Come Tehran from We

 

Exhibit Description of the Never Been to Tehran

Andrea Grover and Jon Rubin, Co-organizers

Imagine a city that you've only seen in reproductions or perhaps have merely heard about. A place, like many others, that only exists for you through indirect sources--the nightly news, hearsay, literature, magazines, movies, and the Internet. Using these secondhand clues as firsthand research materials, invited worldwide participants--who have Never Been to Tehran--will take photographs (from their home base) of what they imagine Tehran to look like. Contributors will upload their photos daily to an on-line photosharing site, which will be projected as a slideshow simultaneously in galleries and public spaces around the world (including Tehran). Anything that anyone might take a photograph of is fair game, just as long as it feels like Tehran.

For the international contributors to this exhibition, the task is to search through their daily lives for clues to a foreign place, for the possibility that somewhere else exists right under their noses and that, like some clunky form of astral projection, one can travel to other lands without leaving home. New information technologies are expanding the possibility of knowing a place to which you've never traveled. Hosts of amateur and commercial websites and podcasts about a given city, its economy, demographics, culture and subculture have opened the way for a new vernacular of representation. As Tehran's image is regularly depicted in the dominant media, it is a compelling challenge for the participants in this exhibition to sift through the glut of images and information to cull out a personally constructed version of an unfamiliar place. For viewers in Tehran, the exhibition presents a chance to witness an unusual mirroring of their globally projected image, taken from the daily lives and environs of outsiders.

Collectively, the artists and viewers of Never Been to Tehran will be charting a liminal space stuck somewhere between here and there that in our contemporary existence just might be home.

>> Web Exhibition : Never Been to Tehran

 

Work Concept of the Come Tehran from We

私は「サイトスペシフィック」アートを中心に創作活動をしています。このサイトスペシフィックというのは文字通り、「場所特別な」アートです。つまり私は、作品制作の為の現地リサーチに非常に重要性を置き、場所そのものから得るインスピレーション、風土、地理的条件を考慮した作品を発表しています。そのような意味で今回の展示会、｢Never Been to Teheran｣とは私にとって、(写真という技術的な面においてもコンセプトの面においても) 少々未知なる挑戦となります。

私は、この｢Never Been to Teheran｣のコンセプトを発展して、非常に個人的なコンセプトを立てました。「 We come from Teheran｣と題した写真シリーズは、私の生活圏内に生活する、テヘラン出身の二人に焦点を当てています。これは非常に個人的な、「私」のテヘランの印象です。

海外で何か文化的な相違があったような場合に、「あなたの国の場合はどう？」というような質問を投げかけられることがあります。日本人の場合はどう？と聞かれても、私は日本人ですが、日本人の全体ではなく、返事に困ってしまいます。「人は人によって違う」、というのが私の返答であったりするのですが、案外その人たち(質問者)にとっては、私の意見が日本人像を決定する要素になってしまっうのかもしれません。つまり、裏を返せば印象というものはあくまで個々の認識であり、例えば海外に生活する個々が、ある地球の離れた場所の印象を、誰かの非常に個人的なレベルにおいて形成していたりするのかもしれません。

Jun'ichiro ISHII

© 2004- Jun'ichiro ISHII