invite these people from the hotel to come in that place and have fresh bread, fresh food, sit together and celebrate their being together and togetherness. I went to the family hub and I had conversation with them about who I was and I told them I was in exile and of course for the first meeting with them, I didn't even take my camera with me, and I always advise and have conversation and suggest to my students when we have conversation about the ethics of the project and how you can collaborate with different communities, you should go inside and you should say hi and hug them and talk to them as a human being, not constantly thinking about them, how I can see them behind my lens, through their lens, how you see them, how you have dialogue and conversation with them without that lens. And that is what happened. I went there and I baked bread which I was awful bit but it happened and we became quite close. And the second time I went I told them actually I am interested in this world and I have this dream about my mother, I haven't been home and two of them, Safa and Asma, immediately, they shared their dreams with me without even thinking about that which was quite fascinating but at the same time I was quite shocked and I started to write it down and write it down in my sketchbook and three of them they said actually one of them, Susan, she said I will contact you about my dream. And that was the reason we had our WhatsApp group and we started to have conversation because it wasn't any pressure, it was time. I didn't want to force them to share their dreams in their particular way or with a deadline because that is quite private and I was quite respecting their time and I did feel quite grateful for them sharing their dreams with me. So I started with these five people, we started to have this conversation and it took me almost three months to have conversation about their dreams and through that time this conversation and dialogues it was quite beautiful and it went deeper and deeper and it turned to a friendship and that was the time they started to introduce me to their friends and their friends they invited me to talk to friends of friends and that is how I started to work with 16 people in many different cities in the UK, London, Leeds, Cardiff, Newcastle and we started to have conversation about dreams and that's one of the reasons this project turned to a very long-term project and research base which took me almost six years to complete, yeah. How do you learn to trust the process and sort of in many ways be an active agent but surrendering to the process in really long-term bodies of work like this because I think a lot of people, the conversations I have a lot of people really struggle even with the idea that a project is like you know one year or two years, how do you sort of cultivate a way of being in your practice? I trust the process because I need to build a trust with my participants and because as I said working with communities we have different relationship with our practice with our work. For me, photography or drawing or writing poetry or making videos, it's always a channel, it is a way, it's a bridge for me to get closer to participants and to find myself within their experience because as I said it is personal but then at the same time I know it is my life and I know and I want to know more, I am not the only person who goes through this and how can I share it with a larger community and that is how I trust the process because I need to educate myself about participants who I work with. As I said the first part was about working with a community and educate myself about their experience and the second part is related to knowing myself as a person, as an artist. I work on this project and I work on for example for 120 minutes when I work with 16 different individuals, I knew that that would be at the end of this process, I will have a better understanding of my own experience too. Because the project has started, it began with this personal connection and this personal reasons and experience, I know and I always appreciate how my participants would feel. About for example for 120 minutes when I ask them, share your dreams because I had the feeling and I remember my feeling and I know and I knew how did I feel when for example my therapist or when people ask me, tell us about your dream. I know that feeling and I know how it feels in my heart, in my mind and in all my being, Therefore I. I totally appreciate the feeling of participants. For example, I did appreciate that they need their privacy and they need their time for answering this question. For one of the participants, Val, who is in exile from Russia, it took him almost six months. Our collaboration wasn't something quite smooth and it wasn't that easy. It took him six months to think about, is he going to share his dream with me? How does he feel about that? And I wanted him to share the dream, but at the same time, I wasn't, and I did not want to force anything, or project any deadline, or propose any deadline to him. I just wanted him to find his own way of sharing that dream with me. So part of that is because it is my personal narrative and I have acquired good understanding about the feelings and knowing of participants. What I was trying to say, actually, it was about dissemination and promotion of the project, too. As I know, and as I feel, and many of us, we experience that, perhaps the second half of your world, when it's after three, four years, you think about you are getting quite worried about, what if I don't have enough time to promote it, what if something similar comes up, and they finish the project and propose it, and then I wouldn't have enough opportunity to talk about these dreams. They are a scary moment, too. But then that is the time that, as an artist, you are just thinking about which value is more important for you, the promotion of the work, which is really, really significant, and it's really important. But then the second part for me was the participants, and they were, when they were ready to share, and they were ready to see their photographs, to see their constructed photographs, which was more important for me, and that is how the process and the trust in the process become part of the path. I don't want to ask you about your dreams, but did your dreams change while making this work? Do you think making this project shaped your dreams in any way? In 120 minutes, you don't see my dream. People share 16 people, they share their dreams with me, and I had these responsibility, privilege, and opportunity to translate their dreams. They, too, have become my own dreams, Jeff. At the beginning, it was quite as scary, because I started to dream, treasure dreams after three years. And that dream is a dream of those two kids playing hide and seek. In the forest, I had her dream, and I remember in my dream, I was thinking, this is treasure dream. Why do I have this dream? It was such an interesting, scary, disturbing, and exciting, because you feel like, yes, I got it. I'm so connected to the project. It was a mixture of so many different feelings. But what I would say, yes, it did. It reformed, and it achieved the way I am dreaming, and it became a collective dream. I still have some times, have their dreams. And I found how similar they were all these dreams together, although we are from many different countries, 14 different countries. And they live in the UK for different amount of times, each of us. But there is that strength. There is that link between the dreams, and that word of dreams, which is quite fascinating. Therefore, I think it's a collective experience. And they are all connected together. Therefore, they are connected, and they are shaping my dreams too. What a powerful experience. I can't even imagine what that must have been like. You know, we've talked so much about this project, but we haven't even got to the point about making the film or making images, and some of the other pieces that you made that accompanied the exhibition at Bristol Photography Festival. Talk a little bit about that journey from sort of being this conduit, this sort of talisman for these people's dreams that you built relationships with, and making them visible in some way. How did that part of the process take shape? Constructing and visualizing their dream, it was the most challenging aspect of this project. And it wasn't because of the abilities or skills or capacities that I had as a person, as an artist. It was because of the responsibility that I had. Constructing of these images and translation of them, it did need and it required few understanding, which was related, as I said, to the culture of the participants, to their religion, to their history. For example, when I had the dream of Asma, seeing her sister in red dress, I had to have some understanding about what does red mean in Somalia culture. For example, for some different cultures, for different cultures, it has different meaning. They might wear it in the wedding or funeral or for parties or for particular ways. So even this very small aspect of the project was really important for me, these small elements of the dreams. When I had conversation with these people, I started to write the dreams and while writing the dreams, I started to draw and to have sketches of the dream, which helped me to understand and to visualize the core elements of each dreams. And then living and having that conversation, after that conversation, I had this opportunity to educate myself, as I said, about those core elements. And different elements of this work. And then I worked with Polaroid cameras. This project was something which I didn't want to limit myself with a specific or particular camera or techniques, because I thought that is something which I need to work with so many different cameras. If it's essential, I should invite poetry or even recording some of the videos of them. So it became the mixture of so many different mediums, the project, because it was related to translation and construction of their dreams. But one of the most helpful aspects of the project and the sketches, they were the Polaroids. After conversation and drawing, I started to take Polaroids, because I had something physical to share with participants. Because the edit of the project, I should add it here, the final edit of this project, it is their edit, it's not my edit. Of course, I did the first edit to make sure that everything is fine, the picture is quite right, and every element has been captured in a right way. And I had four or five images to show to participants, and they were the one who were choosing their dream to say, "This is my dream, and I want to have this one as the final constructor, the image." And the Polaroids helped me a lot, because I had something through the workshops, even conversation, to take some photographs and immediately show to them. That was these elements of a sketchbook, and then after that, having all these materials and dialogue and having the final decision of the final constructed imagery, it was finding all these elements gem in real life, which was really important for me, and it was really difficult. I should say most of them, I found them on eBay, or free to take Facebook pages, finding the plastic dolls, or person who will give birth, and if they are happy for me to go and take photographs of their belly, three hours of giving birth, or finding a door behind somebody's door, take it away, take it to the house, paint it, take it to the forest. So then it was finding these elements in real life, construct them, and take the photographs and make the images. And while I was working on this, as I said, I started to dream their dreams. And that was the point that I told, "I need to write this poetry, which is my dream, and my dream is their dream." And that is the poetry and the written aspect of the project. And the video is the realm of four participants. I had a residency with a person who, unfortunately, needs not experiencing a really good time at the moment, but she lives in exile, in Newcastle. And we had this residency together, and I managed to dream and record the realm of Zarek for almost six hours, which wasn't all the time the sleeping time. The realm is all new. in for less than two hours, but that was another aspect to create something which would be the foundation of final images. I mean the whole body of work is phenomenal. It's one of those bodies of work that requires multiple revisits for how much there is to explore and sort of fall into, but the film in particular was mesmerizing. It was it was completely captivating in a way and I find this a lot with your work. I was thinking about this before we speak. There is an oratic quality to your practice, whether it's an encounter with your book or an encounter with this film or an encounter with your sketchbook. Like there is an aura born from your work that you can feel it before you can see it in many ways. It's kind of the best messy way I can describe it, but it has an energy your practice, which I find incredibly moving and really offers a very powerful entry point to the work, which is obviously incredibly layered and complex in different ways, but there was such an aura born from that film. That's not really a question. It's just. Thank you so much. It means a lot. I think it's because there are many simple things in our life that unfortunately we miss. Even when I was working on that video, I thought how many times I had I had this opportunity to sit and look at my even loved ones when they are asleep, when they are not awake, because it is those eye movements. It says a lot and something's happening within their mind and within their sleep that we are not aware of, but in the other hand because of the tension of eye movement, for instance, you can feel that and you can see that. And that was quite fascinating for me while I was recording the rem of Zarig or Diba. And you're right, I think that aura it comes from participants of the project too, which is the main. I think the power and the message comes through them. I feel like I just capture it. I am there to witness that. And I have this privilege to be there to witness that and share their stories, but nothing more than that. There's also something for me in your work. Often there's a lot happening inside the frame, but you're also. it feels like continually inviting the viewer to think about what's beyond the frame. Or sometimes even like push them beyond the frame. And that feels part of that sort of conjuring of aura as well. It was like. there's a really beautiful, powerful, sometimes challenging way the work brings us in, but it's forcing us to go beyond. Which again, I feel like it's hard to talk about your work in some ways. It's hard to use vernacular language, which is interesting going back to your point at the beginning in terms of thinking about your practice and you was obviously saying photography has its limitations. And so really, there's this multi-modality that allows you to speak through in different ways. And I feel like in some ways that's true of how I think about. yeah, how to talk about your work. It's almost like I want to talk about it, but I equally want to play you a piece of music. And I equally want to provide gesture. It sort of stimulates something in the viewer, I think, which is full body and conscious and subconscious at the same time. Which yeah, it's just incredibly powerful. I wonder if we should talk a little bit about the show in Bristol, because it was also really carefully curated and put together in a way that we were, as we stepped into the building, kind of encased in a dream in your world. Can you talk a little bit about that? But I guess I'm particularly interested in how you think about showing your work and what that opens up for you. It has a huge role. So I think that is somehow that is something which is creating and helps me to create those layers of consciousness and subconsciousness as you said. Because it is a word and the word of music, the word of art, poetry, photography, video, it's just they created language which is a universal language. And in a way, simplify our connections as human beings together and connect us together. So music is really important in my work too. Always it has been. For Bristol show, which was on October 2024 and it was amazing to have you there. For such a great opportunity to talk to you actually, Jim. It was a curation which was part of the Bristol photo festival curation but at the same time they had conversation with me and the curation was quite careful and they were quite respectful in understanding the project and what are the main layers and the main elements of the project. And how we want to show it. The curation was with Alejandra A.C. the director of the festival too and I remember when we started to have the conversation, the first thing when they came to my studio to have conversation with Alex and Ben about the possibilities of exhibiting at Bristol photo festival. I asked them, "I don't want to exhibit this project in a gallery. I don't want to show I I don't want to have it on white walls. I would love to find the abandoned house and is there any possibility for me to show this work in an abandoned house because with these 16 people the main reason of thinking about home very often when we have conversation or even now when we have conversation on our WhatsApp it is always we call home. I had a dream about home. Home was in this particular way or I saw my mom at home and I told home being in a home being in the house it could be quite powerful and it could bring the project really well together and invite the viewers of the project to create to see something which is more an experiment rather than an exhibition and then we got an opportunity to work with 17 Midland Lord Gallery which is the house actually it is a house and it's an Airbnb but they use the first floor for exhibitions. When we went we realized that they have the basement first second and third floor which was amazing for four stages of dream that we were thinking about. The basement was the video of the person's rap which was the foundation and the introduction of what was going on on the next three floors of the house and the light the first floor which was quite bright and you could see everything it was that consciousness and it was all those sketches and polaroids and sketchbooks all those elements that I work on in response to having conversation with participants of the project and second and third floor which was the third and fourth stage of the exhibition they were constructed images and they were all hold together these photographs by the dreams of individuals written all around the ceiling around the house going from the second corridor to the third floor and connect these two rooms of dreams together. The reason of having those recent texts and written dreams at the top of the ceiling around the house one of the reasons was to hold the dreams together as I explained and the second reason very often when I see for example my mother or when I see my home after fifteen years I am in bed and that is the position I have my head it looks to the ceiling and I wanted viewers to have this physical interaction while they were walking through the exhibition to have their heads up in order to be able to read those texts around the ceiling and part of that was quite easy to read and part of that it was more difficult to see and to read and that is how it's the feeling of dream sometimes you remember your dream but it's quite a vivid memory of the dream and part of that it is more understandable part of that is confusing and the idea of connecting them through the corridor the text together it's because in your dream you can be anywhere anytime you can be in Bristol and all of the sudden I could be in my dream in my home in Shiraz without any limitations or without any sense of being trapped in the specific place in a specific time so all these translations of dreams and the meanings of dreams they became all these really important aspects of exhibition in Bristol and you're thinking about making a book for the project as well right? Yes, yeah so that's going to be a really exciting way to think about the richness that you conjured in the show but what does that looking for like in a book format that feels quite exciting the potential of that. It is quite exciting, Jim, because for the book I wanted to have deeper conversation with participants, another thing which I should add for 120 minutes, who you see in the photographs, they are not my participants and not having them in front of the camera, it had two reasons. Firstly, it was because of the trauma and while I was talking to people who had knowledge and especially in particular one person who was helping me through the process and as a therapist they advised me what book to read, how to have conversation with my participants, even for myself, they explained to me that the trauma of reliving your dream could be quite as strong. Therefore it would be better not to have the participants within the frame to go through the process of making that dream, translating that dream in their real life. It should be that separation between their dream and the reality of their life. And the second reason was because many of them they didn't want to be identified, so I don't have them and that gives me perhaps more freedom I should say in publishing the book and yes I am working on the book, I am working on the possibilities of hopefully finding the funding for the book, but something for sure that I would love to share it with you here, I will make only 120 copies. That would be the number of my photo books, which is the combination of sketchbooks and photographs. Well I'm so excited for it. I wish I could magic the funding for you right now, so there was nothing holding you back. It didn't happen, hopefully. It definitely will happen. But before we jump into some quick fire questions, I wanted to ask, and this is perhaps a bigger question regarding your practice, you talked up front about some of the other bodies of work that are part of the chapters of your life and I was thinking about how your work is so deeply human and it's also so deeply political, but you'll never somebody who I hear about calling themselves an activist or you know framing your work in that way. It's very people centric the way that you talk about your work, but there is this rebellion in it. It's a quiet resistance, a quiet rebellion. And I wondered, I guess firstly does that resonate for you and I was just curious to hear about how you think about the work in those terms if you do at all. They are really amazing points in your question, Gem. I can write a book in response to this question. First part is in terms of calling myself an activist because I had a few talks and people asked me if I can call myself or if I call myself an activist because I have all the reasons of calling myself activists, I cannot go home. I live in exile and all my work are political and that is the reason of not being able to go home my work and political aspect of that. And also even the last conversation I had, it was with my own mother and she said actually I cannot hold you, I cannot see you, it's because of your work and I always wonder which comes first in your life, am I like us or your work, but I totally understand because I follow in a way, I follow the traces and footsteps of my father who was, quite he was a musician, he was a writer and he never separated politics from his life but he didn't call himself activists to Gem and I think because living with him and experiencing his life and knowing a person or my family as you know there is a movie called actually born in Avine and that is the family life of my cousins and the cousin who is the director of this film she was born in Avine. Mariam Zareh, so I knew my family and I know what had happened to them and they don't call them themselves activists and I know how the real activists could be a person without even one single tooth in their mouth because of the torturing because of being beaten in the prison and also how far they can go with their beliefs that is my personal reason not to call myself activists because I believe my father was an activist, my cousin who gave birth in prison she is an activist and the second reason of that it's working with participants and communities and collaboration, I always collaborate and I strongly believe we all have our voice as human beings. Therefore I am absolutely against that term that very often we sometimes not very often sometimes we use as artists, some artists use and they say about giving voice to these communities they don't need our voice, they have voice we can just become their speakers because they might not have the opportunities that we have as artists, therefore the real activists they are those people sitting in front of us being brave enough and having this motivation to share their stories with us to make us being able to create something because the creative process is a collective process this is how I believe in that. These are the reasons I although the work is yes it is quite political I cannot call myself activists because we are all activists even what you do with your work and trying to have this conversation and share it it is you are actively engaged and they are people against that which who are unfortunately actively blind and they don't look at what's happening around them. Therefore when I put these things together these two next to each other I think we can all be activists especially in the contemporary political situation and in shadow of what's happening and since last week we should expect and we are expecting unfortunately even worse and the second part of the question about the politics of the work and how it is quiet it is the resilience and solidarity within the work they are really huge white social and political issues that I try to address and I try to explore through my work but I learn through the years and that is something which is happening for instance in Iran that sometimes a whisper a silent protest could be even more effective rather than a loud or really shouting scream because it can affect and it can cause differences within people's lives within the politics and within the life of decision makers so my work I can say the poetry of the work and the whisper of the works it comes from this universal language and the belief that I have and I think it would make the changes which I saw a very really a strong example of that as you might know the as I said the revolution happened in 1979 in Iran in February by March few weeks after the revolution women they went to the street in Iran in Tehran in particular and they did shout they did a scream that we didn't do the revolution to move back we did the revolution to move forward and that is what we were looking for and that was this battle and this fight it had been on for decades and then recently two years ago the movement of woman life freedom happened and reunite all these voices together from different gender from different religion and different race and created that movement but that whisper and silent protest was happening for decades and I believe in a role of art that can be quite quiet poetic it could be a whisper but it could be extremely deep and extremely powerful and strong I love the way you explain that it feels like the butterfly effect yes that sort of sensation so quick for our questions how do you deal with self doubt reading how has success changed your work not that much do you think that photograph still have the power to shift thinking or consciousness sure oh sure is an interesting word but we'll move on thinking about where we stand now what are you most hopeful about I am really much hopeful about the new generation of photographers and how they are able how and how brave they are in shedding their stories the last question that I ask everybody at the end of the show is what matters more to you the process of making your work or the final sort of outcome of the the party. Definitely the process for me, Ja. I cannot survive without the process. The process is the only way of surviving for me here. Well, I appreciate you so, so much for sharing the journey of this incredible body of work and also just your wider thinking around the art practice, your journey, your particular personal practice. I appreciate you so much for coming on. Thank you so much, Ja. It has been absolutely a pleasure. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. You can find out more about today's guest in the show notes. Music is by Judd Greenstein from the album Awake and Design is by Ruby White. To help us grow, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts and thank you for being part of this ever growing community.