Otherwise, The Gap: Performing Identities in Iranian Contemporary Art and Performance

Abstract

Otherwise, the Gap: Performing Identities in Iranian Contemporary Art and Performance explores the intersections between race, performance, and politics within and without the so-called Middle Eastern region. I use theories of race, gender, performance, and ritual to investigate the performativity of what I call strategic acts of repair in the context of four case studies: Shadi Ghadirian’s Like EveryDay photo collection; 84Theatre Company’s productions of Endless Monologue and Mountain Language; and the underground Iranian instrumental and electronic music movement. Through the framework of strategic acts of repair, I intend to theorize the performativity of constant attempts made by Iranian artist-activists in raising awareness as well as facilitating a platform for addressing the political violence imposed on Iranian identity on its legal top-down and everyday bottom-up level, domestically and internationally. I argue these artworks from theatre, performance, visual and sonic art are vital sites capable of articulating and resisting the exclusion that Muslims encounter in the Middle East as well as the United States of America. By interrogating these artworks produced in the spaces of the theatre, Internet, and underground performance venues in the Muslim diaspora, I am able to analyze scenographic, performative, and architectural strategies used by contemporary artists to build new artistic vocabularies of resistance. I argue that these artists and their works orchestrate interactions between the oppositional fronts, e.g., official and unofficial sectors, and provide spaces where people can better understand and interpret their collective and individualistic identities within and beyond the Middle Eastern official narrative.