DIGITAL RESIDENCY | BIJAN MOOSAVI

BIJAN MOOSAVI

RELEASE #1

Bijan Moosavi draws upon the aesthetics of corporate advertising, sci-fi movies, popular culture and the Islamic kitsch to look at the implications of the expansion of neo-liberalism in the Middle East.

“Since around five years ago, I have been calling myself a Muslim entrepreneur and an Islamic futurist. I have made projects such as a television news style film about a fictional start-up company that renders neo-liberal cultural projects in the Middle East, a fabricated performance act that plays neo-liberal Islamic rock, a lecture performance in form of a business pitch inviting international investors in trading Middle Eastern human rights for profit and so on.” – Bijan Moosavi

In Release #1, Bijan talks briefly about his practice and what he has been busy with in the past few weeks. He is now working on a solo exhibition that will open in June at Eastside Projects in Birmingham. As part of this project, Bijan will display an immersive installation around his recent film, called Disco Islam, which is a sci-fi commercial about a fictional dystopian neo-liberal nightclub from the future in Iran. This neo-liberal nightclub is built on the site of an environmental disaster and it covers up human rights issues in the region, with the help of Silicon Valley technologies.

RELEASE #2

In Release #2, Bijan presents the most exciting projects that he worked on at the beginning of this year. In January, he took part in a group show called Assemble, which was organised by V.O Curations. In this show, Bijan exhibited his recent film, called Disco Islam. This is a sci-fi corporate film about a fictional dystopian neo-liberal nightclub from the future, in Iran, which is built on the site of an environmental disaster and covers up human rights issues in the Middle East with the aid of Silicon Valley technologies.

Words by Bijan: When you think about Iran, one of the last things that comes to one’s mind is a country famous for its nightlife. I’m about to challenge this perception and tell you why an investment in the nightlife industry in Iran has been a life-changing one. In our startup company, Future Islam, we decided that it is time for a positive response to the Iranian dream for luxury and freedom by investing in a project which brings about both economic and political stability in the country, and also sets a new tone for further international investments in the Middle East region. A project which will not only work on a financial and economical level, but one which would also be capable of competing with other successful and high prestige cultural developmental projects in the region like the Louvre Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia’s city of future Neom.

Our latest project Disco Islam is a culmination of all our values and efforts so far. Disco Islam uses CGI, live action and music to weave together fact and fiction, and ultimately picture a dystopian vision of the Middle East where the neo-liberal ideology of free trade and boundless profit making has resulted in socio-economic injustices, environmental catastrophes and the abandonment of the humanist project in the Middle East.

RELEASE #3

In Release #3, Bijan talks about how he prepares for his solo show at Eastside Projects. The exhibition is centered around his Disco Islam film and it uses elements from the club culture, the environment and technology, to bring the idea of a dystopian neo-liberal fictional Middle Eastern nightclub into touchable reality.

Following the tradition of using neo-liberal corporate aesthetics in his practice, Bijan’s initial thought for the show was to use a technology called the fog screen at the center of his immersive installation. Since this is a very expensive piece of kit to hire, Bijan has decided to apply for extra funding via the Art Council England Project Grants. In order to do this, Bijan has spent more than half of his time in the past month writing a 96-page application, in which he had to talk unreservedly about his level of commitment to help achieve the vision of “Let’s Create”, and to demonstrate how ambitious he is to improve the quality of his work. Ultimately, he had to provide solid reassurances that he is a sworn foot soldier of the neo-liberal imperial army on a mission to fix problems caused by neoliberalism itself.

RELEASE #4

In Release #4, Bijan Moosavi shares with us some works in progress and the ideas behind them. Since June last year, Bijan has been working on a project that engages with one of the cultural elements of neoliberalism, known as the self-help culture. According to Bijan, self-help is a set of techniques for self-improvement, which argues that hard work eventually leads to success and personal fulfillment in a highly competitive and unequal neoliberal society. Inspired by an essay by Jo Littler with the title "Meritocracy as plutocracy: the marketising of ‘equality’ under neoliberalism”, Bijan has been working on a series of digital portraits, which highlight and exaggerate the internal paradoxes of the self-help culture.

In creating this work, Bijan has been looking at the self-help culture imagery, affirmations and gratitude practices, Instagram makeup selfies, meme pages, Islamic kitsch and post-human fashion. The outcome of this project would be a series of 7-9 digital portraits, which will be printed on film and presented in lightboxes. Bijan is also hoping to make a CGI self-help film in the style of YouTube, ASMR videos, and ultimately bring all of these elements together in the form of an immersive installation.

RELEASE #5

In Release #5, Bijan shares with us video documentation of his Disco Islam: Future Phantasmagoria exhibition at Eastside Projects in Birmingham. After months of preparation, the show opened to the public on June 4th, 2022 and continued until August 6th. You can find more information about this exhibition here

In a fictional Iranian nightclub in a not-so-distant dystopian future, ecological, socio-economic, and human rights issues caused by the expansion of neoliberalism in the Middle East start to unravel. Bijan’s largest solo exhibition to date centres around Disco Islam a sci-fi quasi-commercial video combining CGI, live-action, Islamic kitsch and music, set in an immersive environment that references club culture, the desert, and the language of corporate advertising.

As neoliberalism has become the dominant ideology in late capitalist societies in the West, economic policies prescribed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been presented as the only way toward growth, freedom, and democracy in the Global South and Middle East. Disco Islam: Future Phantasmagoria speculates on a ‘perfect’ neoliberal Middle Eastern future – privatized, deregulated, and market-oriented – where the aesthetics of advertising and commerce, environmental catastrophe, and club culture combine with techno-utopian solutions from Silicon Valley.

Bijan offers a vision of a world where authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes’ human rights violations are traded in favour of international business, local crimes driven by inequalities are solved by hovering ‘killer drones’, restrictions prescribed by Islamic law are addressed by transforming individuals into genderless avatars, cultural censorship is applied using AI, and environmental disasters are ignored by a private sector obsessed with profit. Welcome to Disco Islam: A Middle Eastern horror show from the future.

RELEASE #6

In Release #6, Bijan shares with us a tour of his recent exhibition Disco Islam: Future Phantasmagoria at Eastside Projects in Birmingham with Director Gavin Wade. You can find more information about the exhibition here

RELEASE #7

On 16th of September 2022, a 22-year-old Iranian woman called Mahsa Amini, died in a hospital in Tehran while she was in custody of the Iranian ‘Morality Police’. Her crime: not wearing her hijab according to the Iranian government standards. Mahsa Amini’s death has sparked unprecedented and wide-spread protests across Iran with a very strong presence of women at its frontlines, fighting for freedom. Huge numbers of people have been arrested and many have also been killed so far, but the protesters are not giving up on their demand for an end to the dictatorship in Iran. These recent events have very much reminded me of the 2009 Iranian Green Movement which I was involved with before I moved to the UK. For my 7th release, I decided to share a film of mine from 2012 named 'The Sound And The Fury' which is a direct response to those events.

Following the disputed Iranian presidential election in 2009, numerous protests and demonstrations took place in some of the major cities across the country which invoked a fierce response by the government, resulting in high numbers of arrests and killings by the police, as well as the governmental militia forces. During this period and with the help of the social media platforms, countless video clips were made online by ‘citizen journalists’, providing the international news space with the only visual material reporting on events as they were unfolding in Iran. But what seems to be appearing on the safe television screen and at the comfort of someone’s living room for a few seconds could hold a life changing story within its every frame for the individual who witnessed the event in real-life.

‘The Sound and the Fury’ stretches and articulates a horrendous emotional experience I endured along with a number of strangers during these events in Tehran in 2009. For this purpose, ‘The Sound And The Fury’ utilises the spatial capacities of sound and employs video clips made by anonymous people present at that very incident, which I surprisingly happened to discover on YouTube after I left Iran.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO CONTAINS SCENES OF VIOLENCE

RELEASE #8

In Bijan’s words: For this release, I am sharing a video documentation of my Disco Islam: Commentary Performance that took place at the Eastside Projects (Birmingham) on 1st of July 2022.

Riffing off YouTube Commentary and Reaction videos while dressed up as my Muslim entrepreneur and Islamic futurist character, I gave a live interpretation of my sci-fi corporate ‘Disco Islam’ film, inside the Disco Islam: Future Phantasmagoria installation.

RELEASE #9

It’s really hard to believe that one year is gone since we started the Digital Residency at the IMT Gallery and we have already arrived to the end of this journey. It has been an incredible year (as society was resumed post-Covid) and an amazing experience of chatting, meeting and working with lovely people who are more or less engaged with same concerns and interests both in terms of their politics, as well as their artistic approaches and practices. And like any other ending, there is a sad element attached as well, which shouldn’t overshadow the experience of the residency as a whole, since as it feels, this could be just the beginning of a whole new future of conversations, friendships and professional engagements.

As I am preparing myself for quite a few exciting projects in 2023, I decided to share with you a work of mine which has been in the making throughout this year and in-between other projects. It’s part of a series of fictional self-help selfies from a deep neoliberal future which I talked about briefly through my Release #4 back in April. As usual, I have been drawing inspiration from neoliberal aesthetics (social media, make-up selfies, affirmations and gratitude practices, Islamic kitsch, etc.) and I have been mainly working on and developing them within the following conceptual framework:

Self-help Yalla! is a series of fictional self-help selfies from the future. These images belong to a speculative time where the neoliberal idea of meritocracy has led to an extreme culture of cruel self-interest, aggressive egocentrism and elitist self-gratification, among the Middle Eastern tycoons and their families around the world.