Mohammad Abbasi

How do I feel about this situation I am in right now?

I always need people. I always need gathering. And it has been always happened in a common time and space. but now we only access to a common time in different spaces. To answer this question, considering that the common space has been important for us, and now it’s time to think about this importance. Why this is important for us to meet and gather in a common space? And this is so important for the authority, too, when we desire to meet in a common space, in a way that authority and us always been fighting over the space, like a competition. Who can take over and occupy the space? After the massive demonstration in the streets of Tehran in 2009, government legislate that gathering over 4 people from now on is considered as an illegal act, no matter what the reason of the gathering is. Then the gathering itself became a political act I suppose. And the time we spend in this space became more authentic. Now, the virus just reminds me of a schizophrenic state that want to separate us, but we are already well trained to frequently find a common time to be together. 

But what does this situation do to my artistic work?

To answer this question I share a video which is a capture screen of one of our meeting in “jitsi”:

Since some weeks ago we are meeting with many people in „jitsi“. In this specific video we are 8 people, each one gives a task to the others to react for about 60 seconds. The tasks are inspired by these thoughts: 

„5 how to’s“ as our guideline to record this video:  

1- use home as working/presenting space / 2- use small spaces to express, with a big urgency though / 3- learn to work in limitation and obligation / 4- use the daily destructions created in a nonprofessional space like home as a material for work / 5- define new possibilities out of the restriction of the media/devices you use for these expressions.