THE FUTURE STATE #01

Goethe at LUX Residency Experimental Research Roundtable

During her residency Goethe at LUX residency artist Anahita Razmi considers the future of The Islamic Republic of Iran as seen from the perspective of a diverse range of diasporic communities.

Entitled THE FUTURE STATE, her project references the work of Iranian Marxist Mansoor Hekmat, who is buried in close proximity to Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery. Hekmat was a theorist, revolutionary and leader of the Iranian worker-communist movement, active in Iran until 1981 and in Kurdistan and the UK afterwards until his death in 2002.
THE FUTURE STATE #01 is the first event in a series of open experimental research roundtables. The evening will start with a screening of Maziar Bahari’s documentary „An Iranian Odyssey“(2010), which addresses the history of Iran under the governance of Mohammad Mossadegh and the unfolding of the 1953 CIA coup. Taking part in the first roundtable will be Iranian sound artist Bijan Moosavi, the editor of Militaant Maziar Razi and journalist Arron Reza Merat.
While considering Iran’s political history and present, the roundtable aims to open up a range of topics in relation to: the position(s) of a contemporary Iranian Left vis-à-vis global Leftist tendencies, the relevance of foreign powers when shaping ‘states’, the opportunities and challenges for activists, artists, and writers working from a diasporic position, the possibilities of utopias and the potentials of repetition as tragedy or as farce.
The experimental roundtable setups will also try to test out different ways of constructing a discussion: with reference to Herodotus „The Histories“, book 1, chapter 133 („If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk […]“) , the series will culminate in a dead drunk THE FUTURE STATE roundtable.