zkm
 
Barbad Golshiri
golshiri
mΛ, 2008

The exterior projection of mΛ shows eight young women in Iranian school uniforms standing in a row before a blue backdrop. They slowly close their eyes and dissolve into the blue of the curtain. The rocking chair in the interior is a play on an unadorned "throne," and the television set shows a 6-year-old professional mourner weeping bitterly. mΛ reflects the role of the media, television in particular; how it has in general, and in a motherly way, substituted religion and particularly the Pastor, and how religion, once considered as "the opium of the masses", has become the opium of a religious media-based state and its masses. The Persian word for curtain, pardé, carries equally the meanings of screen, hymen and shroud. The blue pardé refers both to the blue box technique and various mise-en-scènes used in Iran's political visual system of representation.
The installation mΛ is oriented towards Mecca.

Barbad Golshiri, * 1982 in Tehran (IR), lives and works in Tehran (IR)


Barbad Golshiri, mΛ, 2008
video installation (colour, sound), mixed media
dimensions and runtime variable
From 'Odyssey-i project'
courtesy Barbad Golshiri
produced in cooperation with
ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe