Anthropology as Performance at Eye Film Museum

In association with the Eye Film Museum’s current retrospective Cosmic Realism featuring the works of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, DARKMATTER on May 7, 2024, presented “Anthropology as Performance” an evening that combined ethnographic photography and multimedia performance.
Mohamad Khezri Moghadam presented a slideshow of his series “The Thirteenth Day” (shot in Iran) accompanied by live storytelling by me along with traditional Persian music by Ehsan Mollaghadimi.

“In 1921, the Society of Patriotic Women (جمعیت نسوان وطن خواه) arranged a secret theater stage for women inside the house of one of the members. Many women received invitation cards for a wedding ceremony so no one could know what was about to happen. It was not a wedding ceremony, of course. It was the first time women were going to be on a stage. They were going to play “Adam and Eve” written by Mirzadeh Eshghi (میرزاده عشقی). Varto Terian (وارتو طریان) was the director of the play.” This was a part of the story I told at the Eye Film Museum.